Making IT: The Rise of Asia in High Tech (review)

General Electric is an international high-tech icon that began with Thomas Edison and the first electrical revolution, and thrived through every one since. Like many global giants, it has firm American roots. Yet on June 1, 2007, the New York Times could publish a headline in the business section entitled "Chief Says G.E. Aims to Match the Growth Pace Set by India." In it, GE's chairman and chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, is quoted as saying, "If we can grow at the same pace as the Indian economy, we can be a great company." Thirty-five years ago, such a quote would have been unthinkable; today, no one bats an eye. There are truisms that the world economy has become much larger and much more interconnected in the past 35 years, that technological innovation is a key factor in that growth and interconnectivity, and that Asia has come to challenge America as the driving force in that economy and particularly in technology. How did this come about?

The Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Stanford University (SPRIE) has been studying this issue for almost 20 years. In 2000, the current editors published The Silicon Valley Edge, examining the parameters that made America in general, and California in particular, the focal point for the technological revolution in the first 30-odd years after World War II. Now, they have turned their attention to the Asia question. After holding a series of meetings around the world, they have produced the current volume. It is an important resource for any scholar or policy maker interested in how high-tech will evolve in the 21st century.

The volume brings together a number of experts from the US and Asia from business/management, academia, government, and private think tanks. It focuses on "Information Technology," which the editors define to include computer hardware, computer software (products and services), and communications technologies. These technologies arguably underlie the full range of high-tech industry, including biotechnology, space technology, and consumer technology. Geographically, the work centers on several regions in Japan, Seoul, two regions in China (Beijing, Hsinchu), Singapore, and Bangalore, arguing that these are the most successful high-tech regions in Asia. The time frame is generally the past 30 years; although, the editors gave the individual authors some leeway in defining time, space, and industry to fit local conditions.

The volume is too rich in detail to describe in a brief review. Suffice to say, after a comprehensive introduction by senior editor Henry S. Rowen, the various contributors do an outstanding job of framing the developments in their particular regions, each article carefully researched and well documented. Three summary chapters follow, trying to find common themes—in the role of government, in the role of venture capital, and in the role of universities and technology transfer—in the various regions, and tying them back to Silicon Valley.

Finally, there are concluding remarks by the three editors. In them, they try to sum up the similarities that led to the rise of "Asia" in high-tech as an entity, and also the differences that have placed the various regions in various positions, and which will help to determine which regions/nations dominate the next 35 years. I will not "spoil" their conclusions, as I urge everyone interested in the recent revolutionary growth of IT and the world economy—whether from a historical, business or economic perspective—to read this volume. Nor will I critique them, which I could on some specific points—although I found their overall argument convincing. I will say, as a historian approaching these issues from a history of technology rather than business/management/economic perspective, that I found it refreshing that the editors, rather than falling into monocausal explanations, emphasize the complex interaction between technological innovation on the...