Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sanford L. Moskowitz, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Management at St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota. Dr. Moskowitz's teaching and research are in the areas of international business, global strategic management, and international technology development. Dr. Moskowitz is an international consultant to industry and government, specializing in innovation and technology management in advanced materials and related technologies. Dr. Moskowitz received his master's degree and doctorate in economic and business history from Columbia University in New York. He is a member of the Academy of International Business (AIB) and a member of the Advisory Board of Annual Editions: International Business.

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A comprehensive treatment of the economic and global impacts of the advanced materials industry

This book represents the first comprehensive investigation of the emerging international advanced materials industry and its profound impact on the world's industrialized and newly emerging economies. It examines the ways in which science, technology, business, and markets have converged to produce one of the most dynamic industries in recent years one that is increasingly controlling global technological progress as a whole.

From the unique vantage point of this crucial industry, this book illuminates the major differences in how the world's two economic superpowers the United States and the European Union perceive and carry forward the technology creation process and what these differences mean for achieving national and regional competitive advantage in the twenty-first century. It draws upon a rich body of source materials spanning from 1970 through 2007 as well as actual in-depth interviews and internal corporate and governmental documentation. The book is organized thematically, with each section highlighting critical perspectives on the rise of the international advanced materials industry and its impact on the relative competitiveness of the United States and the European Union. It concludes with a discussion of how what we have learned about advanced materials in the West tells us of the future competitive power of an emerging Asia.

The Advanced Materials Revolution is essential reading for researchers, executives, and managers working in the advanced materials and related technological fields, as well as professionals and scholars in the academic, investment, consulting, and government communities. It also serves as a valuable case study textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in business, management, entrepreneurship, technology studies, chemical and materials engineering, economics, economic history, and regional and economic development.

Aus dem Klappentext

A comprehensive treatment of the economic and global impacts of the advanced materials industry
 
This book represents the first comprehensive investigation of the emerging international advanced materials industry and its profound impact on the world's industrialized and newly emerging economies. It examines the ways in which science, technology, business, and markets have converged to produce one of the most dynamic industries in recent years-one that is increasingly controlling global technological progress as a whole.
 
From the unique vantage point of this crucial industry, this book illuminates the major differences in how the world's two economic superpowers-the United States and the European Union-perceive and carry forward the technology creation process and what these differences mean for achieving national and regional competitive advantage in the twenty-first century. It draws upon a rich body of source materials spanning from 1970 through 2007 as well as actual in-depth interviews and internal corporate and governmental documentation. The book is organized thematically, with each section highlighting critical perspectives on the rise of the international advanced materials industry and its impact on the relative competitiveness of the United States and the European Union. It concludes with a discussion of how what we have learned about advanced materials in the West tells us of the future competitive power of an emerging Asia.
 
The Advanced Materials Revolution is essential reading for researchers, executives, and managers working in the advanced materials and related technological fields, as well as professionals and scholars in the academic, investment, consulting, and government communities. It also serves as a valuable case study textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in business, management, entrepreneurship, technology studies, chemical and materials engineering, economics, economic history, and regional and economic development.

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The Advanced Materials Revolution

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

In this chapter, we examine in greater detail what the new advanced materials are and where they came from. We arrive at this goal most effectively by providing an historical context out of which this new technological revolution emerged.

Discussions surrounding advanced materials in the literature are fond of stressing a rupture with the past with respect to the science, technology, organizations, and even markets involved. Although important distinctions exist between what we will call this new-materials revolution and previous periods of technological change, these differences should not be given too much emphasis. Indeed, the new-materials revolution descended from that same line of scientific, technical, organizational, and economic development that began in earnest, and is deeply rooted, in the nineteenth century. One cannot understand present developments without reference to these earlier revolutions.

