Differences, Concepts, Themes, and Approach

So I begin this introductory chapter by emphasizing some significant differences between the evolution of the consumer electronics and computer industries on the one hand, and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries on the other. Then I define the underlying concepts and review basic themes and my historical approach. 

Four major differences mark the two sets of high-technology industries. The first and most obvious is the historical timing of the creation of the initial infrastructures—that is, the building of the technological and institutional foundations of the respective industries. In consumer electronics and computers, the creation of the infrastructure began in the 1950s, thirty years af- 

The third difference is that the products commercialized by the two sets of industries were dramatically different and directed toward different markets. Consumer electronics and computers transformed the ways of communication through sound (audio), sight (video), and manipulation of information (computers). Their products required two sets of hardware devices, one for transmission and the other for reception, with software to process the information within both and that flowing between them. The mature chemical and pharmaceutical industries, on the other hand, utilized the new scientific knowledge to create a vast array of new materials and medicines that replaced natural ones—metal, wood, and other organic products—that 

These radically different performances cannot be explained in terms of national culture, national political processes and institutions, or national educational systems. Since the executives who commercialized the products of the new technologies in these industries possessed similar cultural and educational backgrounds and operated within the same political and financial nexus of institutions, a critical question thus emerges why were the performances of these two sets of national industries in worldwide markets so different The answer is barriers to entry. 

The concepts presented in Chapter 1 of Inventing the Electronic Century provide the conceptual framework for understanding the evolution of high-technology industries worldwide. 

---