FREE ESSAY ON MIKE PORTER RESEARCHES

MIKE PORTER RESEARCHES

Michael Porter On How To Marry Strategy & Operational Effectiveness
The Harvard management guru argues that operations & strategy must fit to create a
sustainable competitive advantage. 
For almost two decades, managers have been learning to play by a new set of rules.
Companies must be flexible to respond rapidly to competitive and market changes. They
must benchmark continuously to achieve best practice. They must outsource aggressively to
gain efficiencies. . . Positioning -- once the heart of strategy -- is rejected as too
static for today's dynamic markets and changing technologies. According to the new dogma,
rivals can quickly copy any market position, and competitive advantage is, at best,
temporary. . . But those beliefs are dangerous half-truths, and they are leading more and
more companies down the path of mutually destructive competition. 
Distinguishing Between Operational Effectiveness and Strategy 
Operational effectiveness and strategy are both essential to superior performance, which
is the primary goal of any enterprise. But they work in very different ways. . .
Operational effectiveness (OE) means performing similar activities better than rivals
perform them. Operational effectiveness includes but is not limited to efficiency. It
refers to any number of practices that allow a company to better utilize its inputs by,
for example, reducing defects in products or developing better products faster. In
contrast, strategic positioning means performing different activities from rivals or
performing similar activities in different ways. . . Constant improvement in operational
effectiveness is necessary to achieve superior profitability. However, it is not usually
sufficient. Few companies have competed successfully on the basis of operational
effectiveness over an extended period, and staying ahead of rivals gets harder every day.

Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of
activities. If there were only one ideal position, there would be no need for strategy.
Companies would face a simple imperative -- win the race to discover and preempt it. The
essence of strategic positioning is to choose activities that are different from rivals'.
If the same set of activities were best to produce all varieties, meet all needs, and
access all customers, companies could easily shift among them and operational
effectiveness would determine performance. 
Developing Strategic Fit Across Activities 
Strategic positions emerge from distinct sources, which often overlap. First, positioning
can be based on producing a subset of an industry's products or services. I call this
variety-based positioning. . . A second basis for positioning is that of serving the
needs of a particular customer group. I call this needs-based positioning. . . The third
basis for positioning is that of segmenting customers who are accessible in different
ways. I call this access-based positioning. . . Positioning choices determine not only
which activities a company will perform and how it will configure individual activities
but also how activities relate to one another. While operational effectiveness is about
achieving excellence in individual activities, strategy is about combining activities. 
Fit Sustains Competitive Advantage 
The importance of fit among functional policies is one of the oldest ideas in strategy.
Gradually, however, it has been supplanted on the management agenda. Rather than seeing
the company as a whole, managers have turned to core competencies, critical resources,
and key success factors. In fact, fit is a far more central component of competitive
advantage than most realize. Strategic fit among many activities is fundamental not only
to competitive advantage but also to the sustainability of that advantage. It is harder
for a rival to match an array of interlocked activities than it is merely to imitate a
particular sales-force approach, match a process technology, or replicate a set of
product features. Positions built on activity systems are more sustainable than those
built on individual activities. 
Finally, fit among a company's activities creates pressures and incentives to improve
operational effectiveness, which makes imitation even harder. Fit means that poor
performance in one activity will degrade the performance in others, so that weaknesses
are exposed and more prone to get attention. Conversely, improvements in one activity
will pay dividends in others. Companies with strong fit among their activities are rarely
inviting targets. Their superiority in strategy and in execution only compounds their
advantages and raises the hurdle for imitators. 
What is Strategy? 
Strategy is creating fit among a company's activities. The success of a strategy depends
on doing many things well -- not just a few -- and integrating among them. If there is no
fit among activities, there is no distinctive strategy and little sustainability.
Management reverts to the simpler task of overseeing independent functions, and
operational effectiveness determines a company's relative performance. 
Improving operational effectiveness is a necessary part of management, but it is not
strategy. In confusing the two, managers have unintentionally backed into a way of
thinking about competition that is driving many industries toward competitive
convergence, which is in no one's best interest and is not inevitable. 
Both Strategy and Operational Effectiveness Are Critical to Success 
Managers must clearly distinguish operational effectiveness from strategy. Both are
essential, but the two agendas are different. The operational agenda involves continual
improvement everywhere there are no trade-offs. Failure to do this creates vulnerability
even for companies with a good strategy. The operational agenda is the proper place for
constant change, flexibility, and relentless efforts to achieve best practice. In
contrast, the strategic agenda is the right place for defining a unique position, making
clear trade-offs, & tightening fit. It involves the continual search for ways to
reinforce & extend the company's position. 
Strategic continuity does not imply a static view of competition. A company must
continually improve its operational effectiveness and actively try to shift the
productivity frontier; at the same time, there needs to be ongoing effort to extend its
uniqueness while strengthening the fit among its activities. Strategic continuity makes
an organization's improvements more effective. 
This report is excerpted from What Is Strategy? by Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business
Review, Volume 74, Number 6, pp 61 - 78. 
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Michael E Porter
The Competitive Advantage of Nations and Regions 
Michael E. Porter continues to extend his study first reported in The Competitive
Advantage of Nations. Porter has published books and studies of other countries, states,
and cities, including Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
and India. A book on Japan (with visiting professor Hirotaka Takeuchi), tentatively
titled The Two Japans, is expected to be completed in 1999. 
Porter is extending his microeconomics-based theory of competitiveness in a variety of
ways. He is exploring the shifting role of various microeconomic influences as a nation's
economy becomes more advanced, and the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and
microeconomic conditions in development. 
Porter's examination of the problems of early-stage economic development includes
research with Pankaj Ghemawat on India, as well as studies on Central American, South
American, and Asian countries. 
