Cognitive capitalism is considered to be a new stage in the historical evolution of capitalism which is undergoing a metamorphosis affecting most of the laws and tendencies characteristic of industrial capitalism. This raises a series of issues tackled in the theoretical part, especially regarding the increased importance of cognitive work and the new composition of the labour market that influence the determinants of the value of goods, the structure of welfare, and the forms of income distribution. A historical analysis is applied to describe the evolution of cognitive capitalism and its endogenous, potentially destabilising, dynamics. The empirical part analyses the diffusion of cognitive capitalism in the former socialist countries of South-Eastern Europe and elsewhere.