It is fair to say, as one author has written, that "the hallmark of progress in every age has been the way 'materials engineers' worked to improve the usefulness of materials, whether extracting coal or iron ore from the earth or creating new materials from combinations, such as iron and carbon to produce steel." Certainly, previous periods saw the introduction of new materials into the world, from iron and bronze in ancient times to aluminum, stainless steel, gasoline, and synthetic chemicals and resins after 1900. From the late nineteenth century to the late 1970s, there were two distinct periods of new-materials development. The first period, lasting roughly from 1880 to 1930, showcased the famous coal-tar products (in Germany) and the mass manufacture of metals, notably steel and aluminum (in the United States). From the 1930s to the post-World War II decades and up to the 1960s, coal as a raw material for organics and metals gave way to other fossil fuels, in particular petroleum and natural gas. This period witnessed the innovation and mass manufacture of completely new and highly complex man-made petrochemicals. This second materials revolution brought the world advanced fuels and the macromolecular synthetics, including man-made fibers, plastics, and resins. During this period, the United States finally gained technical and economic hegemony over Europe, and especially Germany, in the development, production, and application of advanced materials.

The materials that came to commercial prominence during these two technological revolutions represent more than just technical and commercial accomplishments in their own right, although they were certainly that. The more important ones played pivotal roles in the expansion of other interrelated industries. This technological interdependence proved to be a central process in the rise and growth of economically vital industries. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the new metals, such as steel and aluminum alloys, supplied crucial inputs into America's expanding railroad system (revolutionizing the design and construction of both rail and rolling stock), in construction (especially in the building of skyscrapers, bridges, and highways), and in manufacturing (in the construction of new factory buildings, the fabrication of machine tools and equipment, and the design and production of products made within these plants and with these tools and equipment).

In the second period, the new synthetics revolutionized, as well as disrupted, the industrial landscape, first within the United States and then internationally. The large chemical companies, including Union Carbide and Dow, at first led the way to these new petrochemical materials. Then the major refiners, notably Exxon (Jersey Standard), Phillips, and Shell, integrated forward into chemical intermediates and final synthetic products, and became leading innovators in the field. In the postwar period-from the 1940s through the 1960s-as production methods improved and reduced the unit costs of making the new petrochemicals, these materials diffused into and fundamentally transformed those industries that define the contours of what we know of as our modern economy, including semiconductors, communications, energy, transportation, and, increasingly, the Internet and biotechnology.

These two phases of new material development traversed most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This means that they remain intricately linked to what we know as the industrial revolution, especially within the United States. Table 1.1 summarizes this forward progress of innovation during these centuries. The table shows the most important innovations. These may be new materials altogether or, in some cases, new processes to make commercially known materials. The table indicates the year of and country most responsible for first commercialization. The table indicates that, over time, the number of innovations per year increased. On average, between the years 1824 to 1926, we note an innovation coming along every seven years or so. In contrast, about one notable new material technology emerged annually over the following period beginning in 1934. Moreover, the United States increasingly dominated innovation. Whereas during that first period, 65% of new technologies originated from within the United States, a full 80% were American made during the period 1934-1964.

This pace of American innovation did not last, however. Beginning in the 1960s, a slowdown took place, a relative period of quiet after years of frenetic activity. It would be a good 15 to 20 years before the world would see its next-the third-technological revolution in materials, but when it came it opened up a universe of innovation possibilities that promised to dwarf the previous achievements of the past. Paradoxically, this gale of creative destruction evolved from the existing and ever-nurturing technological landscape.

CONTINUITY AND NEW DIRECTIONS: 1980s AND 1990s

Beginning in the mid-1950s, American technology entered a period of stagnation, certainly relative to the dynamic period from 1925 through 1955. Incremental change rather than pioneering innovation characterized the period. This slack time for innovation lasted approximately twenty years. But by the mid-1970s, American technology saw the initial stirrings of a new-materials revolution, the third phase of modern materials development. This technological push has been accelerating its pace ever since. Just as the second materials revolution evolved from but moved far beyond the first, so this third revolution intersects with, but also radically diverges from, earlier movements in a number of ways. Certainly, we discern important technology transfer from established industry, such as high-pressure catalytic techniques and the use of existing materials such as advanced engineering plastics, thin organic films, and biotechnology, as the basis for the new-generation materials. This transfer of information and technology from an earlier revolution to the next can be thought of, as Martha Trescott believes, as "people transfer". Thus, we find that personnel, and often chemical engineers, move physically by various routes from the traditional chemical industry to departments and companies working in more cutting edge areas of new materials, bringing their...