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This chapter examines modular production/manufacturing (as well as emulation), which pose a direct challenge to a host of the most cherished strategies of Japanese electronics firms, including employment protection. Contradictory pressures to respond to the modularization challenge on the one hand, and maintain cherished strategies on the other, lead to electronics firms shedding and protecting jobs at the same time, moving out of old business lines and adding new ones, opening sourcing networks and investing in new in-house component plants, expanding some facilities and shrinking or closing others. Overall, adoption of aspects of modular production in low-end manufacturing can be seen, this is much less so for advanced products and technologies. The result is the creation of a ‘mixed model’.

This chapter concludes that although the Norwegian IT industry has been lacking in export success for the last thirty years, it has been important for the development of the Norwegian economy. Several IT companies have been on the verge of international breakthroughs, but have been stopped by rising costs and guided by national opportunities. The rise of the important oil-sector has been both a hindrance through rising costs, and an opportunity as a market, for the Norwegian IT industry. Specialised products for national markets rather than general mass-market products have become the norm for the Norwegian IT industry. This development had to a remarkable degree been associated with continuity in terms of organizations and people. The firms these people and organizations have been attached too, however, have experienced turbulence, bankruptcy, and change, making the whole development from 1970 until today a seemingly messy and problematic affair. But this has really been a period of IT industry growth, and in the end the national development is reasonably successful.

This chapter has two main sections, which contrast the post‐war development of managerial control in the USA in the mass production industries, and the high‐technology industries––as exemplified by the electronics industry. The first, Sect. 4.2, The post‐war governance of mass‐production enterprises, discusses the trend towards strategic segmentation––the emergence of conglomerations and resulting impact on performance, and the emergence of core corporate enterprises. The second, Sect. 4.3, The electronics complex and the governance of innovation, discusses the roles of the federal government and of venture capital, and the abiding importance of the innovative corporation.

Building on the experience of nine Japanese electronics firms after World War II, the authors look at the explanatory contribution of selective factor disadvantages operating at the country level (hard countries) and of local rivalry (the stimulus of pressures) to the survival and growth of these firms. Their argument, which stresses the spatial influence on firm strategy, is close to that of Enright in the previous chapter. Since Fujita and Ishii look at the global operations of their nine selected firms, they are also able bring to the fore the geographical dispersal and local spatially determined dynamics as they impact firm strategy. Their detailed analysis shows that globalization of the chosen firms is a function of the desire to remain competitive. However, it also notes that fundamental problems have arisen for the Japanese electronics industry as well as for the Japanese economy, and these are identified as primarily institutional and competitive in type.

This chapter explores how, through strategic partnership with global lead firms, domestic firms from South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore can provide cutting-edge design and manufacturing services in the global personal computers and consumer electronics industry. During the 1960s and the 1970s, this industry received significant attention in the developmental state's core program of export promotion. But its transformation from a subservient role of subcontracting to a more technologically capable role of providing original design and manufacturing services took place only in the 1990s and beyond, when these domestic firms became more articulated into diverse production networks coordinated by global lead firms. While this was facilitated by the state's new role in upgrading labor, technology, and infrastructure in the domestic economy, the chapter notes how this was also done through the emergence of global production networks (GPN) as a new organizational structure for global competition.

This chapter deals with the consumer electronics industry: the devices consumers use to receive, record, amplify, and display media information. Without them, electronic media would not exist. Together with content production and distribution systems, media devices form a triangle of media industries. Here, the market concentration of telephone, radio, television, DVD players, camcorders, cable television consumer equipment, satellite receivers, CD players, and MP3 players is analyzed. The media consumer electronics industry in the United States is large and diverse in terms of its products. In 2004, its US volume alone was $63 billion. Some firms appear to be niche players, usually sitting at the high-end of the price scale. As for the low and medium price ranges, the market is dominated by around seven or eight large, efficient firms which enjoy enormous economies of scale and scope. Several large firms have been acquired or operated primarly as a brand. There is little middle ground in the industry.