Porter is also conducting statistical research on the microeconomic foundations of
economic development. An initial paper The Microeconomic Foundations of Economic
Development (in The Global Competitiveness Report 1998, Geneva, Switzerland: World
Economic Forum, 1998) examines the role of microeconomic variables in explaining per
capita income differences among 52 countries. A paper with Mariko Sakakibara (UCLA)
examines the link between domestic rivalry and international competitive success in a
sample of Japanese industries. 
Porter is also conducting research into appropriate forms of economic cooperation within
regions (including countries), for which a major project involving the presidents of
seven Central American nations is serving as a laboratory. 
Clusters and Competition 
Porter is conducting ongoing research on the theory of clusters, or geographic
concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular field. This
work includes further development of cluster theory and its implications for management
and public policy (see On Competition, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998 and
Clusters and the New Economics of Competition, Harvard Business Review, November-December
1998). Porter is also conducting statistical research on the incidence, growth, and
decline of clusters in the U.S. economy. With Claas van der Linde of St. Gallen
University in Switzerland, he is also conducting a meta-study of clusters drawn from
almost 350 known studies of individual clusters. 
National Innovative Capacity and the Ideas Production Function 
Joint research with Scott Stern (MIT) is exploring the determinants of innovative
capacity across countries using time series/cross-section data (Measuring the Ideas
Production Function: Evidence from International Patent Output, draft working paper, July
1998). Using international patenting as a weighting variable, Porter and Stern have
devised an index of national innovation capacity. The data has also been employed to
directly estimate critical parameters of the ideas production function, a central element
in economic growth theory. 
Sustainable Inner-City Economic Development 
Michael E. Porter is using the framework he developed in The Competitive Advantage of
Nations to examine the economic development problems in distressed inner-city areas. He
seeks to understand the potential of inner-city businesses, government policies, and
private-sector initiatives to contribute to sustainable economic development. Porter's
project has yielded a series of articles (see The Competitive Advantage of the Inner
City, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1995) and led to the development of a
private-sector organization called the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, which is
catalyzing inner-city development efforts across the nation. 
Environmental Policy and Competitiveness 
Michael E. Porter has been exploring (with Claas van der Linde of St. Gallen University,
Switzerland) the relationship between environmental regulation, industry competition, and
international competitiveness. He finds that many forms of environmental pollution
reflect inefficient resource utilization and poorly developed technology, suggesting that
better environmental performance is often consistent with enhanced competitiveness. This
perspective recasts the role of governmental regulation, highlighting the importance of
regulatory and corporate approaches that foster innovation and improve resource
productivity rather than simply abate or prevent pollution 
Capital Markets, Investment, and Competition 
Michael E. Porter's research into issues of capital allocation, first published in the
report Capital Choices, is the basis for continuing research that examines how U.S.
capital markets distort competitive behavior and investment. A report to the
Competitiveness Policy Council, Lifting All Boats, contains recent research and policy
recommendations. 
Competitive Strategy 
Porter is engaged in a major new body of work on the theoretical foundations of
competitive positioning and the underpinnings of sustainable competitive advantage. This
research highlights the distinction between positioning and operational effectiveness;
the fundamental role of differences in company activities in positioning; and the central
importance of tradeoffs in delivering different types of customer benefit to the
sustainability of differences in positioning; the role of fit among a firm's activities
(or activity systems); competitive advantage and sustainability; and the relationship
between strategy, organizations, and incentives. 
He is exploring his ideas in theoretical papers, mathematical models, and company
studies. An early discussion of this body of work appears in What is Strategy?, Harvard
Business Review, November-December 1996 and Activity Systems as Barriers to Imitation,
Harvard Business School Working Paper #98-066. 
Porter's next book on strategy, focusing on these ideas, is nearing completion. 
Michael Porter and Anita McGahan are completing a series of statistical papers on the
sources of company and industry profitability. Based on large new database on the
profitability of U.S. business segments between 1981 and 1994, their research examines
topics such as the relative importance of industry; business segment positioning;
corporate parent effects on superior or lagging profitability; the persistence of profit
differences over time; and how high and low performers differ along such dimensions. 
Last updated Wednesday, November 4, 1998 
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By Richard Pastore
For the full interview with Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, see the
Oct. 1, 1995, issue of CIO. 
Competitive advantage is one of the three golden aspirations of any ambitious CIO. Along
with adding value and setting strategic agendas, creating competitive advantage remains a
pipe dream for many a CIO. That's because information systems departments are too often
pigeonholed into an internally focused operational support mode. But it doesn't have to
be that way, says one of the most influential modern theorists in competitive strategy. 
Michael E. Porter, the Roland E. Christensen professor of business administration at the
Harvard Business School, wrote the landmark 1980 work, Competitive Strategy: Techniques
for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. In that book, and in later works, Porter
reconciled historical views on competitiveness and defined the concepts of unique
positioning. 
Porter's more recent research has been a reaction to what he sees as the last decade's
worrisome infatuation with operational improvement efforts -- something he contends does
little to sustain competitive advantage. In effect, Porter tells CIO Managing Editor
Richard Pastore, IS and the businesses it serves are both missing the strategic mark. 
What concerns you most about the way companies today are looking at competitiveness? 
As companies emerge from the last decade, many have been preoccupied with operational
effectiveness -- restructuring, reengineering and improving efficiencies. These
improvements are a necessity in today's competition, but they alone are not enough. They
are approaching a point of diminishing returns. If companies are going to sustain
competitive advantage, they can't do it by being more efficient at running the business.
They have to have a distinctive way of competing. 
The necessity of carving out a distinctive competitive position is not understood as well
as it needs to be today. In a lot of companies, there is a mistaken sense that there is
only one right strategy for that industry, and if one company can be the first to
discover and implement it, they'll win. We've found from our research over the years that
this way of thinking is ultimately self-destructive. If everybody's racing to discover
one right strategy, nobody wins. 
