From Silicon Valley To Singapore

This seminal study explores the significant changes in the global IT industry as production has shifted from the developed world to massive sites in the developing world that house hundreds of thousands of workers in appalling low-wage conditions to minimize labor costs. The authors trace the development of the new networks of globalized mass production in the IT industry and the reorganization of work since the 1990s, capturing the systemic nature of an industry-wide restructuring of production and work in the global context. Their wide-ranging and detailed analysis takes the debates on the globalization of production beyond narrow perspectives of determining criteria of “success” for participation in global networks. Rather, they emphasize the changing nature of work, employment relations, and labor policies and their implications for the possibilities of sustainable economic and social development.

In the 50th anniversary year of Singapore's independence, it is timely to trace our developmental journey in order that young Singaporeans students, visiting tourists and foreigners working in Singapore may be informed about why and how Singapore succeeded, despite tremendous odds. The two volumes relate the developmental stories and secrets of Singapore, so that other developing countries can be inspired to achieve their own successes. It is a story worth telling, so that the great achievements by our Pioneer Generation will be recorded, and which may serve as an inspiration to the younger generations to guide them for the next 50 years.

This text examines how location decisions have contributed to the global dominance of US firms in the hard disk drive industry, with research and development located principally in California and manufacturing based in Southeast Asia, particularly in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.

This book is about the causes and major consequences of the rise of Asia in the IT industry. It focuses on six regions/countries: Japan, especially Fukuoka in the South; Teheran Valley in Seoul; Zhongguancun Science Park in Beijing; Hsinchu Science-based Park in Taiwan; Singapore; and Bangalore in India.

The success of Asian economies (first Japan, then Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and, more recently, China and India) has made it tempting to look for an Asian model of development. However, the strength of Asian development lies less in strategies that reproduce successful national systems of innovation and more in the capacity for institutional change to open up new development trajectories with greater emphasis on knowledge and learning. The select group of contributors demonstrate that although there are important differences among Asian countries in terms of institutional set.

After World War II, several late-developing countries registered astonishingly high growth rates under strong state direction, making use of smart investment strategies, turnkey factories, and reverse-engineering, and taking advantage of the postwar global economic boom. Among these economic miracles were postwar Japan and, in the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called Asian Tigers—Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—whose experiences epitomized the analytic category of the "developmental state." In Betting on Biotech, Joseph Wong examines the emerging biotechnology sector in each of these three industrial dynamos. They have invested billions of dollars in biotech industries since the 1990s, but commercial blockbusters and commensurate profits have not followed. Industrial upgrading at the cutting edge of technological innovation is vastly different from the dynamics of earlier practices in established industries. The profound uncertainties of life-science-based industries such as biotech have forced these nations to confront a new logic of industry development, one in which past strategies of picking and making winners have given way to a new strategy of throwing resources at what remain very long shots. Betting on Biotech illuminates a new political economy of industrial technology innovation in places where one would reasonably expect tremendous potential—yet where billion-dollar bets in biotech continue to teeter on the brink of spectacular failure.

This book offers insights on effective policies that can be applied to other economies in terms of using technology financing to foster technological innovations. It outlines the role of government in accelerating the nation's innovative capacity by promoting technology investments that will achieve successful and sustainable economic development.

How can countries in the underdeveloped world position themselves to take best advantage of the positive economic benefits of globalization? One avenue to success is the harnessing of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the “nontraditional” forms of the high-technology and service sectors, where an educated workforce is essential and the spillover effects to other sectors are potentially very beneficial. In this book, Roy Nelson compares efforts in three Latin American countries—Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica—to attract nontraditional FDI and analyzes the reasons for their relative success or failure. As a further comparison, he uses the successes of FDI promotion in Ireland and Singapore to help refine the analysis. His study shows that two factors, in particular, are critical. First is the government’s autonomy from special interest groups, both domestic and foreign, arising from the level of political security enjoyed by government leaders. The second factor is the government’s ability to learn about prospective investors and the inducements that are most important to them—what he calls “transnational learning capacity.” Nelson draws lessons from his analysis for how governments might develop more effective strategies for attracting nontraditional FDI.

This book is a collection of technology startup cases in Asia, told in a narrative form, to give readers an insider view to how innovators and technopreneurs view entrepreneurial opportunities from use of technology, how the technopreneurs raise funding to support their vision, and the subsequent relationship of the technopreneurs and their investors. The book illustrates some of the cases using the theory of effectuation. The book is divided into four sections: Part One chronicles case studies of technopreneurs who raised capital but had difficulty with managing the investor expectations and relationship, to the detriment of the venture. Part Two chronicles case studies of technopreneurs who started their ventures without venture capital, with some who later raised capital at a much later stage, and were able to exit successfully. All case studies are of technology ventures in Asia from the mid-1990’s where venture capital and entrepreneur ecosystem were under-developed. Lessons learned from the various case studies are told from a practitioner’s perspective. Part Three describes the development of the venture ecosystem, specifically in Singapore, a city-state aspiring to follow the Silicon Valley model. The technopreneurs in Parts I and II play the roles of mentors/investors in the newly developing system. Part Four includes two new young technology ventures’ fund raising dilemmas, written in a teaching case format. The book can be used by practitioners and by educators for developing a deep understanding on the issues of raising capital for the purpose of growing the venture, and the trade-offs of capital from the different groups of investors and their financial terms. It is useful to young and mid-career professionals looking at starting a technology venture in Asia.