I think one depressing example is innovation in weapons and other dangerous fields. “If we don’t build it, someone else will first” is unfortunately historically been shown to be true, has it not?
Today’s unsavory borderline reactionary doomposting brought to you by: my crippling fear that I’m isolating myself in a political echo-chamber (so naturally I gotta hop online and exclusively ask my fellow leftists)
I think this is probably the wrong question to ask unless you mean “In what ways has capitalism been historically progressive compared to feudalism?” or something along those lines. Neoliberal capitalism is purely reactionary.