The ‘de-territorialisation of closeness’ - a typology of international successful R&D projects involving cultural and geographic proximity

Although there is a considerable amount of empirical evidence on inter-firm collaborations within technology-based industries, there are only a few works concerned with R&D cooperation by low-tech firms, especially SMEs. Providing further and new evidence based on a recently built database of CRAFT projects, this study analyzes the relationship between technology and proximity in international R&D networks using Homogeneity Analysis by Means of Alternating Least Squares (HOMALS) and statistical cluster techniques. The resulting typology of international cooperative R&D projects highlights that successful international cooperative R&D projects are both culturally/geographically closer and distant. Moreover, and quite interestingly, geographically distant projects are technologically more advanced whereas those located near each other are essentially low tech. Such evidence is likely to reflect the tacit-codified knowledge debate boosted recently by the ICT “revolution” emphasized by the prophets of the “Death of Distance” and the “End of Geography”.Research and Development (R&D); proximity; SMEs

Societal Effects and the Transfer of Business Practices to Britain and France

This paper seeks to reconcile the notion of a 'societal effect' in business organisation with the considerable evidence that competitive pressures continuously lead national producers to emulate the business practices of other nations, which are perceived as providing a basis for superior economic performance. The paper identifies three sources of national specificity in the process of emulation giving rise to 'hybrid' models. First, the fact that a nation's manufacturers have a distinctive knowledge base means that adopting another nation's methods will depend on local learning involving trial and error. The more 'distant' the emulated technology is from the local one, the less likely it is that this learning process will result in an exact replica of the parent model. Second, when there are strong interdependencies between a nation's production methods and its systems of vocational training, there will be strong pressure to adopt new methods in ways that are compatible with existing career structures. Third, the fact each nation has a particular industrial relations legacy involving varying levels of trust between labour and management, means that new practices will be introduced through a distinctive process of negotiation and compromise giving rise to national specific effects.knowledge, learning processes, national specificity

The Asian miracle and modern growth theory

In the past 35 years, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (China) have transformed themselves from technologically backwards and poor economies to relatively modern, affluent economies. Each has experienced more than a fourfold increase in per capita income. In each, a significant number of firms are producing technologically complex products competitive with firms in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Their growth performance has exceeded that of virtually all comparable economies. How they did it is a question of great importance. Virtually all theories about how they did it placed investments in capital stock at the center of the explanation. The authors divide most growth theories about the Asian miracle into two groups: 1) The"accumulation"theories stress the role of capital investments in moving these economies along their production functions. What lies behind rapid development, according to this type of theory, is very high investment rates. If a nation makes the investments, marshals the resources, development will follow. 2) The"assimilation"theories stress the entrepreneurship, innovation, and learning these economies went through before they could master the new technologies they were adopting from more advanced industrial nations. They see investment in human and physical capital as an essential but far from sufficient part of assimilation. In addition, people must learn about, take the risk of operating, and come to master technologies and other practices new to the country, if not the world. The emphasis for assimilation theorists is on innovation and learning, rather than on marshaling. If one marshals but does not innovate and learn, development does not follow. These are complex theories that raise as many questions as they answer. The authors discuss differences in the way the two groups of theorists treat four matters: entrepreneurial decisionmaking; the nature of technology; the economic capabilities possible with a well-educated work force; and the role exports play in a country's rapid development.The differences between the theories matter because they affect our understanding of why the Asian miracle happened and because they imply different things about appropriate economic development policy.General Technology,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Growth,General Technology,Inequality

Innovative Tokyo

This paper compares and contrasts Tokyo's innovation structure with the industrial districts model and the international hub model in the literature on urban and regional development. The Tokyo model embraces and yet transcends both industrial districts and international hub models. The paper details key elements making up the Tokyo model-organizational knowledge creation, integral and co-location systems of corporate R&D and new product development, test markets, industrial districts and clusters, participative consumer culture, continuous learning from abroad, local government policies, the national system of innovation, and the historical genesis of Tokyo in Japan's political economy. The paper finds that the Tokyo model of innovation will continue to evolve with the changing external environment, but fundamentally retains its main characteristics. The lessons from the Tokyo model is that openness, a diversified industrial base, the continuing development of new industries, and an emphasis on innovation, all contribute to the dynamism of a major metropolitan region.Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Health Promotion,ICT Policy and Strategies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,ICT Policy and Strategies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Innovation

Is America Exporting Misguided Telecommunications Policy? The U.S.-Japan Telecom Trade Negotiations and Beyond

