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Article Excerpt
Introduction
Economic geographers have long recognized industrial learning as a situated process that is territorially and socially embedded. The vast literature on industrial districts, clusters and learning regions that accumulated through the 1990s emphasized place-based learning (Markusen 1996; Braczyk et al. 1998; Malmberg and Maskell 2002). More recently, a second current of inquiry has sought to unravel how learning takes place across space and between regions (Bunnel and Coe 2001; Oinas and Malecki 2002; Bathelt et al. 2004). Both groups of studies have frequently rehearsed Michael Polanyi's (1967) conceptual distinction between tacit and codified knowledge. In a world where codified knowledge is thought to be increasingly ubiquitous (Maskell and Malmberg 1999) many of these accounts view the leading edge, the quality that makes places special, as the province of tacit knowledge. In contrast there remains a lacuna in our understanding of how industrial geographies shape and are shaped by the practice of codification. This imbalance is regrettable, especially considering Nonaka and Takeuchi's (1995) widely cited observation that the cycling between codified and tacit knowledge holds the key to industrial problem solving. To address this research gap, it is necessary to more fully consider the codified dimension and the art of industrial writing.
Codified knowledge serves as the recipe for industrial learning. Codification is the process of inscribing information, the translation from practice to page or what Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to as 'externalization'. Maskell and Malmberg (1999, 15) capture the significance of this process when they state that 'technological progress is to a large extent the result of an interlinked process of knowledge creation and subsequent codification. Codification is thus at the heart of the whole philosophy of industrialization'. In the industrial arena, knowledge externalization produces several outcomes including blueprints, formulas, sketches and patents. Though each of these inscriptions fixes knowledge in a potentially mobile form, they vary according to the situated conditions governing their authorship and use. A patent serves as a more authoritative claim to novelty than an idea hastily sketched on a cocktail napkin.
Intellectual properties (IP) (1) are the currency of a knowledge-driven economy. Taplin (2004, 1) estimates that these sorts of intangible assets comprise 70 percent of the assets of major corporations. As Macdonald (2004, 135) argues, patents have acquired 'a strategic value increasingly independent of innovation'. IBM's patent portfolio, for example, annually generates U.S. $1 billion in profit through licensing. To produce a comparable figure, IBM would have to sell an additional $20 billion in products (Rivette and Kline 2000, 56). IP management has thus become a crucial firm competency to be integrated throughout the product cycle. According to its former vice president of R&D, when razor manufacturer Gillette sought to develop the Sensor brand, 'the first challenge ... was mapping out the patent landscape surrounding the shaver's key performance attribute' (Rivette and Kline 2000, 58; emphasis added). Accompanying these spatial metaphors that hint at the tacit component of working with these inscriptions, is an increasing recognition that in the world of IP, geography matters. National patent systems across major industrialized countries differ significantly and firms face great uncertainty in both registering and defending their patents across borders. The United States judges patents according to the 'first to invent' principle, whereas virtually every other country follows the 'first to file' system. However, moves towards international patent harmonization, such as the WTO's Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) protocol, have been criticized by countries in the global south for undermining indigenous knowledge systems (Shiva 2000). As these examples illustrate, codified knowledge matters, yet there is a poor understanding of the processes through which patents and other industrial inscriptions are produced, mobilized and officiated.
This paper offers insight into the geographies of codification through an examination of the electronic musical instrument (hereafter EMI) industry between 1965 and 1995. This period is marked by two profound shifts in the EMI industry. First, the technological basis of the EMI industry shifted from analog to digital sound synthesis (Theberge 1997; Pinch and Trocco 2002). Second, the industrial advantage shifted decisively from the United States to Japan, specifically to Hamamatsu, an industrial city located on the Pacific coast midway between Tokyo and Osaka (Reiffenstein 2004, 2005). Yet, the key patents--a vital form of codified knowledge--that provided the catalyst for paradigmatic technological change were made by American engineers based in California, and American industry had the opportunity to access their breakthroughs. Why was this vital codified knowledge not properly appreciated in the United States? How and why was this codified knowledge transferred, understood, translated and elaborated by Japanese firms? These questions underline the problematic nature of codified knowledge in industrial location dynamics and regional development and provide the empirical goals of this paper.
Conceptually, I connect the themes of knowledge conduits with actor-network theory and Latour's science studies, especially in relation to the idea of 'translation'. Actor-network theory and Latour's idea of translation offer complementary insights into how knowledge networks are mobilized, including through the interdependencies between people (e.g., engineers) and things (e.g., patents). This discussion privileges patenting as a problematical process that connects scientific practice, engineers and innovation. Empirically, the paper sketches the career trajectories of three U.S. inventors who transferred knowledge from various contexts in California's high-tech industry to Yamaha, a Japanese firm based in Hamamatsu. In this transfer of knowledge, special attention is paid to the role of patents, most notably key 'breakthrough' patents that became the focus of considerable controversy. In terms of organization, the paper first elaborates on spatial transfers of knowledge through conduits and networks comprising people, texts and artifacts, primarily with reference to science studies and the theme of translation. Empirically, the paper then analyzes the role of engineers, firms and patents in the transformation and relocation of the EMI industry.
