Knowledge plays an important role in economic growth. The role of
technological knowledge significantly increased after the Industrial Revolution.
Firms internalised technological knowledge in their R&D laboratories and placed
knowledge creation in a central position in their business strategies. Both the stock
and flow of technological knowledge and the tight interaction among science and
engineering became indispensable to the competitive advantage of industry, as well
as modern economic growth.
Directing its attention to knowledge creation and spillover, this thesis
scrutinises the development of semiconductor lasers from 1960 to 1990. The
semiconductor laser became one of the most important developments in the
optoelectronics industry underlying the drastic changes that took place during the
last half of the twentieth century in information technology, and it has become the
most widely used laser since the 1980s.
Reviewing the optoelectronics industry in the U.S. and Japan, the Japan
Technology Evaluation Center (JTEC) found that “Japan clearly led in consumer
optoelectronics, that both countries were competitive in communications and
networks, and that the United States held a clear lead in custom optoelectronics.”
“Japan’s lead in high-volume consumer optoelectronics and related technologies
gave it a dominant share of the overall global optoelectronics market.” This thesis
explores how the patterns of comparative advantages emerged, which were indicated
by the JTEC report. How did Japanese firms gain technological competitiveness in
high volume product markets? How did the U.S. firms come to be competitive in
niche markets?
Through scrutinizing patent data, it examines the engineers’ network,
mobility, and the pattern of technological choice in R&D competition. Introducing
the two different types of knowledge--current technological domain specific
knowledge and lateral utilization knowledge--it showed how different patterns of
knowledge spillover emerged and resulted in the different paths of technological
development in the U.S. and Japan. Based on the high star-engineers’ mobility and
the well developed research network, the U.S. firms tended to spin off from their
parent firms and targeted niche markets. Therefore, knowledge spillover emerged in
the areas where semiconductor laser technology was applied and exploited to fill
untapped markets. In contrast, the pattern of competition of Japanese firms induced
knowledge spillovers to enhance the development of core semiconductor laser
technology instead of exploiting niche product markets