Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries

by Lamoreaux, Naomi

• ISBN13: 9780226468327
• ISBN10: 0226468321
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-02-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countriesdraws out the underlying economics in business history by focusing on learning processes and the development of competitively valuable asymmetries. The essays show that organizations, like people, learn that this process can be organized more or less effectively, which can have major implications for how competition works. The first three essays in this volume explore techniques firms have used to both manage information to create valuable asymmetries and to otherwise suppress unwelcome competition. The next three focus on the ways in which firms have built special capabilities over time, capabilities that have been both sources of competitive advantage and resistance to new opportunities. The last two extend the notion of learning from the level of firms to that of nations. The collection as a whole builds on the previous two volumes to make the connection between information structure and product market outcomes in business history.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(18)
Naomi R. Lamoreaux
Daniel M. G. Raff
Peter Temin
Inventors, Firms, and the Market for Technology in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries	19	(42)
Naomi R. Lamoreaux
Kenneth L. Sokoloff
Adam B. Jaffe
Patents, Engineering Professionals, and the Pipelines of Innovation: The Internalization of Technical Discovery by Nineteenth-Century American Railroads	61	(42)
Steven W. Usselman
Jeremy Atack
The Sugar Institute Learns to Organize Information Exchange	103	(42)
David Genesove
Wallace P. Mullin
Margaret Levenstein
Learning by New Experiences: Revisiting the Flying Fortress Learning Curve	145	(40)
Kazuhiro Mishina
Ross Thomson
Assets, Organizations, Strategies, and Traditions: Organizational Capabilities and Constraints in the Remaking of Ford Motor Company, 1946--1962	185	(34)
David A. Hounshell
Sidney G. Winter
Sears, Roebuck in the Twentieth Century: Competition, Complementarities, and the Problem of Wasting Assets	219	(34)
Daniel M. G. Raff
Peter Temin
Thomas J. Misa
Marshall's ``Trees'' and the Global ``Forest'': Were ``Giant Redwoods'' Different?	253	(42)
Leslie Hannah
Bruce Kogut
Can a Nation Learn? American Technology as a Network Phenomenon	295	(38)
Gavin Wright
Alexander J. Field
Contributors	333	(2)
Name Index	335	(6)
Subject Index	341