Preface
This book brings together a sequence of studies developed around a common question: why do apparently sensible reforms, investments and innovations produce structural transformation in some national settings but only partial improvement in others? The chapters were originally formulated through separate theoretical and applied inquiries. They are reorganized here as a single argument, with a unified terminology, shared analytical architecture and a cumulative progression from theory to policy application.
The central concept is National Transformational Capacity. It emerged from research on development miracles and the middle-income trap, then expanded through work on strategic coordination, transformational thresholds, science and technology, data-based development and the modernization loop. The silver economy and low-altitude economy offered opportunities to test the framework against two very different transformation challenges: one demographic and social, the other technological and spatial.
The result is not a collection of articles. Redundant introductions and methodological passages have been removed; overlapping arguments have been consolidated; transitions and synthesis chapters have been added; and figures have been redrawn in a consistent visual language. The book retains the exploratory character of theory-building while making the propositions accessible for comparative research, graduate teaching and strategic policy design.
I use the term 'capacity' deliberately. Development depends not only on what a country possesses but on what it can organize, learn, adapt and reproduce over time. The aim of this book is to clarify that organizational problem and to open a research agenda capable of testing it.
Huynh Thanh Dien
2026