What's behind your new theory of complementary activity systems? 
Rarely does sustainable advantage grow out of a single activity in a business. A company
doesn't get sustainable advantage simply because it has some unique product design or a
unique sales force. Those kind of advantages tend to be visible targets to imitate. If it
relies on one activity as its key strength, all its competitors are going to work very
hard to match that--especially if it is dubbed a best practice against which everybody
else is benchmarking. 
Sustainable advantage comes from systems of activities that are complementary. These
complementarities occur when performing one activity and gives a company not only an
advantage in that activity, but it also provides benefits in other activities. 
For example, if a company has a very good inventory management system, it can also offer
faster delivery and do so cheaper than a company without the inventory management system.
Companies with sustainable competitive advantage integrate lots of activities within the
business: their marketing, service, designs, customer support. All those things are
consistent, interconnected and mutually reinforcing. 
As a result, competitors don't have to match just one thing, they have to match the whole
system. And until rivals achieve the whole system, they don't get very many of the
benefits. It's like climbing a cliff; until you get to the top of the cliff, you can't
stand and begin to walk again. 
Where does IT fit into these concepts? Can it promote the creation of these
complementarities? 
Yes. In many cases, achieving complimentarities across activities is heavily affected by
information technology. A production process can benefit a company's after-sales service
if there is effective information exchange. If IS people need a new rallying cry for how
to create competitive advantage, maybe it ought to be around the idea of tying activities
together and achieving complementarities. 
What can chief information officers specifically contribute toward competitive
positioning? 
CIOs understand the enabling technologies to allow distinctive positions to be created,
so the CIO has an important role to play. But that doesn't mean that systems should be
built internally, and it doesn't mean that the CIO should control all the systems
activity in the company. 
There will continue to be a need for integration and certain standards and protocols, but
that's getting easier because the software itself is pushing it. The idea of central IS
as traffic cop and enforcer is less important, and the CIO's role should increasingly
turn to supporting competitive advantage. 
http://www.cio.com/CIO/cio_buttons.maphttp://www.cio.com/CIO/cio_buttons.map
http://www.cio.com/CIO/http://www.cio.com/CIO/
CIO Magazine 
? 1996 CIO Communications, Inc.
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Teaching Note 7: The Competitive Environment and Competitive Advantage
1.There are two fundamental issues, according to Michael Porter. First, is the
industry/market attractive? - i.e. capable of delivering a healthy profit stream. Second,
how might advantage be obtained and sustained? 
2.Porter argues that five forces determine the profitability of an industry. 
-  The threat of new entrants; barriers to entry 
-  The bargaining power of suppliers 
-  The bargaining power of customers 
-  The threat of substitute products/services 
Rivalry within the industry. 
At the heart of the industry are rivals and their competitive strategies linked to, say,
pricing or advertising; but, Porter contends, it is important to look beyond one's
immediate competitors as there are other determinants of profitability. Specifically
there might be competition from substitute products or services. These alternatives may
be perceived as substitutes by buyers even though they are part of a different industry.
An example would be plastic bottles, cans and glass bottles for packaging soft drinks. 
There may also be a potential threat of new entrants, although some competitors will see
this as an opportunity to strengthen their position in the market by ensuring, as far as
they can, customer loyalty. 
Finally, it is important to appreciate that companies purchase from suppliers and sell to
buyers. If these forces are powerful they are in a position to bargain profits away
through reduced margins, by forcing either cost increases or price decreases. This
relates to vertical integration. 
Any company must seek to understand the nature of its competitive environment if it is to
be successful in achieving its objectives and in establishing appropriate strategies. If
a company fully understands the nature of the five forces, and particularly appreciates
which one is the most important, it will be in a stronger position to defend itself
against any threats, and to influence the forces with its strategy. The situation, of
course, is fluid, and the nature and relative power of the forces will change.
Consequently, the need to monitor and stay aware is continuous.
3.Competitive advantage 
Competitive advantage implies a distinct, and ideally sustainable, edge overcompetitors.
It is more than the idea of a competitive strategy, which may or may not prove
distinctive. 
Porter has also shown how companies can seek broad advantage within an industry or focus
on one or a number of distinct segments. He argues that advantage can accrue from: 
i.cost leadership, whereby a company prices around the average for the market (with a
middle-of-the-road products or service) and enjoys superior profits because its costs are
lower than those of its rivals;
ii.differentiation, where value is added in areas of real significance for customers, who
are then willing to pay a premium price for the distinctiveness. A range of
differentiated products (or services), each designed to appeal to a different segment, is
possible, as is focus on just on a segment. 
There are, consequently, four generic strategies: cost leadership, differentiation, cost
focus, differentiation focus. An organization (according to Porter) should concentrate on
just one of these and not be stuck in the middle. 
Speed (say, quicker new product development) and fast reaction to opportunities and
threats can
provide advantage, essentially by reducing costs and differentiating. 
Real competitive advantage implies companies are able to satisfy customer needs more
effectively than their competitors. Because few individual sources of advantage are
sustainable in the long-run, the most successful companies innovate and seek continually
new forms of advantage in order to open up a competitive gap and then maintain their
lead. Achieving this successfully is a cultural issue, as we have seen.
4.Achieving competitive advantage 
Competitive advantage, then, does not come from simply being different. It is achieved if
and when real value is added for customers. This often requires companies to stretch
their resources to achieve higher returns. Improved productivity may be involved;
ideally, employees will come up with innovations, new and better ways of doing things for
customers.
5.Porter's Value Chain 
Porter has provided another framework for examining the sources of added value. 
He argues there are five primary activities and four support activities - listed below.
Each of these is a cost and, therefore, a potential source of cost leadership; each
activity can also be the source of any differentiation. The linkages between the
activities are particularly important. 
