Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Science Industries

Rating:
Summary: More company histories than analytic principles
Review: In earlier books by Chandler that I liked very much, such as Strategy & Structure and The Visible Hand, historical narrative took precedence over facts and figures. Epic stories were told, and individual biography was subordinated to broader historical developments. In this book, I felt the balance tilted the other way: I found myself fighting to concentrate on the story, while wading through very specific details that I quickly forgot as I moved onto the next company history.

Chandler has certainly done his homework. In the Preface, he notes his limited technical knowledge of the consumer electronics and computer industries, but one would never guess that from the adept way he handles technical terms and explains the significance of various innovations. With many tables in the text and more in the appendix, Chandler convincingly documents his story.

It is a simple one: firms that came to dominate their industries did so by being first movers that established integrated learning bases, based on technical, functional or managerial knowledge. They thus gained economies of scale and scope (another concept that Chandler has contributed to the business history literature), obtained a critical head start, and successfully beat back most entrepreneurial startups. In consumer electronics, a handful of Japanese firms built on their initial advantages to not only dominate world markets but also to destroy domestic producers in the U.S. In computers, however, IBM built a lead it never relinquished, even though it was repeatedly challenged by European and Japanese firms.

Chandler noted, with obvious relish, that top executives in many firms engaged in short-sighted strategies that eventually brought them down. For example, RCA created many innovations that it licensed to the Japanese firms that ultimately destroyed it. Indeed, perhaps the major benefit of including so many detailed company histories is that they remind us of just how wrong so many excutives have been!

If you know little about the history of these two industries, Chandler's book will give you an excellent overview. If you are familiar with them, you can still appreciate Chandler's skill in conveying the international comparative context for their evolution in the 20th century. In his provocative conclusion, Chandler asks whether the Japanese firms, with their strong integrated learning bases and dominance of consumer electronics, will ultimately triumph in the struggle for control of the world's information technology industries.

Rating:
Summary: More company histories than analytic principles
Review: In earlier books by Chandler that I liked very much, such as Strategy & Structure and The Visible Hand, historical narrative took precedence over facts and figures. Epic stories were told, and individual biography was subordinated to broader historical developments. In this book, I felt the balance tilted the other way: I found myself fighting to concentrate on the story, while wading through very specific details that I quickly forgot as I moved onto the next company history.

Chandler has certainly done his homework. In the Preface, he notes his limited technical knowledge of the consumer electronics and computer industries, but one would never guess that from the adept way he handles technical terms and explains the significance of various innovations. With many tables in the text and more in the appendix, Chandler convincingly documents his story.

It is a simple one: firms that came to dominate their industries did so by being first movers that established integrated learning bases, based on technical, functional or managerial knowledge. They thus gained economies of scale and scope (another concept that Chandler has contributed to the business history literature), obtained a critical head start, and successfully beat back most entrepreneurial startups. In consumer electronics, a handful of Japanese firms built on their initial advantages to not only dominate world markets but also to destroy domestic producers in the U.S. In computers, however, IBM built a lead it never relinquished, even though it was repeatedly challenged by European and Japanese firms.

Chandler noted, with obvious relish, that top executives in many firms engaged in short-sighted strategies that eventually brought them down. For example, RCA created many innovations that it licensed to the Japanese firms that ultimately destroyed it. Indeed, perhaps the major benefit of including so many detailed company histories is that they remind us of just how wrong so many excutives have been!

If you know little about the history of these two industries, Chandler's book will give you an excellent overview. If you are familiar with them, you can still appreciate Chandler's skill in conveying the international comparative context for their evolution in the 20th century. In his provocative conclusion, Chandler asks whether the Japanese firms, with their strong integrated learning bases and dominance of consumer electronics, will ultimately triumph in the struggle for control of the world's information technology industries.