The role of recipes in increasing productivity

(originally posted August 14, 2011 @ Facebook)

In Man, Economy, and State, Chapter 1.8 "Factors of Production: Labor versus Leisure," Murray Rothbard claims that improved technical knowledge by itself cannot increase production (that it merely broadens the bounds of what is possible with the given resources). I give the full quote at the bottom of this post. I disagree with him and I illustrate this with the following example:

Let's say Crusoe has a nice sharp rock and a heap of coconuts. At first it takes him an hour to crack each coconut until he stumbles upon a better technique. Perhaps he discovers that striking the coconut in a certain way or in a certain place opens it with one simply whack, bringing his production time down from an hour to five minutes.

So: same rock, same type of coconut, but twelve times the productivity. The only difference is his recipe, or technical knowledge. Now of course I do agree with Rothbard in his own example below that Crusoe can't build a mansion on his island even if he knew how to do it. This is because his resources are limited. But what about the coconut example? What do you guys say?
 
Fins


original quote:
"...It is evident that every man desires to maximize his production of consumers’ goods per unit of time. [...] The nature-given factors are limited by his environment and therefore cannot be increased. This leaves him with the choice of increasing his supply of capital goods or of increasing his expenditure of labor. It might be asserted that another way of increasing his production is to improve his technical knowledge of how to produce the desired goods—to improve his recipes. A recipe, however, can only set outer limits on his increases in production; the actual increases can be accomplished solely by an increase in the supply of productive factors. Thus, suppose that Robinson Crusoe lands, without equipment, on a desert island. He may be a competent engineer and have full knowledge of the necessary processes involved in constructing a mansion for himself. But without the necessary supply of factors available, this knowledge could not suffice to construct the mansion."

- Murray Rothbard (Man, Economy, and State)