Primary activities 
Inbound logistics 
Operations 
Outbound logistics 
Marketing and sales 
Service 
Support activities 
Procurement 
Technology 
Human resource management 
The firm's infrastructure 
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Sustainable Competitive Advantage 
Profit
A well-designed business strategy is designed to make money for the owners, by competing
in markets and selling products at a profit. In some cases, however, business leaders may
decide that their market is no longer attractive or a product line is no longer
profitable. At that point, it is appropriate to "harvest" the business1 and extract as
much value from the enterprise as possible. Exit strategies can be very lucrative, if
managed properly. 
Long-term Strategy
By merely imitating your competitors, you cannot prevail. You must offer your customers
an advantage that differentiates your products from competitors'. Michael E. Porter
wrote, "The fundamental basis of above average performance in the long run is
'sustainable competitive advantage' ... Without a sustainable competitive advantage,
above-average performance is usually a sign of harvesting." (see footnote) 
Business writers talk about three types of advantage. You might be the low-cost producer,
attracting customers by underselling competitors. Alternatively, you might offer features
or options which attract customers through value. Finally, you might operate in a market
segment that gives you an advantage. 
Low cost
Typically, the low cost producer is also a high-volume producer, offering standard
products, commanding a large share of the market. While providing the lowest price, you
must maintain approximately the same quality as your competitors.
Product Differentiation
Customers might find value from features, customized designs, operating advantages,
immediate availability, service or maintenance experience, high reliability, training, or
good resale value. Non-economic considerations, such as brand loyalty, "image", or even
nationalism may be significant elements of product differentiation. The customer must be
willing to pay extra for the features that differentiate your product. Furthermore, you
must be able to produce the higher-value product for less than the sales price.
Market Segment
Specializing in a small portion of a large market or operating across related markets can
create structural advantages over competitors who are trying to serve other customers. 
Commercial Airplane Strategy for Boeing
Consider the low-cost strategy. We heard recently that our products were mature -
"approaching theoretical perfection." Additional differentiation was not justified. We
waged a fierce campaign for market-share based on cost. The results were not satisfying.
Many customers claimed that competing products approached theoretical perfection more
closely than ours. Our business strategy remains weighted toward "cost." In DCAC
language, a low-cost strategy encourages Tailored Business Stream 1 features, and
discourages TBS 2 and TBS 3.
We might consider a strategy weighted toward product differentiation. How would we use
our resources? In a product differentiation strategy, we would encourage TBS 2 and 3,
relying on the options in DCAC to provide value to customers. Furthermore, we would need
highly-effective financial systems, so that we could price options properly. Another key
resource would be awareness of our customers' needs and preferences, 
and an accurate means of computing the value our options would have in our customer's
business operations. We claim all these elements as key initiatives or core competencies.

Looking at a market-segment strategy, I can imagine focussing on business jets, airplane
modification, airport ground operations, air traffic control, or some other market
segments, looking for competitive advantages through interactions among business units.
Interactions between commercial, military, space, and communications operations are
traditional examples of this.
Resources
I am not really familiar with Lean Manufacturing, or platform teams, but I believe they
could serve a range of business strategies. Two weak links, from my point of view, are
our highly sub-optimized Theory X management culture and our glaringly backward employee
relations practices. Our Theory X culture is at its best in standard, well-established
stable operations. It is particularly ill-suited to changing environments and evolving
conditions. Both the product differentiation strategy and the market segment strategy
would require excellent communication, committed employees who understand their role in
the business, and a general ability to respond quickly to changing markets and customer
requirements. We are at a distinct competitive disadvantage in those areas.
Decisions
The first major decision, of course, is whether to compete or harvest. Our share of the
commercial airplane sales could easily drop from leader to follower this year. US Steel
concluded that its steel markets were fundamentally unattractive. Their shareholders made
a great deal of money harvesting their steel business, then shifting to other market
segments. Other examples come to mind readily.
If we intend to compete, then we should compete! For the first time in many months, I am
starting to see a return of interest in product development and process improvement. I
hope we continue to regain our focus on customers, products, and processes. As employees,
we are ready to build on our strengths and work toward a common goal: building long-term
value for shareholders, customers and employees. 
Footnote:
Competitive Advantage, Michael E. Porter, 1985, p. 11.
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1. Introduction
In Canada as well as in other countries, many of the concerns about the appropriateness
of the technological basis of economic production are being expressed in terms of
problems of competitiveness, sustainability, and innovation. Science and technology
policies and innovation management practices, in particular, are addressing the
competitiveness and sustainability agendas from an innovation perspective.1 Specialists
have spilt much ink debating the meanings and implications of the notions of
competitiveness and sustainability. Each notion often works as a metalanguage with its
own set of assumptions, problems, and agenda of prescribed actions. The competitiveness
and sustainability agendas share a sometimes apocalyptic language to describe the
consequences of failure to attain competitiveness or sustainability. Both are frequently
held up as imperatives which challenge systems of innovation at the deepest levels. 
The competitiveness and sustainability agendas do not frequently refer to each other, and
in many respects they talk past or contradict each other. There are few overlaps or
linkages between the sustainability and competitiveness' policy networks and interest
groups. However, the two agendas are each increasingly sensitive to problems of
technological innovation, and each hints at the necessity or the inevitability of a new
techno-economic paradigm upon which the next century's peace and prosperity can be based.
In one formulation that is strongly advocated by some technology policy advisory
agencies, a strategic course of technological innovation provides the only way to
reconcile the two conflicting goals of reducing levels of pollution and resource
deterioration while achieving major, sustainable increases in economic activity. In other
words, a particular course of action regarding technological innovation may provide an
intersection between the competitiveness and sustainability agendas. 
