Query: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128

Candidate papers:

abstract: 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 $25 billion from 1986 to 1990 while Route 128 firms increased only $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)
author_names: Alfred Dupont Chandler

AnnaLee Saxenian
title: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128
year: 1994

author_names: Kevin John Morgan
title: Regional advantage: Culture and competition in Silicon Valley and route 128: AnnaLee Saxenian, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994) 226 pp; Price [UK pound]19.95, ISBN 0 674 75339 9
year: 1996

author_names: Meric S Gertler

Paivi Oinas

Michael Storper

Philip Scranton
title: Discussion of Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian
year: 1995

author_names: AnnaLee Saxenian
title: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, With a New Preface by the Author
year: 1996

author_names: Linda Harris Dobkins
title: Regional advantage: Culture and competition in silicon valley and route 128: AnnaLee Saxenian, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1994) pp. 226, $24.95
year: 1997

author_names: Craig Wollner
title: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. By Annalee Saxenian Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1994. xi 226 pp. Figures, tables, notes, and index. $24.95. ISBN 0 674 75339 9.
year: 1994

author_names: Joshua S Gans
title: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by Annalee Saxenian (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1994) xi 226 pp. US$24.95, ISBN 0 674 75339 9
year: 1995

abstract: From classical temples to twentieth century towers, engineers have learned more about design from failure than from success. The concept of error, according to the author of Design Paradigms, is central to the design process. As a way of explaining the enduring aspects of engineering design, Henry Petroski relates stories of some of the greatest engineering successes and failures of all time. These case studies, drawn from a wide range of times and places, from Ancient Greece and Rome to modem America, serve as paradigms of error and judgment in engineering design.
author_names: Martin Nov Goldstein

Inge F Goldstein
title: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, AnnaLee Saxenian. 1994. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 240 pages. ISBN: 0 674 75339 9. $24.95
year: 1996

author_names: Paul Lester Robertson
title: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 By Annalee Saxenian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv, 226. $24.95.
year: 1995

abstract: Dix ans apres son livre remarque Regional advantage culture and competition in Silicon Valley and route 128 dans lequel elle comparait les cultures entrepreneuriales de ces deux regions, Annalee Saxenian, professeure d'economie regionale a Berkeley, corrige ce qui lui etait rapidement apparu comme une faiblesse de son ouvrage de 1996, c'est a dire une vision trop exclusivement americaine des districts de haute technologie. Apres une serie d'enquetes aupres d'entrepreneurs et ingenieurs.
author_names: Yves Boquet
title: Annalee Saxenian The New Argonauts, regional advantage in a global economy. Harvard University Press, 2006, 424 pages
year: 2007