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11. Leading Without Followers: the Political Economy of Japan's ICT Sector

Author:
Kenji E. Kushida
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Despite global leadership by Japanese firms in sectors such as automobiles, precision equipment, and various high tech components, Japanese firms in the ICT sector have followed a persistent pattern of leading without followers. While leading the domestic market to ever-high levels of sophistication, sometimes beyond that of most other advanced industrial countries, Japanese ICT companies have retreated dramatically from international markets. Moreover, in technology after technology, Japanese ICT firms invest heavily, undertake extensive R, and for network technologies, deploy infrastructure rapidly, only to find that global technological trajectories shift in a different direction. While globally successful Japanese industries were able to use their domestic market as a springboard into international markets, Japan's ICT sector became decoupled from global markets, trapping Japanese firms in the domestic market.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Japan, Israel, and Asia

12. The Next Wave of Globalization? Exploring the Relocation of Service Provision to India

Author:
Rafiq Dossani and Martin Kenney
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The rapid increase in the ability and desire of multinational corporations to offshore services or, what are commonly termed “business processes” to developing nations is becoming a significant international development issue. This paper utilizes a case study of India, the largest recipient of offshored services, to explain the dynamics of offshoring from the perspective of the firm and the recipient nation. The explosion of offshoring is placed within a historical context. The technologies enabling offshoring and the corporate environment are discussed. Finally, the organizational forms involved in offshoring are discussed. The conclusion considers the implications of the offshoring of services for developed and developing nations and possible policy initiatives for developing nations interested in the possibility of entering the ITES sector.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

13. 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

14. Spoken-About Knowledge: Why It Takes Much More than 'Knowledge management' to Manage Knowledge

Author:
Niels Christian Nielsen and Maj Cecilie Nielsen
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Unimerco a/s is a company depending on knowledge for its success. For CEO Kenneth Iversen - and for all of his colleagues in Unimerco - leading, managing, and developing knowledge processes internally and with suppliers and customers is a dominant aspect of every single workday.
Topic:
Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Europe

15. 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

16. 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

17. Economic Action Does Not Take Place in a Vacuum: Understanding Cisco's Acquisition and Development Strategy

Author:
Martin Kenney and David Mayer
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Typically, economists and finance researchers have considered corporate acquisitions as arm's length transactions consummated in a relatively perfect market for corporate control, an appealing story no doubt, but it consigns the real world difficulties of managing the acquisition process into a black box. The key to making a successful acquisition does not begin with strategy and end with integration, rather it begins with understanding and participating in the external ecosystem and ends with managing the internal dynamics by which the newly acquired firm will be integrated. This paper finds that traditional "economistic" perspectives ignore the social and organizational dimensions within which the acquisition process is embedded. In tandem with the economist's erasure of the social; the temporal and processual dimensions were ignored. Put differently, acquisitions are treated as point-in-time events occurring in an environment that operates like the stock market in which corporate control, organizational knowledge, and employee fealty is transferred as seamlessly as stock shares. These assumptions ignore the social, temporal, and processual dimensions so critical for explaining acquisition success and failure.
Topic:
Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology

18. The Growth and Development of the Internet in the United States

Author:
Martin Kenney
Publication Date:
06-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Rarely does a new technology emerge that galvanizes a dramatic rethinking of the nature of commerce. The Internet is such a technology. At this early stage, it is difficult to appreciate fully the importance of the Internet, but some speculate it might be as momentous as the arrival of the telegraph (Cohen et al. 2000; Standage 1999). Radically new communication technologies such as the Internet have multiple applications and often become ubiquitous. As such, the adoption, diffusion, and development of this new technology provide an especially penetrating view of how different national innovation systems have responded to and shaped the commercial possibilities inherent in the Internet. Of course, such an assessment for an economy as large as that of the U. S. is difficult. It is further complicated by the peculiar way in which communications technologies permeate and facilitate connections and relationships. Often the action of such technologies is imperceptible to most of the actors involved and even to aggregate statistics; e. g., better information transfer between customers and suppliers is not manifested in the finished good, though it is embodied in the good in terms of lower cost and/ or higher quality. Given the diffuse nature and the speed of the Internet's evolution, any analysis can only be tentative.
Topic:
International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

19. The Internet and E-commerce Development in Mexico

Author:
Martin Kenney, James Curry, and Oscar Contreras
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The Internet is by all accounts one of the most important innovations of the late twentieth century. As yet the Internet's impact on the economies of developed countries is not obvious, and the economic implications for developing countries are even more unclear. Already much has been written about a supposed "digital divide" within nations and between nations, but no one has a clear understanding of the exact dimensions or implications of this divide. This paper does not take any position on whether Mexico is suffering from a digital divide or is likely to do so in the future; rather, it focuses on the recent rise of Internet sites and e-commerce in Mexico.
Topic:
International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Mexico

20. Creating an Environment: Developing Venture Capital in India

Author:
Rafiq Dossani and Martin Kenney
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
In the last decade, one of the most admired institutions among industrialists and economic policy makers around the world has been the U. S. venture capital industry. A recent OECD (2000) report identified venture capital as a critical component for the success of entrepreneurial high-technology firms and recommended that all nations consider strategies for encouraging the availability of venture capital. With such admiration and encouragement from prestigious international organizations has come various attempts to create an indigenous venture capital industry. This article examines the efforts to create a venture capital industry in India.
Topic:
International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States and India