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1. Innovative Clusters & New Work: A Case Study of TaskRabbit

Author:
Emily Isaac
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
In the past five years, San Francisco has become home to dozens of new online and mobile “service networking” companies that claim to be “revolutionizing” the way work gets done. Making up what has come to be known as the “platform economy,” these technology companies provide the platforms for online and mobile marketplaces in which users can buy and sell their goods and services. Together, these “platform economy” companies make up a concentrated innovative cluster in the San Francisco Bay Area, and, more specifically, San Francisco proper. One of the sharing economy’s pioneers and largest success stories, TaskRabbit Inc. allows users to outsource small jobs and tasks to local contractors—or, in company lingo, neighborhood “Taskers.” Launched out of Boston in 2008, TaskRabbit is just one of many tech startups that have left Boston for the San Francisco Bay Area. Since relocating to San Francisco, the company has received $37.5 million in venture funding, is available in 20 cities, and reportedly has 1.25 million users and over 25,000 Taskers. Indeed, TaskRabbit exemplifies the immeasurable benefits of strategically locating a firm in an industry cluster.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Science and Technology, Communications, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States

2. Toward Institutional Innovation in US Labor Market Policy: Learning from Europe?

Author:
Tobias Schulze-Cleven and Henry Farrell
Publication Date:
07-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
What keeps US labor market institutions from more effectively helping the nation cope with the current economic crisis and secure its future prosperity? What is the scope for politically feasible innovation in US labor market policy? These are crucial policy questions. As a result of the global financial crisis, the US unemployment rate climbed into double digits and has remained higher than in many European countries. The US is experiencing the highest level of unemployment for a generation and the highest rate of long-term unemployment for more than half a century. American families are suffering from financial hardship without any fault of their own, and many of the currently unemployed will find it hard to re-enter the workforce during the recovery. Nor is the government easily able to use current programs to help those seeking work. Even though policymakers have launched new initiatives during the past year, the US remains almost uniquely weak among advanced industrialized democracies in its lack of policy programs to support the populace in successfully engaging with the labor market.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Labor Issues, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

3. When Innovators and Not Implementers: The Political Economies of VoIP in Japan and the United States

Author:
Kenji Erik Kushida and Masayuki Ogata
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The spread of Two puzzles immediately present themselves when one examines the spread of "Voice over IP" (VoIP, or IP telephony), a technology that sends voice signals as data, which can travel across the Internet.The first is that, despite the technology's widely hailed potential to undermine the core businesses of incumbent telephone operators by circumventing their traditional telephone networks, incumbent operators do not seem to be in imminent danger. When VoIP made headlines in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a dramatically cheaper alternative to conventional telephones, many predicted that new VoIP service providers would seriously threaten, if not cause the sudden demise of, incumbents. Yet, instead of telephone-replacement VoIP services, it was Skype, the online-based service more reliant on one party calling from a computer, which grew rapidly to take center stage. Why did VoIP as a substitute for conventional telephony, despite being hailed as a potentially "disruptive" technology, not have a catastrophic and relatively immediate disruptive effect on incumbent carriers' business models?
Topic:
Political Economy and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Asia

4. Is the Food Model Changing?

Author:
Martin Kenney
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Consumers offered mediocre quality food – Supersized with chemicals, sugar and lipids Provide ever more highly engineered foods – e.g., Pork with Omega-3 engineered into it Ignore consumer's desires for safety such as BSE testing Government run for the food and chemical industry -- little regulation, low standards – US government welfare keeps this alive.
Topic:
Government, Health, and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States

5. The Mexican Internet after the Boom: Challenges and Opportunities

Author:
Martin Kenney, James Curry, and Oscar Contreras
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The Internet will be the defining technology of the first decade of the 21st Century. It is redefining boundaries of all sorts in new and unforeseen ways. As with many previous disruptive technologies, the Internet can be a double-edged sword for developing countries such as Mexico. For example, the Internet has the potential to dramatically lower barriers to cross-border trade. This will enable international retailers to penetrate the Mexican market potentially undermining domestic retail businesses. On the other side, the Internet could provide opportunities for Mexican firms to enter the global market, particularly Spanish-speaking Latin America and the huge U.S. Hispanic market. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of change. For example, in a country such as Mexico in which information has not been readily available and public libraries are relatively few in number and poorly stocked, the free and low-cost information available on the Internet provides a powerful new distribution medium – it provides inexpensive access to global information sources.
Topic:
Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States, Latin America, Central America, North America, and Mexico

6. Supporting the High-Technology Entrepreneur: Support Network Geographies for Semiconductor, Telecommunications Equipment, and Biotechnology Start-Ups

