The New Competitive Advantage: The Renewal of American Industry
Michael Best
Abstract
The New Competitive Advantage book presents a conceptual framework, the capabilities and innovation perspective, to address the organizational and technological sources of regional growth and decline. The productivity and income level of any region is explained in terms of the implementation and diffusion of universal principles of production and organization amongst its business enterprises. High‐tech regions such as Silicon Valley and Route 128 in Massachusetts have raised performance standards in new product development and innovation by application of the principle of systems integration t ... More
The New Competitive Advantage book presents a conceptual framework, the capabilities and innovation perspective, to address the organizational and technological sources of regional growth and decline. The productivity and income level of any region is explained in terms of the implementation and diffusion of universal principles of production and organization amongst its business enterprises. High‐tech regions such as Silicon Valley and Route 128 in Massachusetts have raised performance standards in new product development and innovation by application of the principle of systems integration to product design, production, and business organization. Systems integration emerged in high‐tech regions in response to the product‐led competition emanating from Japan and East Asia in high volume, flexible mass production systems organized according to the principle of multi‐product flow. An older variant of systems integration can be found in middle‐tech (design‐intensive) industrial districts, particularly in European regions such as those in the ‘third Italy’
Keywords:
industrial organization,
innovation,
product development,
production principles,
productivity,
regional capability,
research,
systems integration,
technology management,
technology transition
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2001 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198297451 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 |
DOI:10.1093/0198297459.001.0001 |
