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Begin New Search Author John Zysman Publication Year within 25 Years

11. The Services Transformation and IT Network Regulation

Author:
John Zysman and Kenji Erik Kushida
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
There is currently a fundamental transformation of services, a transformation central to the growth of productivity and competition in the global economy. This transformation, a response to commodification generated by decomposition of production and intensified competition in global markets, is driven by developments in IT tools, the uses they are being put to, and the networks they run on. The service transformation is changing how firms add value, affecting the underlying economic activity in countries around the world.
Topic:
Government and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Japan and South Korea

12. Innovation and Adaptability in a Digital Era: How Wealthy Nations Stay Wealthy

Author:
Tobias Schulze-Cleven, Bartholemew C. Watson, and John Zysman
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The challenge for the advanced countries is to stay wealthy in a rapidly evolving and ever more competitive global economy. As a new digital era emerges and the mechanisms of value creation – i.e. the engines of productivity and growth – change in volatile marketplaces, wealthy nations have to find new ways to adapt. Particularly in Europe, successful adjustment has often been posed as a choice between social protection and market flexibility. In this paper, we recast this all too common framing and emphasize instead that competitive advantage for the advanced countries may be built through appropriate social policy. Upon clarifying the character of competition in the emerging digital era, we argue that the long-standing strong social protection systems particularly in many European countries could be leveraged to these countries' unique advantage in the emerging digital era. With such benefits as promoting social peace and assisting people in meeting new labour market demands, social protection systems have an important role to play in helping societies reorganize existing economic structures in support of successful adaptation to new competitive conditions.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Political Economy, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Europe

13. Competency Based Regional Growth Strategies: Creating Value in a Digital Global Age

Author:
John Zysman, Niels Christian Nielsen, Dan Breznitz, and Derek Wong
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The policy objective for governments is classic and enduring: sustain the growth of employment and productivity to assure expanding real incomes of the citizens. Success requires that “under free and fair market conditions, the community (firms and populace) can produce goods and services that meet the test of international markets while simultaneously expanding the real income of its citizens.” Yet, the logic of competition and value creation in global markets has evolved. Consequently, old strategies of simply supporting the competitiveness of particular national flag firms or chasing smokestacks are clearly obsolete, but merely investing in R or education is not sufficient, and doing nothing is a formula for decline. Regions have to conceive new strategies to find distinctive advantages to support employment and productive activity. Those strategies will need to target competencies, not particular firms or specific sectors. Our argument begins by considering the basic shifts in global markets that are altering the logic of value creation for firms; it then considers how these market shifts alter the policy choices for places and makes competency domains a necessary foundation of policy analysis.
Topic:
Globalization, International Political Economy, and Science and Technology

14. Building on the Past, Imagining the Future: Competency Based Growth Strategies in a Global Digital Age

Author:
John Zysman, Dan Breznitz, Niels Christian Nielsen, and Derek Wong
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The policy objective for governments is classic and enduring: sustain the growth of employment and productivity to assure expanding real incomes of the citizens. Success requires that “under free and fair market conditions, the community (firms and populace) can produce goods and services that meet the test of international markets while simultaneously expanding the real income of its citizens.” Yet, the logic of competition and value creation in global markets has evolved. Consequently, old strategies of simply supporting the competitiveness of particular national flag firms or chasing smokestacks are clearly obsolete, but merely investing in R or education is not sufficient, and doing nothing is a formula for decline. Regions have to conceive new strategies to find distinctive advantages to support employment and productive activity. Those strategies will need to target competencies, not particular firms or specific sectors. We argue, first, that basic shifts in global markets have altered for firms the logic of value creation and the character of competition. Second, we contend that this changed value logic also alters the policy choices and growth strategies for places, be they regions or nations or simply communities. The focus of and foundation for policy analysis must be the domains of competency that underpin diverse activities of firms and are central to competitive advantage in sectors. Finally, we argue that there are no magic strategy bullets, but rather an array of options and choices. Successful strategies will emerge by building on the past while imagining the future.
Topic:
Development, Government, Markets, and Political Economy

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. Production in a Digital Era: Commodity or Strategic Weapon?

Author:
John Zysman
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The rise of the digital economy reignites debates over the transformation of production in industrial economies. For several decades, analysts attempted to describe the central features of the next economic epoch with labels like the knowledge, information, or service economy. The conventional argument claimed that just as an agricultural economy gave way to a manufacturing economy, an industrial economy was giving way to a service economy. Hence, their arguments went, industrial production was of diminishing importance.
Topic:
Security, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology

17. Governance and Politics of the Internet Economy–Historical Transformation or Ordinary Politics with a New Vocabulary?

Author:
Steven Weber and John Zysman
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Driven by two fundamental processes, rapid technological change as well as social innovation and reorganization, a new digital economy, the E-conomy, is emerging. Rather than merely adding an Internet sector to the economy, the E-conomy has brought about tools for thought, tools that transform every sector of the economy by amplifying brainpower the way steam engines amplified muscle power during the Industrial Revolution. For analytic purposes, the rise of the E-conomy can be told as a story composed of 1) networks and tools, 2) e-business and e-society, 3) the productivity dilemma resolved, and 4) governance and politics. In the short run, the transformative processes unleashed by the E-conomy are likely to lead to new bargains among existing coalitions and interest groups. In the long run, the changes underway promise to fundamentally alter the political sociology of vast communities, give rise to new interests and coalitions, and transform the institutional foundation of social, economic and political life.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Political Economy, Politics, and Science and Technology

18. Tools for Thought: What Is New and Important About the "E-conomy"?

Author:
John Zysman, Stephen S. Cohen, and J. Bradford DeLong
Publication Date:
06-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
There are eras when advancing technology and changing business organizations transform economies and societies. Such episodes do not just amplify productivity in one leading sector. Instead, they give all economic sectors powerful new "tools." Today we are living through such a transformation in our economic landscape, a transformation that warrants a new name: the "E-conomy." Information technologies, data communication and data processing technologies, are tools to manipulate, organize, transmit, and store information in digital form. They are tools for thought that amplify brainpower in the way the technologies of the Industrial Revolution amplified muscle power.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology