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Codification, patents and the geography of knowledge transfer in the electronic musical instrument industry
Abstract
Recent research in economic geography has emphasized tacit knowledge as the basis of industrial learning. In contrast, codification and the practices of industrial writing have received little attention for the roles they play in mobilizing knowledge across space. This paper offers insight into the geographies of codification through an examination of technology transfer in the electronic musical instrument industry between 1965 and 1995. The research draws on a variety of primary and secondary data that include interviews with inventors, biographical accounts and patent analysis. These sources offer perspective on the career trajectories of three U.S. inventors who transferred knowledge from various contexts in California's high-tech industry to the Japanese firm, Yamaha. Conceptually, the paper draws on the actor-network theory and Latour's idea of translation to highlight the detours inventors must take to register novelty. The analysis reveals the problematic nature of codified knowledge and its transfer; in this case codified knowledge was mobile internationally but not locally, at least until it reached Japan. The paper argues for the need to understand how texts such as patents are produced-the context of their authorship, the geographies of their circulation and their efficacy for shaping further innovative practice. © 2006 Canadian Association of Geographers/L'Association canadienne des géographes.
... p.300) 59 Accumulation of data in music systems in this respect also engaged in a cultural reinterpretation of tacit knowledge. For the Japanese manufacturers, the initial acquisition of 59 This refers to the Electronic Musical Instrument Industry as discsussed by Reiffenstein, 2006 knowledge could be arguably surmised as business acumen. Reiffenstein locates 'knowledge conduits' and 'actor network theory' as the means by which knowledge transfer occurs. ...
... Reiffenstein suggests, "A useful, though limited, approach to understanding spatial knowledge transfer is to consider the conduits (texts, people or artefacts) through which it is exchanged." (Reiffenstein, 2006. p.301) ...
... Discussions of learning, innovation and the transfer of knowledge have become commonplace in contemporary economic geography (Amin andCohendet 1999, 2004;Malmberg and Maskell 1999;Maskell and Malmberg 1999;Benner 2003;Bathelt et al. 2004;Reiffenstein 2006;Rutherford and Holmes 2007). The extensive literature on industrial districts, clusters and learning regions emphasizes that place-based learning plays a critical role in determining the competitiveness of firms. ...
... The extensive literature on industrial districts, clusters and learning regions emphasizes that place-based learning plays a critical role in determining the competitiveness of firms. Drawing on Polanyi's (1966) conceptual distinction between codified and tacit knowledge, many writers argue that since codified knowledge is thought to be increasingly ubiquitous it is tacit knowledge that makes places special (Reiffenstein 2006). Tacit knowledge involves learning and skill that is very difficult or impossible to codify and can only be transmitted through training or gained through personal experience. ...
Based on ethnography, interviews with tree planters and a survey of tree planting contractors, this article focuses on work cultures in northern Ontario tree planting camps. The compressed planting season and the relatively high yearly turnover in the workforce requires that new workers quickly learn how to plant efficiently. These features result in the development of distinctive work cultures and practices that facilitate learning and the sharing of tacit knowledge between planters. Using the concept of communities of practice, we emphasize the social practices that facilitate the integration of planters into their working communities. At one level, tree planters belong to an extensive network of practice and have a shared sense of identity, irrespective of for which contractor, in which region or in which camp, they work. However, at a finer level there are noticeable variations between camps. Both the client for whom planting is done and the operational practices of the tree planting contractor shape the communities of practice in individual camps. However, the most important factor accounting for differences between camps is the process by which communities of practice are socially produced, reproduced and transformed over time and the role, played in this process by worker turnover and retention.
... Erişebilirlik açısından bilginin ikinci türü olan kodlanmış bilgi ile yakınlık türleri arasında da ilişki vardır. Kodlanmış bilgi çeşitli şekillerde ve araçlarla kayıt altına alındığı için kitaplar, BİT'ler ve kılavuzlar aracılığı ile transferi ve erişimi kolaydır (Reiffenstein, 2006). Bu durumda bilginin bu türüne erişim için yakınlık türlerinin nasıl bir etkisi olabileceği aklımıza gelebilir? ...
... Örtük bilginin kodlanmış bilgi için gereklidir ve böylece kodlanmış bilgi tabanına bir ekleme olduğunda, örtük bilgi tabanına da bir ekleme meydana gelmektedir (Grimaldi ve Torrisi, 2001: 1427. Bu durum Nonaka ve Takeuchi'nin (1995) örtük ve kodlanmış bilgi arasındaki döngü sayesinde bilgi yaratımının meydana geldiği iddiaları ile örtüşmektedir (Reiffenstein, 2006: 300-301). ...
The most important input of innovation, which is the key to economic growth and development, is knowledge. As a production factor, knowledge increases the productivity of other production factors, enables the development of new products and services, and turns into economic output through innovation. Thus, in a competitive era, it reduces the risks of regions and firms in uncertain market conditions. Access to information has become a prerequisite for the reduction of these uncertainties of regions and firms in competitive market conditions. The forms of knowledge that firms operating in different sectors of knowledge use in the process of innovation has change according to the structure of the sectors. The aim of the study in this context is to reveal the types of knowledge seen as the basic input of innovation in economic geography literature and the channels through which these types are spread. As a result of the theoretical and conceptual literature review, the diffusion channels of information types are shaped by the structural characteristics of knowledge. There is a structural relationship between knowledge types and knowledge propagation channels that interact with each other. As the knowledge structure develops, the channels of propagation of knowledge are also evolving.
... Knowledge and influence are two key dimensions of corporate activity that are connected with firm success. Businesses engage in a variety of strategies to acquire, manage, and control knowledge that is central to their ongoing ability to survive and thrive, such as specialized expertise related to market needs, or skills and competencies generated internally through a firm's own research and development efforts (Audretsch and Feldman 1996; Reiffenstein 2006; Birch 2007). Expertise related to such business fundamentals is important, but knowledge on its own is not sufficient to achieve the desired goals of business. ...
Clarification of the factors that drive business expansion and contraction is among the most important topics that can be addressed by research in economic geography and related disciplines. This study analyzes the development of Canadian business by examining the connection between firm-level growth and decline and elite knowledge and influence connections that Canadian businesses use to link themselves to other corporations and cities nationally and globally. The research focuses on the inter-firm and inter-city linkages embodied in the boards of directors of Canada’s leading corporations. Corporate directorships have an important geographic dimension, as firms invite people from a variety of places and backgrounds to serve on their boards. This study finds that board member selection practices among Canadian firms can be linked directly to business growth and decline. Benchmarking board composition against firm expansion and decline in terms of inflation-adjusted annual revenue change over the 1991–2006 period, this study shows that growing Canadian firms are associated with directors from a much broader range of national and international cities than firms that experienced decline over the same period. Firm growth in Canada thus appears to be related to boards encompassing diverse members from national and international locations, while firm decline appears to be associated with boards including more local and regional members. The conclusion interprets the implications of board member diversity and suggests that broadly-based boards can play a role in encouraging firm growth through access to elite knowledge and influence networks.
... From the 1980s, Japanese industry's growing success in securing patent protection abroad and especially in the key US market transformed it into a net technology exporter (see, for example, Reiffenstein, 2006). More recently Japan has more explicitly devoted increased emphasis to intellectual property policy. ...
This article explores the international implications of the developmental state model of Japanese capitalism. It does so by investigating the extension of Japanese intellectual property (IP) policy and practice in Vietnam. The escalating role of intellectual property within Japanese industrial policy is first framed according to Johnson’s developmental state thesis and extended in reference to the ‘flying geese’ model of regional development in East Asia. This latter approach anticipates Vietnam’s growing importance as a site for Japanese foreign direct investment and technology transfer. Interviews with key informants from both countries and analysis of policy documents provide evidence of the extra-territorial practices employed by Japanese companies, government agencies, and IP intermediaries in Vietnam. These accounts bring to light key developmental mechanisms, such as the packaging of IP internationalization within Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) and the overseas pro-bono work performed by IP intermediary associations in which the line between benevolence and self-interest is blurred. The paper concludes by interpreting these practices in accordance with the broader strategic imperatives of Japan in the region.
Patent agency services are crucial for the codification of technical knowledge and inventions. Drawing on an inter‐firm network analysis of the patent agency service relationships between patent agencies and their innovation clients during the last two decades in China, this paper seeks to explore the structure of urban patent agency service networks and how it is shaped by China's unique institutional and market forces. The study found that although the patent agency service network generally follows the basic structure of China's innovative and economic landscapes, it is still deeply shaped by China's unique intellectual property institutions, administrative hierarchy factors, market forces driven by patent agency service demand, and multidimensional proximities in a complex manner. Analyzing how these factors function should be related to the characteristics of patent agencies and the actors of networks. The study will help us understand how city patent service networks might be shaped by institutional and spatial factors, and provide new evidence on how cities are interlinked within patent agency service networks.
Scholars in science and technology studies (STS) have long noted scientists' tendency of converting data into visual representations. This article provides an overview of the use of visualization and sonification in different fields of STS. Conversion to the visual provided a hook to mutually implicate vision and science as hallmarks of modernity. Visual representations became raw materials for art historical analyses of science and histories of objectivity. Sonification has found favor even among scientists whose work is primarily visual. In microelectronics, acoustic microscopy has been successfully applied to nondestructive inspection of integrated circuits. The final phase of acoustic microscopy took place in a postreconversion environment where engineers no longer faced such criticisms for doing basic research. Although successfully employed in some fields of physical sciences, such applications have not yet fully found their use in the field of life sciences.
This study focuses on spatial and temporal changes in onion farming-related patents filed in the United States between 1883 and 1939. There are strong linkages between the geographic distributions of patent holders and specialized onion farming regions. In fact, tracing the evolution of patent applications for labor-saving improvements in onion-growing is almost tantamount to tracing the rise of new localized growing districts across the United States as measured by market output. During the study period, 97 onion-related inventions were patented by 81 inventors. Inventors were often immigrants or sons of immigrants with occupations including farming, carpentry, and blacksmithing. There were also exceptions to this generalization. A few inventors had little farming experience and not all were male – there was one female patent-holder. Most inventors held only one patent and rarely found commercial success with their invention. The handful with commercially assigned patents were less likely to be farmers and more likely to live near agricultural implement manufacturing centers. Not all innovations were patented but the patents themselves provide valuable insights into the creation of material culture within the onion-growing industry. Introduction In 1883, James P. Turner of Davenport Township in Scott County, Iowa, was granted a patent for an " Onion-Cultivator, " whose purpose was to allow for the cultivation of onions without causing injury to the onion tops. He didn't know this at the time, but Turner's simple invention, comprised of less than ten parts, was the first of a long line of inventions created to assist in the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of onions. Turner was also likely unaware that not only was his the first onion cultivator patented by the U.S. Patent office, but in the coming decades, the county in which he lived, would proclaim itself the country's leading producer of yellow onions.
This paper examines the relationship of actor-network theory (ANT) and economic geography, arguing that there has been a rather restrictive, sometimes ambiguous reading of ANT literature. It reviews three major lines of reception in economic geography around the themes of topological space, translation and performativity. Subsequently, the paper problematizes conflicting interpretations of ‘network’ and ‘power’ as central ANT terms. In an attempt to open up new avenues of engagement with ANT, it finally sketches an agenda around three themes that are of relevance both for economic geography and for human geography more broadly: hybridity, desire and fluidity.
This article proposes that economic geography would benefit from a closer consideration of the topological multiplicities of power, that is, the multiple contending configurations of networks that make power a precarious accomplishment through creating constant overflows. It develops this argument by tracing how the circulation of knowledge in the preparation for the Olympic Games establishes sociomaterial networks that are meant to allow the International Olympic Committee to coordinate the organization of the event. On the basis of Bruno Latour's concept of the oligopticon, the article develops a sociomaterial notion of power to govern at a distance that emerges through the triple movement of collecting and mobilizing information, casting it into stable intermediaries, and recirculating knowledge. At the same time, a parallel narrative considers how this power and its spatial reach remain always partial and are transformed by overflows as elements move in and out of networks and how forces outside the network bear on it, creating “absent presences.” Giving adequate attention to these topological multiplicities of sociomaterial networks offers an important counterweight to the dominant notion of stable social networks in economic geography and is particularly useful when analyzing the governance of projects and various other forms of ephemeral, distributed organizing.
Stanford, more than most American universities, transformed in the early Cold War into a research powerhouse tied to national security priorities. The budgetary and legitimacy crises that beset the military-industrial-academic research complex in the 1960s thus struck Stanford so deeply that many feared the university itself might not survive. We argue that these crises facilitated the rise of a new kind of interdisciplinarity at Stanford, as evidenced in particular by the founding of the university’s computer music center. Focusing on the “multivocal technology” of computer music, we investigate the relationships between Stanford’s broader institutional environment and the interactions among musicians, engineers, administrators, activists, and funders in order to explain the emergence of one of the most creative and profitable loci for Stanford’s contributions to industry and the arts.
The use, nature and movement of knowledge have a central place in recent debates concerning contemporary economies. Within this context, knowledge spillovers from universities to industry are believed to be an important driver of innovation. Because these spillovers are thought to be geographically localised, they have a potentially important role in developing the regional economy. However, the concept of the knowledge spillover, although widely accepted in the literature, is not unproblematic. This article explores the theoretical assumptions behind the academic knowledge spillover, namely that academic knowledge is a public good, inherently tacit and context-independent. It argues that such assumptions make knowledge spillovers between universities and firms appear more likely than they in fact are. Instead, a mixture of informal and formal, market-related activities enable knowledge flow between universities and industry. Knowledge flows are governed by processes of transfer, translation and transformation that impact on the mobilities of different types of knowledge. However, the mechanisms authors have proposed for knowledge spillovers, such as social networks, are still important. As far as the contributions, such linkages make to regional development are concerned, these may be affected by both the socio-cultural environment of the region and extra-regional factors.
Knowledge is sticky because it adheres to people along social routes, lodged within relational and collective modalities, as well as through copyright’s proverbial fixed works that can be transacted more freely. Sticky knowledge may in fact constitute a much larger body of knowledge than we usually acknowledge in intellectual property and may intersect with copyright in unexpected ways. This Article delves into sticky knowledge, which has been referenced often outside of intellectual property and sometimes within the laws of patents and trade secrets but almost not at all within copyright law. Under what circumstances will sticky knowledge encourage robust knowledge transmission – or copyright’s goal of "encouragement of learning"? Understanding the scope and reach of this kind of knowledge may point to optimal means to encourage knowledge spillovers and reliability.
This article advocates evolutionary institutionalism as a conceptual platform to launch a systematic approach to environmental economic geography. Evolutionary institutionalism interprets industrial transitions through the lens of innovative behaviour that is shaped by reciprocal economic and non-economic processes and periodically restructures economies in the form of new techno-economic paradigms (TEP). In this approach, environment–economy relations need not be zero-sum games, as is often assumed. Rather, as a result of innovation and choice, these relations have been recalibrated historically and can be redefined again towards developing a green TEP in which development and sustainability are co-imperatives. It is argued that the mandate of environmental economic geography is to assess and prescribe how place makes and should make a difference to a green TEP and the article sketches a research agenda to promote this goal. This research agenda focuses on the themes of regions as institutions, remapping resource use and sustainable value chains.
Reiffenstein T. Specialization, centralization, and the distribution of patent intermediaries in the USA and Japan, Regional Studies. The preparation, examination and litigation of patents requires a complex division of labour. The inventors and firms that generate patents have been well covered in the geographical literature, but the same cannot be said of the producer services whose job it is to shepherd patents through patent offices and the courts. This paper explores the spatial distribution of patent intermediaries (agents and attorneys) in the USA and Japan with a view to shedding light on how the institutional architecture of national patent systems shapes the geographies of patent practitioners. This comparison reveals important differences in their locational preferences at several scales of analysis. US patent intermediation is geographically decentralized and practised in conjunction with other facets of business law, while in Japan the situation is far more specialized and concentrated in Tokyo. [image omitted]
In traditional location theory there is a distinction between factors of production for which the costs differ significantly between locations, on the one hand, and production inputs which are in practice available everywhere at more or less the same cost (i.e. so-called ubiquities) on the other.
In this article, we discuss the process whereby some previously important location factors are actively converted into ubiquities. With an admittedly rather horrendous term, we label this process ‘ubi-quitification’. It is argued that ubiquitification is the outcome of the ongoing globalization process as well as of a process whereby former tacit knowledge gradually becomes codified.
Ubiquitification tends to undermine the competitiveness of firms in the high-cost areas of the world. When international markets are opened up and when knowledge of the latest production technologies and organizational designs become globally available, firms in low-cost areas become more competitive. In a knowledge-based economy, as a consequence, firms in high-cost areas must either shield some valuable pieces of knowledge from becoming globally accessible, or be able to create, acquire, accumulate and utilize codifiable knowledge a little faster than their cost-wise more favourably located competitors.
