Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 - Tapa dura

Saxenian's findings are important because they highlight the fundamental organizational practices behind California's economic successes in several key sectors, a reality dangerously ignored by many of the state's political and business leaders. -- David Friedman "Los Angeles Times" Over the past decade however there has been a growing interest in the role which territory (in the form of regions, industrial districts or innovative milieux)plays in fostering technical change and industrialinnovation... One of the many virtues of this book is the way it penetrates beneath these superficial similarities, exposing a more complex, more telling set of differences which help to explain the very different fortunes of these regions in recent years... what we have here is a well-researched, elegantly written and provocative book on a subject which should engage a wide array of disciplines, especially those with an interest in innovation and regional development. -- Kevin Morgan "Research Review" The best book I've seen at analyzing the secrets of Silicon Valley's success. And it shows why the valley's future remains bright even though costs are high. This is scholarship at its best-thoroughly researched, elegantly written, a compelling story that's relevant to business executives and policymakers everywhere. "Regional Advantage" is an impressive demonstration of why new technologies and new markets both create and are driven by new business models and corporate structures. A welcome addition to the growing literature on American high technology, offering fresh insights in a thorough...account of the economic and technological evolution of America's premier high-technology regions.

Silicon Valley in California and Route 128 in Massachusetts are America's centres of electronics innovation and entrepreneurship. The regions are similar in many respects: both trace their origins to unversity research and military spending, and both faced severe downturns in the early 1980s. Today, however, Silicon Valley is flourishing again while Route 128 continues to decline. Why did Silicon Valley adapt successfully to intensifying international competition, while Route 128 ceded its longstanding advantage in computer design and manufacturing to the west? The author argues that despite similar histories and technologies, Silicon Valley developed the type of decentralized industrial system that encourages experimentation, collaboration and collective learning among networks of specialist companies, whereas Route 128 came to be dominated by a few self-sufficient corporations. Saxenian demonstrates that Route 128 was slow to adjust to changing markets because skill and technology remained confined within independent firms. In contrast, companies in Silicon Valley created a regional advantage by drawing on local knowledge and relationships to create new markets, products and applications. In doing so, they blurred the traditional boundaries among customers, supplier and competitors. The result of numerous interviews with executives, entrepreneurs and policymakers, this analysis highlights the importance of local sources of competitive advantage in a volatile world economy. It also underscores the need to develop regional, as well as national and sectoral, economic policies.