The book opens by saying that because the relatively late industrializing countries wanted to quickly get in pace with advanced industrialization, they could skip the mistakes made by the advanced countries and the process of moving from simple to complex. This meant that such countries needed a degree of high-level coordination and strong leadership which only governments were sufficiently competent to supply.
書中一開頭就提到：經濟發展起步較晚的國家，由於要盡快跟上工業化腳步，跳過先進國家嘗試錯誤及由簡至繁的過程，需要高層次的協調、主導力量，這只有政府能夠勝任。