Toward a Comparative Institutional Analysis

The northern California town of Mendocino, which was the shooting background for the film “East of Eden” starring James Dean, retains some of the air of its late nineteenth century role as a harbor to ship out lumber cut from the mountainsides. Ex-hippies-turned-farmers and artists live in the surrounding area. In the latter half of the 1990s, we rented a house facing the Pacific Ocean from an artist every summer. My wife and daughters went back and forth to Stanford for their activities, but I burrowed myself there for the summer with our dog Robin, brought back with us from Japan, and focused on writing my survey on comparative institutional analysis: Toward a Comparative Institutional Analysis (MIT Press, 2001). Mornings and evenings I took Robin for a walk on the cape where there was a greater than 180 ° view. In the morning, the horizon was veiled in fog, while in the evening the ocean was tinted red by the setting sun. It was the perfect place for rethinking problems and reorganizing chapters. Robin was a small mixed breed with some Shikoku-ken, but she was stubborn and at times got into fights with a large Coast Guard officer’s watch dog. My family enjoyed meals made from the organic produce we bought at the farmers’ market (so many varieties of tomatoes); we also went to the harbor to buy albacore tuna and fresh sea urchin still in its thorny shell.

Picking winners or building them? Alliance, intellectual, and human capital as selection criteria in venture financing and performance of biotechnology startups

Innovation is increasingly based upon a “Triple Helix” of university-industry-government interactions. The increased importance of knowledge and the role of the university in incubation of technology-based firms has given it a more prominent place in the institutional firmament. The entrepreneurial university takes a proactive stance in putting knowledge to use and in broadening the input into the creation of academic knowledge. Thus it operates according to an interactive rather than a linear model of innovation. As firms raise their technological level, they move closer to an academic model, engaging in higher levels of training and in sharing of knowledge. Government acts as a public entrepreneur and venture capitalist in addition to its traditional regulatory role in setting the rules of the game. Moving beyond product development, innovation then becomes an endogenous process of “taking the role of the other”, encouraging hybridization among the institutional spheres.

Innovation in Innovation: The Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations:

The resource-based view of the firm provides a satisfactory account of how firms go about sustaining their existing competitive advantages, but it is less successful in accounting for how firms create such advantages in the first place, or overcome incumbent advantages, when the firms start with few resources. The paper utilizes the case of latecomer firms from the Asia-Pacific region breaking into knowledge-intensive industries such as semiconductors, to illustrate the issues involved and the resource-targeting strategies utilized. This results in a strategic theory of the overcoming of competitive disadvantages through linkage, resource leverage, and learning. The dynamic capabilities of such firms are enhanced through repeated applications of linkage and leverage. The resources strategically targeted are characterized as being those most amenable to such linkage and leverage, namely those that are least rare and most imitable and transferable, i.e. as positive versions of the criteria utilized in the conventional resource-based view of the firm. It is argued that this adaptation of the RBV is potentially of wide applicability, and is the needed amendment that makes it of prime significance in accounting for latecomer success within the conceptual framework of strategic management.

Competitive advantages of the latecomer firm : a resource-based account of industrial catch-up strategies

Introduction 1. The Silicon Valley habitat Chong-Moon Lee, William F. Miller, Marguerite Gong Hancock and Henry S. Rowen 2. Mysteries of the region: knowledge dynamics in Silicon Valley John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid Part I. Silicon Valley Today: 3. A profile of the Valley's evolving structure Doug Henton 4. Life in Silicon Valley: a first-hand view of the region's growth E. Floyd Kvamme 5. Innovation in business models T. Michael Nevens 6. Four styles of Valley entrepreneurship Chong-Moon Lee 7. Changing everything: the Internet revolution and Silicon valley Steve Jurvetson Part II. The Evolution of Silicon Valley: 8. Fairchild semiconductor and its influence Christopher Le cuyer 9. Serendipity or strategy: how technology and markets came to favor Silicon Valley Henry S. Rowen 10. The role of Stanford University: a Dean's reflections James Gibbons 11. Social networks in Silicon Valley' Emilio J. Castilla, Hokyu Hwang, Ellen Granovetter and Mark Granovetter 12. Networks of immigrant entrepreneurs Annalee Saxeninan Part III. A Clustered Community: 13. Venture capitalists: the coaches of Silicon Valley Thomas F. Hellmann 14. The valley of deals: how venture capital helped shape the region P. Banatao and Kevin A. Fong 15. Fueling the revolution: commercial bank financing John C. Dean 16. Advising the new economy: the role of lawyers Craig W. Johnson 17. Shepherding the faithful: the influence of executive search firms Thomas J. Friel 18. Guiding the innovators: why accountants are valued James D. Atwell 19. Free advice: consulting the Silicon Valley way Regis McKenna Afterword: sustaining the edge Chong-Moon Lee, William F. Miller, Marguerite Gong Hancock and Henry S. Rowen Notes References Index.

The Silicon Valley Edge: A Habitat for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

East Asian countries have adopted remarkably good policies to ensure sustained economic growth, but how did they come to adopt such policies in the first place? This book produces a more thorough explanation than has previously been advanced drawing on several disciplines including contributions from anthropologists, economists, political scientists, technologists, demographers, historians and psychologists. Several contributors have held high positions in Asian governments. Four broad themes are identified: * effective governance * achieving and learning societies * growth with equity * external influences This is the most comprehensive account of the foundations of East Asia's rise. Its distinctiveness lies in the range of comparisons across the countries of East and South-East Asia and in the wide array of contributing disciplines.

Behind East Asian Growth: The Political and Social Foundations of Prosperity

This article asks: "What will be the future character of China's political system?" According to Freedom House, all countries above a certain income level are rated at least Partly Free, so why not China? Assuming continued growth in education and the economy, the model result shows it edging into that category by 2015 and Free by 2025. Despite evident negatives, changes in personal liberties, legal system, media, village elections, and individual values support this prediction. An in-between stage might involve more open competition within the party. When achieved, a democratic China would be a positive factor for peace in Asia.

When Will the Chinese People Be Free

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2006/R266.pdf

Henry S. Rowen

Papers

The Silicon Valley Edge: A Habitat for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Behind East Asian Growth: The Political and Social Foundations of Prosperity

When Will the Chinese People Be Free

Selection and Use of Strategic Air Bases

The Impoverished Superpower: Perestroika and the Soviet Military Burden