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1. Building on Complimentary Assets in a Unified TCP/IP World

Author:
Martin Kenney and Timo Seppälä
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The contemporary competition in the smartphone industry is an ideal setting for studying Schumpeterian creative destruction, the role of the complementary assets, and the strategic use of technology platforms. This current creative destruction is particularly interesting because the current convergence from previously separate industries is pitting firms with differing business models from the old telecommunications world against the operating system winners of the old personal computer, and competitors from the new internet world. This paper utilizes insights from the literature on complementary assets and technology platforms to understand the completion in smartphones. This paper contributes a broadened understanding of the contemporary industry convergence occurring with Internet and cloud computing at its unifying center, and with intelligent communications devices at its edges. Furthermore, this paper extends the current academic discussion of the changes in the mobile telecommunications industry to consider the possibility that cloud computing will integrate a plethora of new devices that will include personal computers, smartphones, the internet-enabled television, and a nearly infinite number of other devices that will provide data to the cloud.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Science and Technology

2. Leading Without Followers: How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan's Domestic "Galapagos" ICT Sector

Author:
Kenji E. Kushida
Publication Date:
03-2011
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 telecommunications 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 telecommunications-related 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 telecommunications sector became decoupled from global markets, trapping Japanese firms in the domestic market.
Topic:
Globalization, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Japan and Israel

3. Diffusing the Cloud: Cloud Computing and Implications for Public Policy

Author:
John Zysman, Kenji E. Kushida, and Jonathan Murray
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Cloud Computing is rapidly emerging as the new information technology platform. It is, however, much more than simply a new set of technologies and business models. Cloud Computing is transforming how consumers, companies, and governments store information, how they process that information, and how they utilize computing power. It can be an engine of innovation, a platform for entrepreneurship, and driver of corporate efficiency. While an increasingly commonly term, confusion remains over what exactly constitutes Cloud Computing, how the markets are unfolding, and what forces will drive their evolution and diffusion. This paper provides an overview and conceptual tools for business leaders, policymakers, and non-specialist scholars to identify, distill, and easily understand the core aspects of how Cloud Computing service markets are developing, and how an array of policy issues will influence how this new computing platform unfolds across the world.
Topic:
Globalization, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Science and Technology

4. Who Captures Value in Global Supply Chains?

Author:
Jyrki Ali-Yrkkö, Petri Rouvinen, Timo Seppälä, and Pekka Ylä-Anttila
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Available statistics tell us little about the economic consequences of increasing global dispersion of production processes. In order to shed light on the issue, we perform grass roots detective work to uncover the geography of value added in the case of a Nokia N95 smartphone circa 2007. The phone was assembled in Finland and China. In the case when the device was assembled and sold in Europe, the value-added share of Europe (EU-27) rose to 68%. Even in the case when it was assembled in China and sold in the United States, Europe captured as much as 51% of the value added, despite of the fact that it had rather little role in supplying the physical components. Our analysis illustrates that international trade statistics can be misleading; the capture of value added is largely detached from the physical goods flows. It is rather services and other intangible aspects of the supply chain that dominate. While final assembly – commanding 2% of the value added in our case – has increasingly moved offshore, the developed countries continue to capture most of the value added generated by global supply chains.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Finland

5. 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

6. 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

7. A Case for Non-Globalization? The Organization of R in the Wireless Telecommunications Industry

Author:
Alberto Di Minin and Christopher Palmberg
Publication Date:
11-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The offshoring of manufacturing has been the most visible ingredient of economic globalization in recent years. However, the rapid change in the global division of manufacturing has overshadowed another – and perhaps even more significant phenomena – namely the internationalization of the R and inventive activities of firms.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Political Economy, and Science and Technology

8. Digitizing Services: What Stays Where and Why

Author:
Rafiq Dossani and Martin Kenney
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The spatial extension and deepening of capitalism has been a topic of interest to geographers, other social scientists, and activists since, at least, Lenin. This topic has reappeared on the public agenda recently under the rubric of “globalization.” Once again, the spatial redistribution of economic activities is sparking enormous controversy and opinions from nearly every philosophical position. This paper considers two dimensions of this enormous topic and argues that neither dimension has received sufficient attention from geographers. The first dimension is the role of technological advancement in transportation and communication technologies in a capitalist system. The second dimension is the development of a global division of labor in service provision.
Topic:
Emerging Markets, Globalization, and International Political Economy

9. 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

10. Went for Cost, Stayed for Quality?: Moving the Back Office to India

Author:
Rafiq Dossani and Martin Kenney
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Will the next great wave of globalization come in services? Increasingly, components of back-office services, such as payroll and order fulfillment, and some front-office services, such as customer care are being relocated from the U.S. and other developed countries to English-speaking, developing nations especially India, but also other nations such as the Phillipines. Though moving service activities offshore is not entirely new, the pace has of late quickened. The acceleration of this offshoring is intertwined, though not synonymous, with another phenomenon, namely an increasing willingness by firms to outsource what formerly were considered core activities. The importance of the fact that a substantial number of service activities might move offshore is that it was service jobs that were thought to be the future growth area for developed country economies as manufacturing relocated to lower labor cost regions offshore. This is especially important, because these services commonly known as "business processes" (BPs) are among the fastest growing job categories in the US (Goodman and Steadman 2002). Should these jobs begin to move offshore, a new tendency may be underway in the global economy that will be as important or more important than the relocation of manufacturing offshore, and might necessitate a rethinking of government policies across a wide spectrum.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
United States, South Asia, and India