This paper is meant to stimulate discussion about a social science research agenda on
innovation, sustainability, and competitiveness in the North American region. I will try
to be explicit about the paper's assumptions. First, I use the term competitiveness to
refer to the ability to successfully offer products or services in an open trading
system, in exchange for income, despite others who offer similar products or services,
thus maintaining or expanding access to the life chances that income can purchase.
Competitiveness is a frequently cited rationale and objective of innovation policy
measures in Canada. I use the term sustainability to refer to development that does not
pass on undue or irreversible environmental costs to succeeding generations.2 The term
innovation usually refers to the first commercial application of a product or process by
a user.1 This definition of innovation is close to what is commonly understood as
technological progress and it focuses attention on increases in efficiency and
productivity. About one-third of U.S. economic growth between 1929 and 1982 can be
attributed to innovation of this sort (Denison, 1985). 
A broader definition of innovation to address issues raised by the competitiveness and
sustainability agendas is required because the larger the increment of technological
change, the more likely organizational or social innovations are involved. Understanding
innovation at the managerial, organizational, social, or cultural levels requires, at the
very least, that a host of conceptual and measurement problems be addressed. Second, I
claim that two of the most consistent (and increasingly explicit) policy agendas of our
times, the competitiveness and sustainability agendas, are committed to stimulating,
guiding, or directing science and technology to achieve their ends. Each agenda attempts
to influence technological and industrial innovation in the narrow sense and each ponders
the broader issues of institutional and social innovation, raising a host of questions
about ends and means. 
Third, innovation takes place in systems of public and private institutions and the rules
and routines of their behavior. Innovation research uses notions such as system of
innovation (Niosi et al. 1993; Nelson 1993) to describe the social institutions of
innovation. 
The set of distinctions among minor and major forms of technological change employed by
evolutionary economists helps to address the level-of-analysis problem that one
encounters when searching for the boundaries of a system. Freeman (1992) distinguishes
among innovation at the level of the firm, the production system, the technology system,
and the technoeconomic paradigm. These distinctions identify progressively larger
increments of change in current practices of production, and progressively broader groups
of organizations and behaviors taken as reference points. Incremental innovations are
minor cumulative changes continuously occurring in firms which can add up over time to
significant improvements in productivity and efficiency. Radical innovations are
discontinuities in the production system. Nylon and the oxygen steelmaking process are
historical examples. More recently, radical innovations are usually the result of
deliberate research and development in enterprises and/or in university and government
laboratories (Freeman 1992). Changes of technology system are the result of clusters of
radical innovations that create far- reaching changes in technology, affecting several
branches of the economy, as well as ultimately giving rise to entirely new sectors.
Synthetic materials and the associated manufacturing techniques are examples.
Technological revolutions, or change of technoeconomic paradigm, are new technology
systems which have such pervasive effects on the economy as a whole that they change the
style of production and management throughout the economy (Freeman 1992). Technological
innovation entails organizational, social, or cultural innovation. 
Fourth, I inquire whether it might be useful to develop and apply a systems of innovation
approach in the North American region. The existence of a North American system of
innovation may be surmised on the basis of the considerable degree of economic
integration that has taken place among the United States, Mexico, and Canada. However,
the contours and dynamics of this system have not been well described. 
Fifth, my discussion focuses primarily on problems of industrial innovation, and the
section on sustainability is correspondingly limited. Issues of natural resource
management, energy, transportation, sustainable cities, or sustainable agriculture need
to be examined from an innovation perspective, but it has not been possible to do it
here. 
While neither competitiveness nor sustainability (however defined) is imaginable in the
absence of innovation, the key issue, in my view, is the degree to which a production
system can be both competitive and sustainable in a given context. As North American
economic integration proceeds, science and technology policies and private management
strategies will respond to the emerging conditions of innovation in the region.
Subregional patterns of economic activity will change, and successful social mastery of
new configurations of production will be an important skill to acquire. The greening of
technology policies and management practices presents a new set of challenges in the
context of trade regional liberalization, heightened intra- and inter-regional
competition, and increased mobility in factors of production. 
2. A North American System of Innovation
The notion of system of innovation can be operationalized in terms of financial flows,
legal and policy links, and flows of information, science, technology, and people (Niosi
et al. 1993). Among the legal and policy measures that are contributing to an integrated
North American innovation system are the NAFTA rules governing investment, intellectual
property, and technical standards. Among the financial and technology flows is the huge
volume of bilateral trade between the United States and its two neighbors, especially
intrafirm trade. Among the flows of science are the innumerable linkages between Canada
and the U.S. on the one hand and the U.S. and Mexico on the other. The familiar hub-and-
spokes pattern of North American economic interchange, in which the United States'
neighbors entertain extensive interactions with it but very little with each other, is
paralleled in patterns of scientific communication.1 
A regional system integrator is an actor that aligns and integrates the economic and
technological systems of regional members in interaction with them, including bilateral
and multilateral trade, direct investment, official development assistance, non market
technological collaboration (for example, military), political relationships, provision
of services, establishment of trade rules, export of production technology, and export of
the software of technological development such as management beliefs, social science
paradigms, administrative and technical curricula, information, publications, symbolic
reward systems, etc. (Yama*censored*a 1991). These linkages help spread a pattern of
growth into related economies. In Asia, the Japanese role of regional integrator may
represent an enlargement of the parent-subcontract industrial relation to include newly
industrializing countries (Yama*censored*a 1991, 4). In Europe the role of systems
integrator is played by a supranational institution, the European Community, its
multitude of programs and policies, and the networks of firms and institutions within the
regional economic space. The United States, its large firms, and the regional trade rules
are the principal innovation system integrators in North America. 