Focusing on learning processes, the article maintains that most firms learn from close interaction with suppliers, customers and rivals. Furthermore, processes of knowledge creation are strongly influenced by specific localized capabilities such as resources, institutions, social and cultural structures.
The autobiographies of people who run large corporations have become a distinctive literary genre. This paper analyzes the narrative structures of three such texts to understand what they tell us about their authors as individuals and as members of a social class, and about how firms are run in real life. The texts relate to the histories of IBM, Apple Computer, and Xerox. The analysis centers on how the narrative is structured to present the person and his story and how the self is fashioned through this narrative approach. In these three cases, the autobiographical stories are not about self-transformation, although the corporations are transformed. Instead, they are narratives of self-realization through passionate engagement in which the realized self becomes a catalyst for corporate change. The paper also considers the role of the autobiography in underwriting the social position of high-level corporate executives.
The aim of this paper is to outline the importance of tacit knowledge in the innovation process and to highlight the way that geographical location not only in uences the relationship between knowledge and innovative activity, but also affects the way that such interaction in uences the geography of innovation and economic activity. After a discussion about the nature of knowledge, the paper explores the relationship that exists between knowledge and geography. The paper then reviews, using as an analytical lens, the growing body of literature on knowledge spillovers which af rm the importance of geography. However, the discussion then seeks to outline some crucial gaps that remain in our conceptualisation of the knowledge spillover and transfer process. The paper then highlights the neglected role of knowledge demand and consumption in a spatial context, before concluding with a review of areas for future research.
Previous research has indicated that investment in R&D by private firms and universities can lead to knowledge spillover, which can lead to exploitation from other third-party firms. If the ability of these third-party firms to acquire knowledge spillovers is influenced by their proximity to the knowledge source, then geographic clustering should be observable, especially in industries where access to knowledge spillovers is vital. The spatial distribution of innovation activity and the geographic concentration of production are examined, using three sources of economic knowledge: industry R&D, skilled labor, and the size of the pool of basic science for a specific industry. Results show that the propensity for innovative activity to cluster spatially is more attributable to the influence of knowledge spillovers and not merely the geographic concentration of production. (SFL)
How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.
The creation and management of knowledge has become a central concern to business and management, both as a source of value and as an opportunity to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. This new book brings together leading thinkers in the area of knowledge and innovation management in a state of the art collection of studies in this field.
'I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell', writes Michael Polanyi, whose work paved the way for the likes of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. "The Tacit Dimension", originally published in 1967, argues that such tacit knowledge - tradition, inherited practices, implied values, and prejudgments - is a crucial part of scientific knowledge. Back in print for a new generation of students and scholars, this volume challenges the assumption that skepticism, rather than established belief, lies at the heart of scientific discovery.
This paper starts with a critical assessment of the recent paper by Cowan, Foray and David. It also provides the authors' own assessment of why the tacit-codified distinction is important in relation to economic analysis and knowledge management practice. The criticism of Cowan, Foray and David centres on three points. Firstly, it is argued that the discussion on codification must make the fundamental distinction between knowledge about the world (know-what) and knowledge in the form of skills and competence (know-how). Secondly, it is argued that the dichotomy between codifiable and non-codifiable knowledge is problematic since it is rare that a body of knowledge can be completely transformed into codified form without losing some of its original characteristics and that most forms of relevant knowledge are mixed in these respects. Thirdly, we contest their implicit assumption that codification always represents progress. We conclude that for these reasons their intellectual exercise of extending definitions of what is codified and possible to codify, while in principle addressing very important issues related to innovation policy and knowledge management, ends up having limited practical implications for these areas. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.
How did mid-nineteenth-century manufacturers establish trust and manage business affairs over long distance? The 1867 correspondence of a senior partner in a small reaper manufacturing company offers insights into the geography of nineteenth-century business networks and trust. Dayton Morgan managed key reaper patents, sales agents, and personal business. His letters reveal business relations with lawyers, bankers, brokers, manufacturers, politicians, some employees, agents, and dealers. Both the geographic spread of this correspondence and of his railroad travel are remarkable. Although New York bankers and lawyers in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago dominate his address list, Morgan corresponded widely. He also made repeated trips to Chicago and New York to meet with agents. Personal connections and face-to-face meetings backed much of the correspondence, but so did legal contracts. Thus Morgan combined process-, characteristic-, and institutional-based modes of trust production. From his base in a small town, Morgan organized a variety of networks, using railway and postal services. Through his network activity he made every part of the network "local."
Recent work on innovation and technology implementation suggests the importance of closeness between collaborating parties for the successful development and adoption of new technologies. This idea is subjected to empirical scrutiny through a postal survey and set of interviews with users of advanced manufacturing technologies in southern Ontario. The chronically underdeveloped state of the Ontario advanced machinery sector ought to create major difficulties for manufacturers there trying to implement leading-edge processes. The analysis indicates that "closeness' between user and producer, defined physically, organizationally, and "culturally', is important for the successful implementation of these advanced technologies. The paper suggests a set of circumstances in which proximity of the user to the producers is most important. The paper concludes that industrial policies based on free trade in industrial machinery will be inadequate, on their own, to ensure that firms in mature regions make effective use of advanced process technologies. -from Author
This paper attempts a greater precision and clarity of understanding concerning the nature and economic significance of knowledge and its variegated forms by presenting 'the skeptical economist's guide to 'tacit knowledge''. It critically reconsiders the ways in which the concepts of tacitness and codification have come to be employed by economists and develops a more coherent re-conceptualization of these aspects of knowledge production and distribution activities. It seeks also to show that a proposed alternative framework for the study of knowledge codification activities offers a more useful guide for further research directed to informing public policies for science, technological innovation and long-run economic growth.
