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Sources of Industrial Leadership: Studies of Seven Industries

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Scholars from around the world provided seven chapter-length overviews of leadership in seven key industries. Editors David C. Mowery and Richard R. Nelson present these detailed, well-documented and richly written explorations in context by offering an analysis in chapters that follow each industry study. The forces that moved these industries in the U.S., Japan and Western Europe included technological innovation, world politics, changing marketing, product innovation and the advent of mass production. We [...] recommend this book to those interested in the progress of the seven industries covered - computers, computer software, semiconductors, machine tools, organic chemical products, pharmaceutical biotechnology and medical devices - and in global commerce and manufacturing.

This book contains chronicles of seven industries of G3 (US, Japan, Europe) like semiconductor, computer, software, machine tool, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, and medical diagnostics. The aim of those chronicle documenting is to examine the effectiveness of existing models of industrial leadership or, in Porter¡¯s term, competitive advantage. There have been several theories like technology life cycle theory, punctuated equilibrium, dynamic comparative advantage, and the like. But authors argue that close examination of seven industries in this book dose not support those theories. Some industry fits into some theory, but not into others. According to authors¡¯ analysis, each industry shows very specific dynamic of competitive advantage. In some industry, for example, competitive advantage lies in firm level, in other, in industry level. They suspect that all-encompassing theory could not be developed. They seems to conclude that all we can do is to identify a set of factors affecting the dynamics of industrial leadership, such as resource endowment, its institutional embodiment, features of local market demand, and local technological condition. The industrial leadership is the function of the system of those factors, not individual factor. In my opinion, what they have in mind is not that different from Porter¡¯s conception of ¡®cluster¡¯. Overall points are reasonable. But it¡¯s far from conclusive enough to suggest some clear-cut picture to reader. And that, case studies of industries are far too cursory. In fact, in-depth study of various industries in a volume is definitely prohibitive task. And that, the aim of this book is at another. But I can¡¯t help thinking that this book is no more than preliminary trial.