In contrast to trends in Asia and Europe, science, technology, and innovation have not
been prominent considerations in the discussions about the North American region's
future. Before the present decade, neither Canada, nor the United States, nor Mexico
tended to see itself as a member of a North American community or system. Most attention
focused instead on the extensive bilateral relationships between Canada and the United
States on the one hand, and between Mexico and the U.S. on the other. It was implausible
to suggest that North America might evolve into a region possessing a specific, shared
identity and continental-scale institutions. Regional economic integration is reshaping
the North American economic landscape. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
establishes a framework for a trade regime encompassing one of the largest (about 360
million people) and richest (about $6 trillion) regional markets in the world. NAFTA sets
trade rules for a regional economy that has already undergone substantial integration.
Canada and the United States have the world's largest bilateral trade relationship, and
the United States is Mexico's largest trading partner. 
NAFTA includes provisions for the reduction and eventual elimination of most tariffs
affecting commerce among Canada, the United States, and Mexico in commodities,
manufactured goods, and services. However, NAFTA goes beyond tariff elimination to
establish rules governing trade and investment. The three countries agree not to
discriminate against each others' goods and services, and to eliminate most tariffs over
a decade. Customs procedures and temporary entry for business travellers are simplified.
Mexican import licensing procedures are immediately eliminated. The chapter on rules of
origin sets out formulae by which Mexican, American, or Canadian products incorporating
third-party materials or components can qualify for preferential access to each other's
markets. Under the net cost formula, most products qualify for preferential treatment
with 50% North American content. In the case of light vehicles, the figure is 62.5%. This
provision is designed to discourage new transplants from using Mexico to supply the U.S.
automotive market. The rules for determining North American content can be complex in
practice, and their primary implication for manufacturing is in sourcing practices. 
NAFTA extends national treatment to member countries' suppliers of goods and services to
public markets. NAFTA signatories agree not to impose offsets or performance requirements
in public procurement. Improved tendering and dispute resolution procedures are
specified. The rules governing public procurement are broader than those in the GATT
procurement code, and NAFTA, in its extension of procurement rules to subnational
governments (states, provinces, and municipalities), goes well beyond the Canada-U.S.
Free Trade Agreement. The net result is to liberalize a North American public market of
about $70 billion. 
NAFTA sets rules regarding control over foreign investments. It establishes the principle
of national treatment for all three parties regarding investments, establishment of new
businesses, acquisition and sale of businesses, and the conduct and operation of
businesses. No minimum levels of equity may be imposed on purchases or ownership. No
performance requirements (for import substitution, local sourcing, export targets,
foreign exchange generation, production sharing, product mandates, hiring of nationals in
management positions, or technology transfer) may be imposed on investments from any of
the three countries or on any investments from any third country (Article 1106). However,
governments may offer advantages to firms in exchange for commitments regarding R&D,
training, expansion, or location of production facilities. Canada retains the investment
screening regime established under CUFTA (the right to review direct acquisition of
Canadian controlled firms valued at more than C$ 150 million). No restrictions may be
placed on the patriation of profits and transfer payments. Mexico retains a range of
investment prohibition privileges in the energy and communication sectors. 
Unlike CUFTA, NAFTA contains a chapter setting out rules for intellectual property.
Chapter 17 applies standards regarding sound recordings, literary and artistic works,
software, data, designs, copyright, trademarks, and patents. It makes provisions for
enforcing intellectual property rights, and it restrains the parties' latitude to permit
compulsory licensing of patents. NAFTA also contains provisions governing energy, natural
resources, agriculture, financial services, technical standards, telecommunications,
cultural industries, and transportation services. Like the Agreement's provisions
discussed above, the general thrust is to deregulate and liberalize trade in these
industries within North America, and to specify special cases in which governments retain
rights to discriminate. Two side agreements cover labor and environmental issues.
However, the disciplines envisaged by these two agreements in case of noncompliance are
weak (Shrybman, 1993; Martin 1992). Continental market liberalization necessarily
modifies the options available to policymakers to structure national or subnational
economic development, and reduces the range of policy instruments available. Because
NAFTA establishes new rules of the game for regional trade, it has been called an
economic constitution for North America. What are the implications of NAFTA for
innovation policy and management? 
In the first place, NAFTA clearly restrains governments from imposing performance
requirements on foreign investors, North American or other, and considerably reduces
governments' latitude to screen foreign direct investment (FDI).1 Also, under NAFTA
governments cannot impose performance requirements but may negotiate some kinds of
innovation-related performances with firms in exchange for incentives. 
In the second place, like CUFTA, NAFTA contains no rules governing subsidies, one of the
most difficult issues on the trade policy agenda. Many kinds of government assistance
have been labelled subsidies in U.S.-Canada trade disputes, including grants, tax
credits, low-interest loans, and unemployment insurance. The subsidy issue was not
resolvable during CUFTA negotiations. In the case of NAFTA, the subsidy issue was
referred to the GATT, where the recently signed Dunkel text contains rules governing
publicly- supported R&D and other kinds of subsidies. Since NAFTA does not cover
subsidies, the rules of the game are unclear regarding direct or indirect public
involvement in initiatives that help create advantage in the private sector. Given the
uncertainty about subsidies, policymakers in Canada and Mexico will probably pay close
attention to innovation policy practices in the United States in the belief that American
practices will set a de facto standard in the region. The Clinton administration has
adopted a more vigorous approach to promotion of industrial innovation than the two
preceding administrations. 
In the third place, NAFTA is clearly intended to cover the activities of subnational
governments, insofar as the respective Federal governments are empowered to commit
subnational governments through international agreements. This will have the same effects
on state and provincial innovation policies as on national policies in North America.
Many states and provinces have developed quite extensive programs and institutions in
support of innovation. Similarly, many American cities offer substantial industrial
incentives. Tax and subsidy competition among localities is widespread in North America.