This industrial region in the western part of Shizuoka Prefecture is an old industrial region in the Tokai region. The most important industries are cotton textiles, musical instruments and transportation machinery. These industries developed in close relationship with each other - one leading to the birth of new one. Hamamatsu region now accounts for 99.5% of piano production and about 80% of organ production in Japan. This concentration is not accidental but has been sustained by the geographical conditions and the industrial context. The manufacture of musical instruments was started by Torakusu Yamaha in 1888. There were several favorable conditions in Hamamatsu, especially capital and skills. The capital came from tea and cotton textile manufacturers. Engravers in Hamamatsu, and ship carpenters in Kakezuka, provided the necessary skills. Piano production began in 1900. Since 1927 the production of musical instruments has increased, especially since the Second World War. There were 32 factories in 1961. -after English summary
Prologue Part I. Practice: Introduction I 1. Meaning 2. Community 3. Learning 4. Boundary 5. Locality Coda I. Knowing in practice Part II. Identity: Introduction II 6. Identity in practice 7. Participation and non-participation 8. Modes of belonging 9. Identification and negotiability Coda II. Learning communities Conclusion: Introduction III 10. Learning architectures 11. Organizations 12. Education Epilogue.
This article analyses the role of interactive learning and localised knowledge in globalising learning economies. Some authors argue that as a result of globalisation and codification processes the importance of local, contextual knowledge and localised learning is decreasing, and, thus, the competitive advantage of high-cost regions (and nations) are steadily being undermined. Other authors maintain that much strategic knowledge, tacit as well as codified, is disembodied (i.e., knowledge which is the result of positive externalities of the innovation process), and, thus, remains `sticky'. Important parts of the learning process continue to be localised as a result of the enabling role of geographical and social proximity in stimulating interactive learning, which taken together represent strong `untraded interdependencies' constituting important context conditions for regions to remain innovative and competitive. The article argues that learning economies should be used to conceptualise a specific historical period of capitalism in which knowledge and learning has attained an increasing importance in the economy. This period of capitalist development is also referred to as post-Fordism.
Contemporary research on innovative processes makes use of a range of scales, from the global to the regional/local. In addition, network-based approaches have introduced a nonterritorially bounded dimension to studies of innovation. While much of the latter has, to date, been concerned with local networks, recent work has pointed to the importance of non-local interconnections. This paper seeks to build upon such insights suggesting that greater attention be given to extra-local connections in studies of innovation. We explore ways in which extra-local interconnection may be extended beyond the globalization of formalized R&D by, and between, transnational corporations (TNCs), which is the overwhelming preoccupation of existing research. The paper is divided into two main parts. The first consists of a review of work on the three key scales of innovation. The second considers the role of firms and individuals as key actors in systems of innovation, and suggests how network-based approaches may offer the best way for analysing how these actors operate through and across spatial scales. In conclusion, we emphasize the need to further investigate non-TNC-based dimensions of extra-local interconnection.
Fisheries scientists established institutions, engaged metropolitan ideas and local knowledge, and worked out particular spatial practices to produce fisheries science in early-20th-century British Columbia. Problems of distance and the mobility of scientific specimens shaped practices. The difficulties of operating in a peripheral location influenced the institutional development of the field and the emphases of science towards commercially important problems focusing on salmon migration and life history. In this case study I compare and integrate approaches to science and distance from Latour's work and postcolonial historiographies of science in an empirical context.
In this paper I draw upon both biographical and sociological approaches to examine one moment in the history of geography's quantitative revolution of the late 1950s and early 1960s: the publication of Brian Berry and William Garrison's paper, "The functional bases of the central place hierarchy", in Economic Geography in 1958. The origins of that paper are traced through the life stories-the 'lives told'-of the two authors. In particular, I try to connect the specific life trajectories of Berry and Garrison up until 1958 with the wider social and cultural contexts in which they lived. The theoretical impetus for the study are three literatures: the first is science studies, and especially the work of Bruno Latour and his ideas of 'black boxing' and 'translation'; the second is on the history and sociology of quantification; and the third is on biography, particularly scientific biography. The broader argument of the paper is that the seemingly disembodied numbers, calculations, and precisely drawn figures and graphs that increasingly inflect human geography from the late 1950s, and found in such papers as Berry and Garrison's, are socially embedded, a consequence not of a universal rationality but of specific lives and times that infuse the very substance of the works produced.
In this paper, an ethnographical take on objects in motion, I follow the travel of patents from their places of origin in the Western world of technoscience to newly developing worlds. I argue that not only does the influx of patents and patent systems change the sociotechnical configurations in which they emerge; the patent itself - or so I claim - changes with its travel as well, and so it is a different thing in different places. I thus link the nature of things with the places in which they operate, and frame the patent as both a changeable object and an agent of change.
Research articles and patents are claim-making texts that work in different social arenas. They have in common a process of enrolment, by which diverse interests are incorporated textually to support a claim. But the evaluation of a patent draws on different assumptions about the nature of a claim, the relation to other texts and the account of future effects. One way to bring out these differences is to look at the experience of researchers who are used to writing research articles, as they learn to write their first patents. I follow the drafting of patents by a zoologist (applying in the US) and a medical researcher (applying in the UK). They revised their texts in response to the comments of their patent agents, the patent examiners, the potential sponsors, and in response to their own continuing laboratory experiments. In both cases, the crucial areas of debate were the scope of the claims, the relation to prior and competing texts and the story that linked discovery and a range of possible applications. In each case the researchers and their agents developed textual devices appropriate to the discourse of patents: nesting claims, constructing an ideal reader, doubling the story. Their strategies for translating interests between their laboratories, sponsors, the patent agencies, potential users and the wider public raise the question of how separate arenas of knowledge and ownership are defined.
