In his book The Social Brain, Czech neuroscientist František Koukolík writes that the main advantage of primates over animals with much smaller brains is not so much better handling of tools or devising tricks for specific situations, but the ability to work closely together in larger groups.
He has probably hit on a more general pattern that applies to the evolution of civilizations. If we were to compare a 20th century engineer with a builder who worked 3,000 years earlier, the difference would not be in the ability to solve a completely new problem, but in the fact that the modern engineer has an incredible store of knowledge, experience, technical solutions, and proven procedures that others have devised. That we have methods to share these things with each other.
In other words, what creates civilizational maturity is the ability to collaborate. Which makes it somewhat problematic to try to make competition the fundamental engine of progress. Yes, it works to some extent, it motivates performance. But it also limits cooperation. As psychologist Daniel Kahneman has shown in his experiments, just saying words like “profit” or “competitive advantage” in public causes a measurable decline in people’s willingness to cooperate.
Once again we come to the point that if we are to build on any general principle, it is neither collectivism nor individualism, but adequacy. The ability to think analytically and to ask what we need in those particular situations.