This paper introduces an innovative methodology that combines industry level information (exports, HA 4-digits) with indicators at the country level, to analyze which social capabilities are important to explain the observed patterns of structural transformation. The authors consider several indicators to characterize three dimensions: cultural, governance, and economic, plus only one indicator (polity) for a political dimension. Through the use of the product space, a measure of density that identifies the proximity of non-developed products to the countries' export profile, and a system of coupled networks where densities are adjusted in terms of social affinities, the authors find the following main results: (i) countries can be competitive in certain industries even if they do not have a high value in some of these indicators
(ii) the governance dimension is closely related on how the countries' export profiles are positioned in the product space
and (iii) all of these dimensions, but not all the indicators, help explain the observed process of structural transformation and the widening of the gap between poor and rich countries.