Steps to improve the financing for small New England companies, together with developments in electronics, paved the way for a burgeoning new area industry. Electronics was a key growth sector in the mid-twentieth century. In the industry’s advanced segment, a new type of company arose as technical personnel left established research organizations to set up their own “spinoff,” or startup, firms. The Boston area was originally a spinoff center of secondary importance. But by the early 1960s, Boston’s “Route 128” had become the leading locus of technologically advanced industry. Spinoff companies near Boston outpaced their competitors elsewhere in part because of the greater support they received from local financiers. New England venture capitalists invested in some early Boston spinoffs. More importantly, the First National Bank of Boston and other commercial banks provided loans and other assistance. Financiers assisted the spinoffs in a conscious attempt to develop new regional industry.

This chapter applies the strategic value framework to case studies of nonstrategic industries (consumer electronics, foodstuffs, and paper) to show that decentralized engagement is the dominant regulatory pattern in low-tech, labor-intensive industries. Consumer electronics ranks the highest in strategic value among the nonstrategic sectors surveyed. Despite its low strategic value for national security applications and medium rank in contribution to the national technology base, the most high-tech subsectors, including microelectronics, produce inputs and have applications for strategic industries, including telecommunications and transportation. The state adopted a more deliberate orientation toward the development of indigenous technologies and domestic industry in these subsectors. The state has extensively liberalized market entry and business scope in foodstuffs. It has also taken an incidental orientation toward paper since paper production has miniscule applications for national security and makes a small contribution to China's national technology base.

This chapter compares innovative activities in India and China. It first presents the larger context against which one may analyze the nature and extent of innovative activities in these two countries. It then presents quantitative evidence on whether the two economies are becoming innovative. The Chinese National System of Innovation (NSI) is dominated by the Sectoral System of innovation (SSI) of the electronics and telecommunications industries; for India it is dominated by the SSI of the pharmaceutical industry. In both countries, innovative activities are increasingly provided by multinational corporations. In other words, both China and India have become important locations for innovative activities. However, the continued rise in innovative activity in the two countries is limited by the availability of finance and high-quality scientists and engineers.

This chapter describes the ways in which patents are commercially exploited by various industries. It discusses the use of patents to exclude competition in the pharmaceutical industry; patents for survival in the biotechnology industry; patents as a source of royalty income for universities; patents as lottery tickets for inventors; and patents as bargaining chips in the electronics industry. The final section explains the use of patents as tools for extortion. The term ‘patent troll’ has become widely used in the last few years, and is usually applied to an entity that has no business activities except asserting and litigating patent rights.

The thesis in this book is that pyrite has been a key material in the development of our civilization and culture. It has figured in the foundation of nations and key industries, in the development of science, and in our current understanding of the nature of matter. It has played a key role in the development of our culture mostly through its use in the most important of human inventions: the taming of fire. Pyrite has determined the nature of the Earth’s surface environment and the origin and evolution of life itself. I have discussed how pyrite affects our present environment through its key role in the great biogeochemical cycles of fundamental substances like oxygen and carbon and how this has continued through over 4,000 million years of Earth history. This long history of the centrality of pyrite to the Earth system has enabled confident predictions about how pyrite is going to affect future Earth environment through acidification of atmospheres, rivers, and soils and eutrophication of the oceans, for example. Pyrite has played a central role in the development of humankind for the entire 200,000 years of the existence of Homo sapiens sapiens and this is unlikely to end now. It seems incontrovertible that pyrite will play a similar role in future human development as it has for the last 200,000 years. In this chapter I return to some of the themes from previous chapters and show how pyrite is still influencing our society and how this is likely to continue into the future. Gold occurs naturally in two basic forms: visible gold and invisible gold. Invisible gold was a term used by one of the greatest of 20th-century gold prospectors, John Livermore, to describe gold that “would not pan”—that is, gold that did not appear in the prospector’s pan when the crushed rock or natural gravel was gently swirled around with water. Livermore discovered invisible gold in Nevada, which led to the 1980s gold rush in that state that has, to date, produced gold to a value of over US$85 billion.