Backwardness is a lack of progress by a person or group to some perceived cultural norm of advancement, such as for example traditional societies relative to modern scientific and technologically advanced industrialized societies.
The backwardness model is a theory of economic growth created by Alexander Gerschenkron.
Thorstein Veblen's 1915 Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution is an extended essay comparing the United Kingdom and Germany,[1] and concluding that the slowing of growth in Britain and the rapid advances in Germany were due to the "penalty of taking the lead".
British industry worked out, in a context of small competing firms, the best ways to produce efficiently.
Germany's backwardness gave it an advantage in that the best practice could be adopted in large-scale firms.