Technological Innovation in Legacy Sectors by William B. Bonvillian and Charles Weiss (review)

William B. Bonvillian and Charles Weiss have launched an ambitious and important quest with their study of Technological Innovation in Legacy Sectors. The legacy sectors are those in the United States that the authors believe have fallen behind the global innovation frontier: energy, agriculture, construction, health services delivery, higher education, transportation, the military, and, above all, manufacturing. "Behind" in this case refers to productivity, job creation, growth, and global competitiveness, but also sustainability, protection of the environment, and national security. To meet this formidable challenge, these distinguished authors provide their readers with a complex set of categories, some of which will be familiar to historians, business scholars, and economists ("disruptive innovation," for instance) and some of which will be unfamiliar to many scholars ("elephant technology," for example). In each of the legacy sectors, they identify the obstacles to innovation and the "creative destruction" that Schumpeter long ago lauded as the primary process of positive change in capitalism; Bonvillian and Weiss specify technological lock-in, dominant designs, and other structural obstacles to would-be innovators.

The authors carefully explain each idea—several times—as they build their argument for a new series of policies and support for the "change agents" capable of restoring economic progress and creating a better society along the way. Most of the policies we "must" adopt involve new governmental agents and novel, long-run strategies, as well as cooperative programs in a private sector historically addicted to individualism and to short-run approaches to economic action.

This is a serious effort to deal with a very broad, complex, and important problem. Historians of technology, of entrepreneurship, and of America's position in the world today will find the models in this book and the U.S. case studies of immense value. They will, I believe, appreciate the manner in which the authors explain the five basic approaches to innovation: the linear or pipeline model of science-driven technology; the induced theory that emphasizes market pull; the extended pipeline in which the government provides the push; manufacturing-led innovation; and a broad-based organizational phenomenon that blends public and private action. Along the way, Bonvillian and Weiss apply their analytical tools to brief comparative studies of Scandinavia, Russia, Germany, France, China, and India. This breathtaking historical excursion produces some new proposals—using counterparts of the German Fraunhoferinstitutes in America—and some anxious warnings about competition, especially from China.

Will the book reshape public policy in the United States? The immediate impact will, I believe, be slight because the book will discourage all but the hardiest academic readers. The authors badly needed a tough developmental editor who could have eliminated most of their endless repetitions and summaries. Yes, we need to know about the "valley of death" between applied research and development where innovations frequently fail. But we do not need to have that idea explained over and over and over again.

There are other problems that point toward further study of the issues the authors have raised. The economic activities they address are disparate, and they offer interesting universal categories of analysis. Some readers will remain uncertain that we can improve higher education with the same intellectual toolkit we use in recasting agricultural policy.

But even the skeptics will be challenged by this study to produce some new ideas particular to the legacy sector they inhabit or study. The opposition to the type of wholesale change offered here will doubtless look to America's high standings in the international competitiveness reports. "Why fix it," they will chant, "if it ain't broken?" This will be an unfortunate conclusion to reach in regard to the outlook for American manufacturing, transportation, and energy industries. All of these industries could benefit from some of the new ideas these two experienced, ardent scholars have provided to the nation's policy elite, their staffs, and the academic community. Their ideas should help all of us understand that the...