European and North American regional trade arrangements shield regional economies from
offshore competition. However, the two regional arrangements are based on quite divergent
philosophies. Europe has adopted a Keynesian approach to regional economic integration,
creating a wide range of institutional arrangements to address economic and social
issues. European economic integration involves an attempt to build an administrative
framework that takes into account the economic efficiency and collective security needs
of the community, by means of the creation of a genuinely mixed economy at the regional
level, when it seemed no longer viable on a national level (Deblock and Rioux 1993: 32).
In contrast, NAFTA, like the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement it superseded, largely
concentrates on removing barriers to the movement of goods and capital. NAFTA is a
negative approach to regional economic integration. It is concerned largely with removing
tariff and nontariff barriers to movements of goods, services, and capital. It has no
mechanisms to promote positive adjustment to economic integration. Problems of adjustment
are largely left to the national governments to resolve. 
A regional trade agreement provides preferences among member countries, and fosters
intraregional trade at the expense of interregional trade. Continental trade
liberalization is precipitating wide discussion in North America about jobs, the
environment, and national sovereignty. What are the implications of economic
continentalization for science and technology strategies in the region, considering the
increasingly integrated continental production system into which the two smaller
countries have opted, and considering also the constraints placed by NAFTA on use of a
wide range of traditional instruments of industrial and economic policy? 
The rationale for trade liberalization is well known. Manufacturing firms require
economies of scale to compete in global markets, and production efficiencies are
determined by relative size of market. Under tariff protection, inefficient, subcritical
plants produce short runs of excessively diverse product lines. Access to a large market
and increased competition should lead to rationalization and accelerated R&D investments
(Daly and MacCharles 1986). Trade liberalization should induce manufacturers in Canada to
rationalize within the North American market, decreasing unit costs and reducing the
productivity gap with the United States (ECC, 1988). One expects increased competition to
improve the technical and allocative efficiency of firms (Globerman 1990). Thus economic
gains from trade liberalization are principally realizable in the presence of
productivity growth via attainment of economies of scale, increased internal R&D
investments, and a higher rate of technological diffusion within firms and their supplier
networks. As for the reorganization of production in North America, the simplest
assumption is that of segmented production, with resource extraction, mass assembly
operations, and higher R&D and management functions all sited in different locations.
However, a much wider range of organizational responses is available to firms, such as
just-in-time production (and its implications for proximity to suppliers), strategic
alliances, multilocational production strategies, flexible specialization and the like
(Eden 1991; 1994). Concern is being voiced that the North American trade regime provides
strong incentives for manufacturers to respond to market competition with a low-wage
strategy, which will lower incomes and productivity over the long run, rather than [take]
the more difficult path of producing quality products more efficiently.1 This would
create downward pressures on social and environmental standards in North America. 
While the objective pursued by conventional trade policy is to increase the allocative or
Ricardian efficiency of the economy, the rationale of development-oriented innovation
policy is to increase the growth or Schumpeterian efficiency of the economy (Dosi,
Zysman, and Tyson 1990, 25). A major task facing policymakers, practitioners, and
innovation scholars in North America is to identify plausible routes to technological
learning in open economies and assemble a collection of policy instruments that are
relatively effective (i.e. likely to induce technological spillovers into the economy),
efficient (i.e. do not entail disproportionately high costs), and acceptable under the
prevailing trade regime. 
3. Industrial Innovation and Canadian Competitiveness
Canada is a trading nation. Approximately 30% Canada's GDP is generated through
international trade, and the combination of imports and exports amounts to half of
Canada's GDP. Of the G-7 countries, only in Germany does international trade contribute a
higher proportion of GDP. Although much of the discussion about innovation in Canada has
been pitched in terms of adjustment to globalization, Canada's international trade is
mainly continental. About three-quarters of Canadian trade is with the United States, and
more than half of this is intra-firm trade. Furthermore, Canadian international trade is
highly concentrated. About 70% takes place via about 50 firms, half of which are of
Canadian origin. 
The search for competitiveness has created an eager market for indicators, yardsticks,
and report cards in Canada. These provide sometimes paradoxical views on the state of
Canadian competitiveness. According to the United Nations Human Development Index in
1992, Canadians enjoy the highest quality of life in the world. According to the OECD,
Canada recently had the fastest increase in employment among the G-7 countries and the
second highest growth rate. But the World Competitiveness Report's 1993 survey ranked
Canada eleventh among twenty-two industrialized countries, down from fourth place just
four years earlier. The World Competitiveness Report gave relatively high marks to
Canada's financial system (3d place) and infrastructure (5th place), but low marks to
Canadian science and technology strategies (16th place), quality of production
technologies (15th place), trade diversification (20th place), quality of management
(14th place), and investment in new equipment (21st place). Of all countries surveyed,
only Britain's manufacturing base had deteriorated more dramatically than Canada's.
Canada has lost an estimated half million manufacturing jobs since 1989, with
manufacturing's share of overall employment falling to about 15%. The unemployment rate
is about 11%, and by mid-1990s the net public debt/GDP ratio will have climbed to about
75% - up from about 30% at the beginning of the 1980s. Canada is carrying one of the
highest per capita public debts among advanced countries. 