Knowledge Transfers, Codification and Translation over Space
The tacit-codified knowledge dichotomy is frequently the starting point for economic geography's examination of knowledge creation and transfer (Asheim 1999; Cowan et al. 2000; Johnson et al. 2002). Codified knowledge, also known as formal, explicit and articulated knowledge, concerns those forms of scientific or engineering knowledge that exist in textual form and are thereby potentially tradable. Tacit or informal knowledge, on the other hand, in Polanyi's (1967, 4) words is the highly personalized and contextual realm of knowledge in which, 'we know more than we can tell'. In practice the two are interdependent. As Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995; Nonaka et al. 2000) argue, knowledge creation proceeds from the cycling between tacit and codified knowledge. Geographers have seized on this mutually constitutive quality to caution against binary spatial logics that read tacit knowledge as local and sticky and codified knowledge as global and slippery. Asheim (1999) proposes an intermediate form of contextual knowledge, 'disembodied knowledge' that comprises locally sticky forms of codified knowledge. Bathelt et al. (2004, 31) similarly question 'the view that tacit knowledge transfer is confined to local milieus whereas codified knowledge may roam the globe almost frictionlessly'. While there has been increasing intimations about the importance of tacit knowledge in economic geography (Gertler 2004), the unpacking of codified knowledge has been left far behind.
Knowledge conduits
A useful, though limited, approach to understanding spatial knowledge transfer is to consider the conduits (texts, people or artifacts) through which it is exchanged. The so-called knowledge spillover literature focuses on the transfer of texts (Jaffe et al. 1993; Audretsch and Feldman 1996; Breschi and Lissoni 2001). These studies examine patent data, by looking for patterns of knowledge exchange. Howells (2002, 876) takes issue with the conceptual inferences derived from this type of data analysis, arguing that patent citations are a metric that, 'impl[ies] the imparting of knowledge, but do[es] not actually measure it'. Absent in the discussion of knowledge spillovers are discussions of how patents are produced--the context of their authorship, the geographies of their circulation and their efficacy for shaping further innovative practice.
For the second conduit, people, Pinch and Henry's (1999; Henry and Pinch, 2000) work on the British Motor Sport Industry (BMSI) cluster has tracked the movements of talent amongst enterprises. Their analysis highlights the turnover of engineers among competing teams. It further illustrates how knowledge was translated across sectoral boundaries to produce design innovations in the cars themselves--an element that recurred in the present study. Nevertheless, their emphasis on the exchange of tacit knowledge embodied in individuals hinders insight into the full spectrum of the knowledge cycle. A concept that might lend traction here is the notion of 'knowledge enablers', that is, agents usually operating within corporations, who facilitate the diffusion of tacit knowledge (von Krogh et al. 2000, cited in Gertler 2004). The challenge for these individuals, as Gertler (2004, 146-147) notes, is that it is 'devilishly difficult to disseminate' this knowledge without 'at least partial codification in the process of transmission'. In other words, the movements of people and texts need to be viewed as being complementary to each other.
Finally, technology transfer occurs through the mobilization of artifacts, such as consumer or capital goods. Especially in the case of complex machinery, Gertler has repeatedly (1995, 2001) called into question the limits to the transfer of these technological artifacts, a point commonly made about technology transfer by development scholars. On the other hand, reverse engineering, a central plank in the strategy of Japanese postwar reindustrialization (Freeman 1987; Partner 1999; Takahashi 2000), illustrates how artifacts, in concert with texts and expert advice, mobilize knowledge between places. This example affirms both the inadequacy of theorizations that treat people and things as operating in mutually exclusive domains and the need to look beyond North America and Europe. These issues are addressed in the communities of practice literature and by actor-network theory.
Communities of practice and actor-networks
Communities of practice are intra- and interorganizational problem-solving networks (Wenger 1998). Debate in geography questions whether these communities effectively mobilize knowledge between locations. Amin and Cohendet (1999) assert that the organizational and relational closeness that define communities of practice substitute and even supersede physically proximate relations. Gertler (2001), however, expresses skepticism with the fact whether social or institutional proximities can really overcome distance. Coe and Bunnel (2003, 446) stake out an intermediate position in reasoning that, 'while such communities will originally almost certainly be local configurations, over time sustained and repeated interaction facilitated by "boundary crossers" may create new spatially extensive constellations'. Boundary crossers sound a lot like the knowledge enablers discussed earlier, suggesting, in part, that we are working through a conceptually cluttered space. In its emphasis of shared repertoires and stories of community participants, this literature is still primarily working through the idea of knowledge in the tacit dimension. This emphasis stands in contrast to actor-network theory.
Actor-network theory and the 'science studies' literature of Bruno Latour (1987, 1999) develop a conceptual framework and vocabulary to interpret the circulation of scientists and engineers through society. Actor-networks are so called since their architecture derives from the ability of humans and non-humans (machines, books, etc.) to enroll new actors into the network. Importantly, this perspective solves many of the difficulties inherent in the compartmentalized knowledge conduits approach since it views texts, people and artifacts as mutually constituting entities. It further opens up new possibilities for refining our understanding of the geographies of tacit and codified knowledge. Central to this perspective is the idea of 'translation', or the notion that within networks, actors are forced to 'take detours through the goals of others' (Latour 1999, 89). These 'translations' are the displacements in meaning and objective that result from the inevitable compromise among disparate interests. Within geography, various authors have illustrated the utility of actor-network and science studies' perspectives (Murdoch 1994; deLaet 2000; Barnes 2001; Winder 2001; Evenden 2004). Actor-network theory and translation also have particular reference to the practice of patenting and the detours that engineers are forced to take to authorize their inventions.
Patents and the inscription of actor-networks
In contrast to approaches that interpret patents as a proxy for innovation (Pred 1966; Schmookler 1966; Mensch 1979; Freeman et al. 1982; Ceh 2001), actor-network theorists begin from the assumption that patents are problematic. Their...
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