Intellectual property? Five years ago, that phrase wasn't even in the vocabularies of many CEOs, let alone a part of their business strategies. Indeed, many chief executives still regard patents, trademarks, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property as legal matters best left to the corporate attorneys. But the burgeoning knowledge economy has given rise to a new type of CEO and a new type of business competition-one in which intellectual assets, not physical ones, have become the principal sources of shareholder wealth and competitive advantage. And therein lies one of the next great corporate challenges: figuring out how to unlock the hidden power of patents. In this article, authors Kevin Rivette and David Kline describe how the strategic management and use of patents can enhance a company's commercial success in three broad ways: by establishing a proprietary market advantage, by improving financial performance, and by enhancing overall competitiveness. They present real-world examples of effective and ineffective patent management strategies-for example, comparing Dell's aggressive patenting of its direct-sales business model with Wat-Mart's looser protection of its unique business systems. They describe common but effective patenting techniques such as clustering and bracketing, both designed to block out or hamper competitors in the market. For both traditional and new-economy businesses, such as Amazon.com and Priceline.com, leveraging patents properly can produce benefits such as reduced corporate risk, the ability to anticipate and react to market shifts, and, ultimately, increased shareholder value and profits.
This unique book – informed by ten years research – focuses on intellectual property and charts the global transition towards intellectual capitalism with technology-based corporations as prime movers. The book gives a comprehensive overview of the history and fundamentals of intellectual property as well as a textbook introduction to the field.
The book sheds new light on the economics and management of intellectual property in large corporations in Europe, Japan and the US. Special emphasis is given to strategies for the acquisition and commercialization of new technologies, patent strategies and strategies for secrecy and trademark, technology intelligence and corporate management of intellectual property. It includes an in-depth study of leading large corporations in Japan – including Canon, Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony. In conclusion, it explores the possible evolution of intellectual property management towards a distributed intellectual capital management in the context of a wider transition to intellectual capitalism, fueled by new technologies in general and new infocom technologies in particular.
The book will have particular appeal to practitioners such as managers, economists, engineers and lawyers as well as students and scholars of industrial organization, economics of innovation and technical change, and management of technology.
In this paper we address two problems related to what can be claimed about the powers of decentralised business networks. The first concerns the role of tacit knowledge and proximity in securing competitive advantage. Recently, in a strand of the literature concerned with the differences between tacit and codified knowledge, it has begun to be claimed that the superiority of relational and geographic proximity (for example, intense face-to-face contact, local industrial clusters, and districts) over formally constituted and distantiated networks of knowledge and learning. In the first part of the paper we dissent from this interpretation by questioning the separability of the two forms of knowledge and by suggesting that business networks largely dependent on local tacit knowledge and incremental learning may prove to be inadaptable in the face of radical shifts in markets and technologies. The second problem regards the relationship between knowledge and the oganisational structure of firms and business networks. In the second half of the paper we focus on the challenge facing competence-based large firms which draw on localised sources of knowledge to argue that competitive advantage is crucially influenced by the ability of firms to mobilise and integrate diversified forms of knowledge (tacit and codified), rather than to specialise in one form. We also argue that the imperative to sustain continuous learning is adding a new architecture of organisation and governance to that traditionally associated with the reduction of transaction costs, rather than replacing it, as is implied in the new literature which privileges the firm as a nexus of competencies. Thus, a dual structure seems to be emerging, which is composed of a decentralised network of reflexive and interactive centres to advance core competencies and learning and overlaid upon a more traditional hierarchical structure for the regulation of noncore activities.
Technology and Culture 41.3 (2000) 460-484
The development and international success of the Japanese consumer electronics industry in the postwar period is often portrayed as the result of a collaboration between big business and government ministries. This portrayal neglects an important foundation for the success of this industry: the existence of a culture of "tinkering" with consumer electronics in Japan. After World War II a network of inventors, tinkerers, and small businesses developed an unofficial sector of radio manufacturing, which grew to include radio magazines, books, and standard-setting trade associations. This network helped launch the television kit industry, which lowered the price of home-use televisions, making commercial broadcasting viable in Japan. Even after mass-produced televisions had driven television kit manufacturers out of business, the large Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers used the network of repair shops that had assembled television kits to build a service network. These local service providers, close to their customers and to the service problems of the products, gave manufacturers the feedback they needed to create products that met consumer needs, enabling Japanese industrialists to compete effectively in the export market.
Today the Japanese electronics industries are dominated by big business, while amateurs and hobbyists play only a minor role, primarily as ham radio operators. Historically, however, the electronics industry began with radio, a field founded by amateurs and tinkerers. In the early stages of the radio industry, radio listeners typically built their own receivers; some became semiprofessionals and opened radio shops. Small-scale manufacturers sprang up to supply components. Amateur hobbyists, semiprofessionals, local radio stores, and small manufacturers for radio components formed an "unofficial" sector of the radio and electronics industry. In comparison, large-scale producers and assemblers of equipment, government, and public institutions made up its "official" sector.
The radio boom grew out of the liberalized political climate of postwar Japan. After Japan's defeat the government ban on reception of foreign broadcasting was lifted, and commercial broadcasting began. As a result of greater programming, radio (and later television) tinkering expanded, and the dismantling of the Japanese military made military surplus electronics components available and inexpensive. The Allied occupation forces promoted radio production, using broadcasts to democratize Japan. Later, public institutions such as the research laboratory of Nihon Hoso Kyokai (NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation), professional bodies of engineers, government ministries, and local government encouraged the hobby of radio, organizing training courses in radio construction and repair. Small-scale component manufacturers flourished as radio tinkering expanded.
