The role of information, knowledge and value in the late 20th century

Futures

Volumn 28, Issue 8, 1996, Pages 695-707

  Kenney, Martin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000304019     PISSN: 00163287     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/0016-3287(96)00029-8     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Although information and knowledge are quite different, the current period is emphasizing the importance of both (for further discussion, see Martin Fransman, 'Information, knowledge, vision and theories of the firm', Industrial and Corporate Change, 3(3), 1994, pages 713-756; and Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company (New York, Oxford University Press, 1995).
2. Although information and knowledge are quite different, the current period is emphasizing the importance of both (for further discussion, see Martin Fransman, 'Information, knowledge, vision and theories of the firm', Industrial and Corporate Change, 3(3), 1994, pages 713-756; and Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company (New York, Oxford University Press, 1995).
3. Physical labour will not disappear completely. There are still a number of production activities that do not require significant thinking, but rather are highly routinized activities that cannot be automated economically. For example, in the garment and footwear industries much of the production process requires little intellectual input from the workers. One reason for difficulty in automating is simply the recalcitrance of the materials. Many routinized labour-intensive activities are being relegated to areas with inexpensive labour.
4. Daniel Bell, The Coming Post-industrial Society (New York, Basic Books, 1973); Fred Block, Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1990); and Krishnan Kumar, Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Postindustrial Society (New York, Penguin Books, 1978).
5. Daniel Bell, The Coming Post-industrial Society (New York, Basic Books, 1973); Fred Block, Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1990); and Krishnan Kumar, Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Postindustrial Society (New York, Penguin Books, 1978).
6. Daniel Bell, The Coming Post-industrial Society (New York, Basic Books, 1973); Fred Block, Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1990); and Krishnan Kumar, Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Postindustrial Society (New York, Penguin Books, 1978).
7. Shoshona Zuboff, In the Age of the New Machine (New York, Basic Books, 1988); Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'Capitalism in the computer age', New Left Review, 160, 1986, pages 81-91; and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'Robots and capitalism', New Left Review, 147, 1984, pages 109-121.
8. Shoshona Zuboff, In the Age of the New Machine (New York, Basic Books, 1988); Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'Capitalism in the computer age', New Left Review, 160, 1986, pages 81-91; and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'Robots and capitalism', New Left Review, 147, 1984, pages 109-121.
9. Shoshona Zuboff, In the Age of the New Machine (New York, Basic Books, 1988); Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'Capitalism in the computer age', New Left Review, 160, 1986, pages 81-91; and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'Robots and capitalism', New Left Review, 147, 1984, pages 109-121.
10. Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (New York, Harper Collins, 1993).
11. Andrew Sayer and Richard Walker, The New Social Economy (London, Basil Blackwell, 1992).
12. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1974).
13. As an example, a Boeing 747 has an enormous number of different skills embodied within it. From materials science to design and parts, the specializations and separate knowledge bases mobilized are myriad.
14. Abbott Payson Usher, A History of Mechanical Innovations (Cambridge, Oxford University Press, 1954).
15. Zuboff, op cit, reference 4. In previous work I have attached great importance to the intellectual contributions of manufacturing workers, see, for example, Martin Kenney and Richard Florida, Beyond Mass Production (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993).
16. Zuboff, op cit, reference 4. In previous work I have attached great importance to the intellectual contributions of manufacturing workers, see, for example, Martin Kenney and Richard Florida, Beyond Mass Production (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993).
17. Robert Reich, The Work of Nations (New York, Alfred A Knopf, 1991).
18. W Mark Fruin, Knowledge Works (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996); and Kenney and Florida, op cit., reference 10.
19. W Mark Fruin, Knowledge Works (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996); and Kenney and Florida, op cit., reference 10.
20. George Gilder, Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology (New York, Simon and Shuster, 1989).
21. Joseph Schumpeter, Business Cycles; A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1939).
22. Because of the sheer volume of information, many of the outputs are now being converted into visual formats permitting more rapid comprehension of the interrelationships between variables.
23. This is curiously similar to the way in which old film and television programme libraries are being mined. For example, developing retrospectives for certain stars or programmes can offer 'new' programmes.
24. The most modern warehouses are now designed in such a way that it would be physically nearly impossible for human beings to retrieve items from shelves without the use of sophisticated equipment that requires no human guidance.
