If our ship-wrecked individual finds a sheep. Perhaps he has made a sharp stone knife and can shear the sheep and gather its wool. If he can make a tool, to spin the wool into a yarn, then he may be able to make some warm clothing from the yarn. But that yarn might also be wound together with many other yarns, to make a strong rope. Or perhaps he could make a net for catching fish. This yarn is a new material which cannot exist without tools. It can be used to create clothing with another production step, but it could also be used to make net, which could then be used to catch fish, so the new material could satisfy that want with two subsequent production steps.

If Man works out how to use fire to cure container made of mud, then he can make ceramic containers. At a very basic level such a container could be used to improve his water supply be giving him the ability to carry and store water. But these containers could also be used in cooking or storing other products. They could also be used to melt ore in a hot fire and extract purer metal from the ore. This would not be possible without a heat resistant container. Pure metal can be formed into other objects (such as plates or cups) that satisfy Wants, which would otherwise be unsatisfied.

A glass lens for specific optical Needs cannot be created without tools to create the appropriate glass and grinding or shaping tools to create a lens with the exact characteristics required to create a useful lens for reading or magnifying text. The tools to create the lens require complex metal tools with many different components, each made by other tools. The glass raw material for the lens requires complex mining and refining capabilities as well as other manufacturing capability to produce a glass raw material, suitable for the production of a lens.

In the modern economy, every single good or service that we consume has a complex production system, in which tools are used to create tools and these tools transform other materials into final goods and services. In some respects, materials used to create a consumer good differ only from a tool in that the material may be entirely transformed when producing the good, whereas a tool is only partially transformed. All tools depreciate, so if a factory, which is created by many tools, can produce 1 million cars before it is obsolete, the each car produced consumes one millionth of the factory. Whereas an engine, which also is produced by many tools, is totally consumed in the production of a car. So the production of car consumes one engine.

In a general sense, tools and materials serve a similar purpose and are produced in a similar fashion. They both require saving for their production, they are each partially or completely consumed when used to produce another good. Each is valued according to its usefulness in producing a consumer good. In a general sense, these tools, new materials and improved consumer goods can all also be considered to be technologies. They form the physical capital structure of an economy.