Summary.
Reprint: R1107C Since 1776, when Adam Smith described how the division of labor could spur economic progress, work has increasingly been broken into everAdam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, famously described what would be one of the central drivers of economic progress for centuries to come: the division of labor.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review.
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