Author:
Martin Kenney and Donald Patton
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Using a unique database derived from U.S. initial public stock offering prospecti, the authors examine the location of four actors (the firm's lawyers, the venture capitalists on the board of directors, the other members of the board of directors, and the lead investment banker) of the entrepreneurial support network for start-up firms in three high-technology industries: semiconductors, telecommunications equipment, and biotechnology. We demonstrate that the economic geography of the biotechnology support network differs significantly from the networks in semiconductors and telecommunications equipment. Our results suggest that generalization about the economic geography of high-technology industries drawn from a single industry study can be misleading. We find that biotechnology has a far more dispersed network structure than the two electronics-related industries. We suggest that the case of biotechnology suggests that if the source of seeds for new firms is highly dispersed, then an industry may not experience the path dependent clustering suggested by geographers and economists. Also, we argue that contrary to common belief biotechnology and its support network does not exhibit as great clustering as does either semiconductors or telecommunications equipment. Suggesting that for economic development planners, it may be easy to encourage biotechnology start-ups, but the synergies from the industry may not be as powerful as in other high-technology fields.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

7. Building Venture Capital Industries: Understanding the U.S. and Israeli Experience

Author:
Martin Kenney, Gil Avnimelech, and Morris Teubal
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
During the growth phase of every venture capita (VC) business cycle, it seems as though both local and national governments in various countries initiate policies aimed at establishing VC industries as part of a high-technology economic development strategy. It is remarkable how each time there seems to be a proliferation of ill-advised policies that are usually reminiscent of the ones tried during the previous phase. Not surprisingly, in a distressingly large number of cases, the “new” policies to foster VC meet with minimal success or fail outright. While the causes of failure are undoubtedly multiple, there is ample room for believing that often the policies were based on a simplistic or incomplete understanding of the roots and dynamics that have led to the development of self-sustaining national VC industries. This paper uses historically informed case studies of Israel and the U.S. to develop an appreciative model of how the VC industries in these two nations came into being. Our model and understanding of this process is deliberately evolutionary and systemic. We believe that this perspective is the only one capable of providing both scholars and policy-makers with a grounded understanding of the emergence and development of the VC industries in these two nations.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States and Israel

8. How Revolutionary is the Revolution: Will there be a “Political Economy” of the Digital Era?

Author:
John Zysman and Abe Newman
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to consider whether there is a political economy of a digital era. Our concern is how the digital revolution influences the role of the State in society and the economy and the politics that surround it? In the spring of 2000 in the midst of the stock boom we would have as ked: “Is the extraordinary expansion of computing intelligence, the pervasive spread of digital networks, and the recent arrival of the commercial Internet, the edge of an historical revolution, a transformation?” Data networks had existed for decades and Business to Business commerce (B2B) had been conducted over these networks for years. But the sudden interconnection of disparate networks into a single “cyber world”, and broad consumer participation in those networks through vehicles such as AOL seemed to augur a new era. The pace at which individuals, not just firms, were being connected to the Internet in the United States was explosive. Businesses were reorganizing and extending intern al activities to capture the possibilities of the network of networks. Together the Internet's rapid build out encouraged the fantasy that the new information network technologies could, in themselves, transform the terms of competition and restructure a broad range of the economy. By the summer of 2003, the conventional question had become different: “Was this the revolution that never happened, the dreams evaporating with stock values, first during the dot com collapse and then in the telecoms debacle?” Did the digital revolution have more in common with tulip speculation, a pure ephemera, than the railroad expansion and transportation revolution that created and destroyed individual fortunes. Of course, the industrial revolution di d not end with the first textile company failures, nor does the digital revolution end with the dot com collapse.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

9. Innovation and Social Capital in Silicon Valley

Author:
Martin Kenney and Donald Patton
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The high cost regions of Europe, North America, and Japan recognize that the key to their economic vitality is innovation. Increasingly, many also accept that the primary units of competition based on high quality, innovative products are not nations, but firms within regions, some of which occasionally bridge national boundaries. This has resulted in a significant increase in interest in the nature and functioning of such regional economies, variously known as clusters or industrial districts.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Israel, East Asia, and North America

10. Sponsors, Communities and Standards: Winning in the Local Area Networking Business

Author:
Martin Kenney and Urs von Burg
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Economics has treated technological standards creation as an outcome of network externalities and decisions on the demand side. They pay little attention to the supply side, where firms make strategi choices on which standard to support. These choices can ignite a contest between adherents to the different proposed standards. This case study examines the contest btween the Ethernet and Token Ring standards for local area networking. We find that the critical difference in explaining the success of Ethernet vibrancy was the nature and strategy of the standard's sponsors in assisting the growth of a community of firms supporting the standard.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States