25. This paragraph is based on the comments by James Curry on an earlier draft.
26. For the quintessential exposition of this theme see, Nonaka and Takeuchi, op cit, reference 1.
27. Lewis Platt, 'Experiences of a major player in IP', Les Nouvelles, December 1993, pages 145-148.
28. Kazuo Yamazaki, professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC Davis, Personal communication, 18 May, 1995.
29. The entire field of machine sensing has received little attention from nontechnical scholars. However, the ability of machines to receive, catalogue, process and 'act' on environmental inputs allows them to react to change in limited but increasingly sophisticated ways. My thanks to Professor Ken-ichi Imai for pointing this out.
30. Ramchandran Jaikumar, 'Postindustrial manufacturing', Harvard Business Review, 64, November 1986, pages 69-76.
31. Ashoka Mody, Rajan Suri, and Mohan Tatikonda, 'Keeping pace with change: international competition in printed circuit board assembly', Industrial and Corporate Change, 4(3), 1995, pages 583-613; and Makoto Kawai, General Manager, Circuits Manufacturing Technology Laboratory, Matsushita Electric Industrial Corporation, Personal interview, 3 December, 1992.
32. Ashoka Mody, Rajan Suri, and Mohan Tatikonda, 'Keeping pace with change: international competition in printed circuit board assembly', Industrial and Corporate Change, 4(3), 1995, pages 583-613; and Makoto Kawai, General Manager, Circuits Manufacturing Technology Laboratory, Matsushita Electric Industrial Corporation, Personal interview, 3 December, 1992.
33. For example, a state-of-the-art semiconductor memory or microprocessor fabrication facility costs approximately $1.2 billion.
34. Packard Bell has eschewed final assembly in Asia and currently does final assembly in Sacramento. Similarly, Hewlett-Packard uses a contract assembler to manufacture its new home computer line.
35. However, the watch design is now done on sophisticated CAD/CAM equipment. See, for example, Nicholas Hayek, 'Message and muscle: an interview with Swatch titan Nicholas Hayek', Harvard Business Review, March/April 1993, pages 99-110.
36. Michael Borrus, 'Reorganizing Asia: Japan's new development trajectory and the regional division of labor', BRIE Working Paper No 53 (Berkeley, CA, BRIE, 1994).
37. Evidence of the importance of visual images is the fact that William Gates, the president of Microsoft purchased the Bettmann photo archives which contains 16 million images. These are being catalogued and digitized to be marketed in various electronic forms. See, Wendy Bounds, 'Bill Gates owns Otto Bettmann's lifework', Wall Street Journal, 17 January 1996, page B1.
38. Urs von Burg and Martin Kenney, 'Silicon Valley and the creation of the computer networking industry', Hitotsubashi Business Review, 42(4), 1995, pages 15-44 (in Japanese).
39. In some countries private property rights in land are not nearly as secure as in the USA. For example, in Mexico there are often peasant occupations of land - one of the flash points in the Chiapas Zapatista revolts.
40. Paul David, 'Intellectual property institutions and the panda's thumb', Center for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University Publication No 287, April 1992.
41. It is important to recognize that the transfer or theft of tacit knowledge such as know-how is not easy. See Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1966).
42. Robert Evenson and Jonathan Putnam, 'Institutional changes in intellectual property rights', American Journal of Agricultural Economics, May 1987, pages 403-409.
43. Alberto Cambrosio, Paul Keating and Michael Mackenzie, 'Scientific practice in the courtroom: the construction of sociotechnical identities in biotechnology patent dispute', Social Problems, 37(3), 1990, pages 275-293.
44. See, for example, Richard Nelson, 'What is public and what is private about technology', University of California, Berkeley, Center for Research in Management, Consortium on Competitiveness and Cooperation Working Paper No 90-9, 1990.
45. Ernest Braun and Stuart Macdonald, Revolution in Miniature (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1982).
46. Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, Fire in the Valley (Berkeley, CA, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1984), and Richard Florida and Martin Kenney, The Breakthrough Illusion (New York, Basic Books, 1990).
47. Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, Fire in the Valley (Berkeley, CA, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1984), and Richard Florida and Martin Kenney, The Breakthrough Illusion (New York, Basic Books, 1990).
48. Since even software is currently stored on some type of media that does degrade through time, it is not entirely immune to entropy.
49. Chip production is not merely a repetitive activity generating little value. Much value can be created in production, because the 'software' must be rendered into the physical material - a process that requires enormous ingenuity, knowledge, and skill. The knowledge base for making integrated circuitry includes making and controlling explicitly physical materials at the atomic level.
50. Brian Arthur, 'Competing technologies: an overview', in G Dosi et al (eds), Technical Change and Economic Theory (London, Frances Pinter Publishers, 1988), pages 115-135.
51. David Stern, 'An analysis of the scope of copyright protection for application programs', Stanford Law Review, 41, May 1989, pages 1045-1104.
52. Raghu Garud and Sanjay Jain, 'The embeddedness of technological systems', unpublished mimeo, Department of Management, Stern School of Business, New York University, May 1995, makes the important point that entire businesses can arise from making the connections or 'gateways' that can bridge these differences.