Global telecommunications markets have traditionally been closed to foreign trade and investment. Recent World Trade Organization negotiations resulted in a Basic Telecommunications agreement that sought to construct a multilateral framework to reverse that trend and begin opening telecom markets worldwide. Regrettably, this new WTO framework is quite ambiguous and open to pro-regulatory interpretations by member states. In fact, during recent bilateral trade negotiations with Japan, U.S. government officials adopted the position that the new framework allowed them to demand that the Japanese government adopt very specific regulatory provisions regarding telecom network interconnection and pricing policies. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative argued that Japanese officials should require their domestic telecom providers to share their networks with rivals at a generously discounted price to encourage greater resale competition. Those interconnection and line-sharing rules were borrowed directly from the U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996, a piece of legislation that remains the subject of intense debate within the United States. Good evidence now exists that those rules generally retard net-work investment and innovation by encouraging infrastructure sharing over facilities-based investment. Consequently, the USTR has generated resentment on the part of Japan and other trading partners as it has attempted to force them to adopt heavy-handed telecommunications mandates that have very little to do with legitimate free-trade policy. The USTR must discontinue efforts to impose American telecommunications regulations on other countries as part of free-trade negotiations and should instead focus on reforming or eliminating the most serious barriers to foreign direct investment both here and abroad

Perspectives on Mature Marshallian Industrial Districts

Industrial districts growing in various industrialized countries and regions after the golden age of mass production, in the second half of the twentieth century, have shown a re-emergence of forces of local development. The success stories, in particular those more peculiar and consistent as forms of industrial and social organization, like many Italian cases, have asked and favored the definition of apposite concepts and frames of interpretations. A strong basis of theoretical refinement was extracted from Alfred Marshall’s reflections on the role and working of industrial districts before the golden age of mass production. A well-known refinement is the model of the so-called Marshallian industrial district (MID). Sustained trajectories of success gravitating around the logic of such model have resulted in what may be intended as cases of typical mature industrial districts. They have been confronting since the end of the last century with the effects of a new wave of globalization challenges. It is argued in this paper that MID general structural and dynamic characters encompass a large set of empirical cases, in particular those of typical mature IDs reacting progressively, in terms of innovation and internationalization, to contemporary challenges and de-maturing. They find their way and combine old and new characters, still within the model. However, the MID’s borders may be trespassed as well, as the MID logic coalesces with other logics of industrial and social organization.Marshallian industrial districts; contemporary innovation and internationalization challenges

Toward a Third Industrial Divide?

Introduction: The Second Divide Revisited The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity was written in another time of great despair about the future of the American economy. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel described the mid-eighties in terms that seem to fit our own predicament: “The times are troubled indeed when thegood news is almost indistinguishable from the bad. Economic downturns no longer seem mere interruptions in the march to greater prosperity; rather they threaten to destroy the world markets on which economic success has depended since the end of World War II. Meanwhile, upturns avert disaster without solving the problems of unemployment and slow growth, which have become chronic in almost all the advanced countries. No theory seems able to explain recent events, let alone predict what will happen next.” (Piore and Sabel 1984, p. 3)

2D3D2D: a diagnostic approach to textile and fashion research practice

In the School of Art and Design, at Nottingham Trent University, a range of research methods and practices have developed through PhD and post doctoral study in relation to printed textile design and new technology. Individual research projects have addressed pattern (Bunce 1993); photographic imagery (Briggs 1997); colour (Leak 2001); non-repeating pattern (Carlisle 2003) and 2D/3D (Townsend 2003). Post-doctoral research (Briggs-Goode & Bunce 2001) and Townsend's research into 2D/3D informed a group project and exhibition Transforming Shape (2004). The outcomes created by Gillian Bunce, Amanda Briggs-Goode, Gillian Bunce, Rosemary Goulding and Katherine Townsend explored the relationships between innovative surface imagery and three-dimensional prototypes, based on the simple geometric forms of square, rectangle and circle

Skill, craft and histories of industrialisation in Europe and Asia

It is time to reexamine craft and small-scale manufacture within our histories of industrialisation, both West and East, and to reflect on the long survival and adaptation of artisanal production even within our globalised world of production and consumption. Historians since the 1950s have addressed craft, skill and labour-intensive production in historical frameworks such as ‘the rise of the factory system’, ‘proto-industrialisation’ and ‘flexible specialisation’. More recently, they have devised other concepts which include labour and skill-intensive production such as ‘industrious revolution’, ‘the great divergence’, ‘knowledge economies’, ‘East Asian development paths’ and ‘cycles of production’. This paper surveys this historiography of craft and skill in models of industrialisation. It then reflects on small-scale industrial structures in current globalisation, emphasising the continued significance of craft and skill over a long history of global transitions. It gives close examination to one region, Gujarat, and its recent industrial and global history. The paper compares industrial production for East India Company trade in the eighteenth century to the recent engagement of the artisans of the Kachchh district of Gujarat in global markets. It draws on the oral histories of seventy-five artisan families to discuss the past and future of craft and skill in the industry of the global economy