For both private and government leaders, how to promote American productivity growth in an interdependent global system is the central economic challenge of the 1990s. The decade just passed saw disappointingly slow gains in U.S. productivity low levels of profit, investment, and economic growth, and consequent stagnation in average wages. Companies based in the United States often found themselves unable to match Japanese, German, Italian, and Scandinavian competitors in their ability to put new technologies in practice, to bring new products to market, or to upgrade their work force. Can America -- and American business -- do better in the 1990s?