## 5 Cultural-Institutional Country Profile Analysis  
### The U.S.: Distributed Orchestration Through Enabling Institutions  
The American cultural-institutional framework exemplifies an Individualist-Monumentalist type. This type aligns with the United States' strategic approach to its digital technology innovation ecosystem. The strong ethos of individualism favors personal ambition with low central control over innovation, resulting in a thriving and highly entrepreneurial bottom-up startup approach that promotes competition and tolerance of high risk-taking and fuels a disruptive innovation ecosystem. It also features a market-driven governance style that embraces this bottom-up approach. Conversely, monumentalism embodies confidence, high self-esteem, and resistance to constraints, which drive bold efforts for innovation but may also foster resistance to necessary adaptations or improvements. In this distinctive cultural-institutional type, market mechanisms drive technological progress and adaptation, while state institutions focus on systemic goals, acting as catalysts for the tech ecosystem. Overall, the U.S. public sector plays an enabling rather than directive role. The U.S. thus represents a model of distributed ecosystem orchestration: state institutions deliberately avoid direct control over digital tech innovation but actively invest in infrastructure, research, and market incentives to sustain ecosystem vitality. The roots of the U.S. digital innovation model trace back to the Cold War, when government agencies, like DARPA and NASA, laid the groundwork for core digital technologies, including the internet, satellite communications, and GPS. During this period, public-sector investments in mainly defense-driven technologies spurred breakthroughs that were later commercialized, demonstrating a national-to-commercial pathway [32; 45; 47; 48]. Figure 4: Dynamics of the number of patent applications (compiled based on [88]). With the end of the Cold War, America's unipolar moment, and globalization, the U.S. approach shifted to a more commercially driven model focused on consumer technologies, scalable business models, and technological entrepreneurship. The 1990s dot-com expansion illustrates this shift, as internet diffusion, deregulation, and flexible capital markets enabled American digital firms to lead globally [45]. Nevertheless, the White House initiated proactive policies to boost private-sector growth [89]. By the late 1990s, even the defense sector recognized the attractiveness of commercial technologies and the need to keep the high-tech industry dynamic [90]. Over time, the system moved from state-led development toward purchasing innovations from the private sector [91]. Consequently, the American digital technology ecosystem is highly decentralized, comprising a dense network of small and medium-sized firms, leading global tech giants, strong universities, venture capital, and supportive state agencies. In this ecosystem, private-sector actors take the lead in scaling and commercializing breakthroughs, while state institutions intervene mainly indirectly by funding basic research, providing early-stage support through civil and defense channels, and creating incentives for R&D. They also maintain competition by coordinating industrial policy and regulatory oversight. This approach gave rise to the iconic \"Silicon Valley\", where talent, capital, and disruptive ideas converged. It fostered rapid innovation, market agility, and a deliberate avoidance of centralized control, leaving private actors to determine the course of digital evolution. Consequently, major technology companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft operate independently, often setting global technological standards without direct government guidance or alignment with national (security) priorities [92; 93; 94; 95; 96; 97].