The television boom, beginning with the first Japanese television broadcasts in 1953, had similar roots in the culture of tinkering. Tinkerers wanted to build their own television receivers, but it was far more difficult to put together a television from scratch than to construct a radio. As a result, component manufacturers developed key components for television receivers and put television kits on sale. The kits were welcomed by hobbyists and semiprofessionals, and the television receivers they built contributed to the popularization of television. Some small manufacturers eventually grew into middle-sized companies, and after the popularization of receivers had been achieved, larger companies took over the mass production of televisions.
Though the unofficial sector of the Japanese television and radio industry declined in the 1960s, it had a profound influence on the success of the Japanese electronics industry in export markets. The culture of tinkering and the amateur entrepreneurship of the early Japanese radio and television industry helped create an electronics industry attuned to customer demands for quality and service. Many of the tinkerers who began their careers as radio and television kit assemblers and owners of small repair shops went on to staff the service companies affiliated with large Japanese radio, television, and electronics manufacturers. With their firsthand knowledge of customer expectations and their knowledge of components, these tinkerers gave critical feedback to their new employers to help bring about the high-quality, high-reliability, low-cost consumer electronics that won over export markets in the 1960s.
Radio broadcasting was begun in Japan in 1925 by the Tokyo Hosokyoku (Tokyo Broadcasting Station). This later became the Nihon Hoso Kyokai, an incorporated association under...
The background to the creation of an international resource organisation is discussed. The author goes on to describe various activities of the Foundation, including the provision of hard-to-obtain CDs and access to other materials of interest to the electroacoustic community. The Foundation
maintains a substantial presence on the World Wide Web: http://www.emf.org
This book shows how firms can generate and nurture ideas. Weaving together lessons from such international leaders as Siemens, Unilever, Skandia, and Sony, along with their own first-hand consulting experiences, the authors introduce knowledge enabling - the overall set of organizational activities that promote knowledge creation - and demonstrate its power to transform an organization's knowledge into value-creating actions. They describe the five key "knowledge enablers" and outline what it takes to instill a knowledge vision, manage conversations, mobilize knowledge activists, create the right context for knowledge creation, and globalize local knowledge. The authors stress that knowledge creation must be more than the exclusive purview of one individual - or designated "knowledge" officer. Indeed, it demands new roles and responsibilities for everyone in the organization - from the elite in the executive suite to the frontline workers on the shop floor. Whether an activist, a caring expert, or a corporate epistemologist who focuses on the theory of knowledge itself, everyone in an organization has a vital role to play in making "care" an integral part of the everyday experience; in supporting, nurturing, and encouraging microcommunities of innovation and fun; and in creating a shared space where knowledge is created, exchanged, and used for sustained, competitive advantage. This book puts practical tools into the hands of managers and executives who are struggling to unleash the power of knowledge in their organization.
The notion of sustainable development, which is currently being proposed as the panacea to many of the most pressing environmental problems, reflects the environmental movement's ambivalent relationship to scientific knowledge: on the one hand, science is used to legitimize the ‘green case’; on the other, it is seen as responsible for many of the current environmental problems. Local, or traditional, knowledge is often proposed as a superior form of knowledge as it lies outside science and is seen as representing a closer affinity with ‘nature’. However, local knowledge, like scientific knowledge, can be reified, given virtues it simply does not possess. In this paper we examine the two categories of scientific and local knowledge. Using the work of sociologists of science such as Bruno Latour, we show that science is not different to local knowledge because it has a superior access to ‘reality’ but because it is more powerful, i.e. it is able to act over greater distances. We then draw upon anthropological work on the use of local knowledge in traditional agriculture to show that this system of knowledge is often ‘scientific’ but is more intimately related to local environments. However, local knowledge is not always in ‘harmony’ with such environments and can result in serious degradation. It should not, therefore, be counterposed as a ‘greener’ alternative to scientific knowledge. Rather, as with science itself, local knowledge should be investigated in ‘action’. We conclude with a call for a new social science approach to the relationship between nature and culture and the local and universal which stresses ‘hybridity’ i.e. the extent to which these categories are inextricably mixed.
Complementing existing approaches on national innovation systems (NISs) and regional innovation systems (RISs), the proposed spatial innovation systems (SISs) approach incorporates a focus on the path-dependent evolution of specific technologies as components of technological systems and the intermingling of their technological paths among various locations through time. SISs utilize spatial divisions of labor among several specialized RISs, possibly in more than one NIS. The SIS concept emphasizes the external relations of actors as key elements that transcend all existing systems of innovation. The integrating role of these relations remains inadequately understood to date. This poses a challenge for future research.
Identifies and assesses three types of industrial districts that exist as alternatives to the "new industrial district" model, to remark on the limits of a locally targeted development strategy. Industrial districts are defined as sizable and spatially delimited areas of trade-oriented economic activity with a distinct specialization. "Sticky places" are industrial districts with the ability to both attract and keep capital and labor, despite globalizing tendencies. Especially in advanced capitalist countries, corporations are faced with the problem of maintaining income-generating activities rather than outsourcing labor to developing countries. This analysis rejects the "new industrial district" (NID) traditionally offered as a solution - that is, the proposed "flexibly specialized" scenario of small, innovative firms in a successful system of industrial governance. Metropolitan growth since 1970 was studied for four countries - the United States, Japan, Korea, and Brazil -and include one case in each country that conformed to the NID, as well as three to five others that did not. Utilizing interviews and examination of documents, three alternative models emerged -- the hub-and-spoke district, the satellite industrial platform, and the state-centered district. These models reject the NID emphasis on small firms, instead demonstrating the power of the state and/or multinational corporations. As opposed to the NID internal emphasis, the proposed models are exogenously driven and allow increased networking across districts. Districts emerge as a result of multiple forces, including industry structures, cororate strategies and public policies. The study of industrial districts needs to move away from the NID model, encompassing a greater variety of firms, and analyzing more closely their links to the larger industry and global economy from which they emerge. (CJC)
Compares the organization of regional economies, focusing on Silicon Valley's thriving regional network-based system and Route 128's declining independent firm-based system. The history of California's Silicon Valley and Massachusetts' Route 128 as centers of innovation in the electronics indistry is traced since the 1970s to show how their network organization contributed to their ability to adapt to international competition. Both regions faced crises in the 1980s, when the minicomputers produced in Route 128 were replaced by personal computers, and Japanese competitors took over Silicon Valley's market for semiconductor memory. However, while corporations in the Route 128 region operated by internalization, using policies of secrecy and company loyalty to guard innovation, Silicon Valley fully utilized horizontal communication and open labor markets in addition to policies of fierce competition among firms. As a result, and despite mounting competition, Silicon Valley generated triple the number of new jobs between 1975 and 1990, and the market value of its firms increased 1 billion for the same time period. From analysis of these regions, it is clear that innovation should be a collective process, most successful when institutional and social boundaries dividing firms are broken down. A thriving regional economy depends not just on the initiative of individual entrepreneurs, but on an embedded network of social, technical, and commercial relationships between firms and external organizations. With increasingly fragmented markets, regional interdependencies rely on consistently renewed formal and informal relationships, as well as public funding for education, research, and training. Local industrial systems built on regional networks tend to be more flexible and technologically dynamic than do hierarchical, independent firm-based systems in which innovation is isolated within the boundaries of corporations. (CJC)
In this article we seek to move beyond existing conceptualizations of innovation systems in two key respects. First, we identify the need for a shift away from research that focuses on discrete scales as the locus for understanding innovation towards that which places more emphasis on network relationships operating between and across different scales. Second, we illustrate the need for approaches that recognize the significance of innovative networks that extend beyond firms and, in particular, those associated with the movement of knowledgeable individuals. By synthesizing recent insights from three literatures on ‘communities’ of varying kinds — namely communities of practice, knowledge communities and transnational communities — we propose a conceptualization of transnational innovation networks based around three overlapping and mutually constitutive domains. In addition to the much-studied ‘corporate-institutional’ domain, we also identify ‘social network’ and ‘hegemonic-discursive’ domains that may be important components of transnational innovation networks operating across different localities.
Recent years have seen a lively debate over the role of tacit knowledge and interactive learning in privileging the local over the global. Yet, our continuing inability to answer questions such as 'when and why is the local important in production and innovation processes?' indicates that our understanding of the firm and the forces that shape its managers' choices remains weak. Such a theory ought to be able to answer fundamental questions like: why do firms in particular places adopt particular production and innovation practices, and not others? What forces determine what a firm 'knows' and when it is able to act upon this knowledge? How easy is it to transfer this knowledge between places? This book presents a new conception of industrial practice and firm behaviour. It explains how the cultures that shape the practices of firms and the trajectories of regional and national economies are actually produced. The analysis shows how the internal and inter-firm organization of production, use of technologies, and the industrial knowledge underpinning these practices are strongly influenced by their social and institutional context. Routine forms of behaviour are not simply inherited from past practice. Instead, they are shaped and constrained - though not wholly determined - by a set of institutions that govern how work is organized, workers are deployed, and technology is implemented. Because of the slowly evolving nature of these institutions, distinctive national 'models' are not converging around a single global norm.
The patent is supposed to be a means to an end, that end being innovation. Whether the innovation comes from the protection the patent affords the inventor, or from the dissemination of the information of invention the patent allows, the patent is not meant to be an end in itself. This seems to be changing, the patent acquiring a strategic value increasingly independent of innovation. If this development has gone largely unnoticed, it may be because the patent system tends to be viewed from the entrenched perspectives of lawyers and economists, and of a number of interest groups that justify their reliance on the system in terms of the innovation it is supposed to encourage. These groups have never included small firms and developing countries in whose name they frequently defend the patent system. They may have some difficulty justifying a system whose strategic value is so divorced from its value for innovation.
Japanese companies have become successful because of their skill and expertise at creating organizational knowledge. Organizational knowledge is not only the creation of new knowledge, but also disseminating it throughout the organization, and embodying it in products, services, and systems. Knowledge is the new competitive resource, and its creation and utilization is a dynamic, interactive process. Knowledge is used as the basic unit of analysis to explain firm behavior; a business creates and processes knowledge. Knowledge may be explicit or tacit; this study treats them as complements that form a dynamic relationship. The individual interacts with the organization through knowledge; knowledge creation occurs at the individual, group, and organizational levels. The forms of knowledge interaction (between tacit and explicit, and between individual and firm) produce four major processes of knowledge conversion: from tacit to explicit, explicit to explicit, explicit to tacit, and tacit to tacit. Japanese companies create new knowledge by converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. The book has three goals: to formalize a generic model of organizational knowledge creation, explain why certain Japanese companies have been continuously successful in innovation, and develop a universal model of company management based on convergence of knowledge practices in Japan and the world. First presents a philosophical exposition of knowledge and its application to managemen, then the core concepts of knowledge creation, with four modes of knowledge conversion. The Matsushita company is used to illustrate the process model of organization knowledge creation. The two traditional styles of management (top-down and bottom-up) are shown not to be effective in fostering the dynamic necessary to create organizational knowledge, and a new organization structure considered most conducive to knowledge creation is proposed. (TNM)