Canadian competitiveness has been dissected and debated in an avalanche of reports and
studies.1 Many believe that Canada's overall technological effort is too modest, and R&D
expenditures too heavily dependent on the public sector, to help realize Canada's
aspirations to maintain an advanced economy. To get to the bottom of the competitiveness
question, in 1990 the Federal government and the Business Council on National Issues
commissioned Harvard Business School strategist Michael Porter to apply his renowned
diamond analysis to Canada. In The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) Porter says
that a nation's goal is to improve the standard of living by increasing the growth of
industry through increasing industrial productivity and through shifting resources to
higher productivity segments. This will normally happen as industry works to reduce unit
costs and differentiate products, but industry will not choose to do so unless faced with
competition (rivalry) and opportunities for innovation in their markets. Nations are
competitive if their firms can engineer not just cost improvements but also
differentiation. International rivalry normally pushes firms down product streams toward
highly differentiated products. This requires constant innovation on the part of the
firm. Internationally competitive firms create a virtuous cycle in which reinvestment
drives further growth through innovation and learning. Mass production strategies are
abandoned to less-developed countries. The most appropriate national innovation strategy
is one that encourages firms to compete at the high end of the market through innovation,
product differentiation, and service delivery, in contrast to sole reliance on
traditional cost-cutting, productivity-enhancing measures.2 Porter's thesis is that
national competitive advantage is embedded in a competitive diamond of four essential
attributes. These are: Factor conditions (labor, land, natural resources, infrastructure,
labor skills, and services to industry); Demand conditions (the quality and strength of
home-market demand for local industrial output. Porter attaches considerable importance
to the presence of knowledgeable, demanding local customers); Related and supporting
industries, especially the presence or absence of internationally competitive suppliers;
and Firm strategy, structure and rivalry, which constitute the conditions in which
companies are created, organized, and managed. 
Porter says that firms have a home base where the key strategic decisions are taken and
where the core product and process technologies are maintained. He says that if firms do
not use their national home base in this way, they do not contribute to competitiveness
of the national economy. Porter's Canadian report, ominously entitled Canada at the
Crossroads, argues that Canada is not doing so well in the new competitive environment
(Porter, 1991). Five trends indicate underlying weaknesses: low productivity growth, high
unit labor costs, persistently high unemployment, lagging investment in skills and
technology upgrading, and an unencouraging macroeconomic climate for productive
investments. 
Porter observes that Canada is deficient in vigorous export industries. Most Canadian
exports are in natural resources industries (materials and metals, forest products, and
petroleum and chemicals), with some other successful exporters in transportation (mainly
automobiles and avionics) and food and beverage industries (Porter, 1991). In other
words, Canada is specialized in exports of unprocessed or semi-processed commodities.
Many of the sales of the relatively higher value-added exporters, such as chemicals or
autoparts, go to a very small number of parent firms in the United States. Porter
concludes that in Canada, natural resource factor advantages are more important than
innovation-related created advantages, and that an abundance of natural resource-related
factors does not necessarily lead to new factor creation, it leads to specialized
resource firms. One might expect an indigenous capital goods industry to service the
resource industries, but this has not happened in Canada. 
Furthermore, Canadian domestic demand plays a minor role in the development of
internationally competitive Canadian firms; the American market and American suppliers
predominate. Domestic rivalry is usually not significant in internationally competitive
Canadian industries, nor do these industries develop local clusters of upstream and
downstream linkages. Canadian regional development policies prevent geographical
concentration of firms, and foreign direct investment in Canada has reduced the
importance of supporting industries through intrafirm transactions or vertical
integration. Moreover, Porter notes that few non-North American firms have developed a
home base type relationship with Canada. Porter irked defenders of continental economic
integration when he suggested that high levels of foreign direct investment in Canada are
an impediment to international competitiveness. Canada has one of the highest levels of
foreign ownership of industrial assets of any advanced country, raising the question of
the extent to which foreign ownership inhibits the development of a national innovation
system and, indeed, whether a national innovation system is necessarily preferred to
integration into an international system (McFetridge 1993: 320). 
Porter's analysis provoked a debate about the appropriateness for small countries of the
national diamond competitiveness framework. Canada's home country diamond does not have
the answers to explain Canada's international competitiveness, say D'Cruz and Rugman
(1992), who are concerned with the strategic behavior of MNCs operating from small, open
economies. To be applicable to Canada, the Porter model needs to be corrected for the
nature of foreign direct investment in Canada, the value added in Canada's resource
industries, and the relevance of Canada's home country diamond in an integrated North
American economic system (ibid.). In a stream of publications, Rugman and D'Cruz have put
forward a series of critiques of the Porter model in particular and of the more generally
held belief in Canada that policies to promote indigenous manufacturing or high
technology firms firms are critically important. 
D'Cruz's and Rugman's analysis of Canadian competitive advantage is based on the
recognition that most Canadian firms are concentrated in sectors or production phases in
which cost reduction is the primary competitive strategy. Canada's ten leading export
industries are automobiles, pulp and paper, vehicle components, commercial vehicles,
non-edible agricultural products, non-ferrous metals, crude oil, cereal products, natural
gas, and motors, turbines, and pumps. With the exception of the automotive sector,
Canadian export performance is not determined by an ability on the part of its
manufacturing sector to compete in international markets. It depends instead upon the
output of the natural resource sectors (D'Cruz and Rugman 1992: 21). Also, Rugman and
D'Cruz take issue with Porter's selection of strategic industrial clusters. In Fast
Forward: Improving Canada's International Competitiveness (1991), they identify ten
subregional clusters accounting for the bulk of Canadian GDP and note that seven of the
ten clusters are in the resource sector or in wage-sensitive production phases of
manufacturing.1 They view competitiveness in these industries as largely determined by
productivity growth, which in turn is driven by factor costs, especially wage and capital
costs. In other words, indigenous advanced-technology development is not regarded as
important in these sectors' competitiveness. 
The problem of staples-driven economic development is the central theme of Canadian
economic history. Trade in primary products is a very slowly growing segment of world
trade. This is partly because barriers to entry are relatively low, encouraging exports
from the Third World and soon from the former Soviet Union. Of equal concern is the
phenomenon of dematerialization of production, in which information-rich, highly
engineered components such as optical fibers, ceramics, or high- strength composites
replace simple commodity-based components.2 Because of competition and dematerialization
of production, the long-term trend for commodity prices is down. In 1992 the Economist
reported that real commodity prices were at their lowest level since the magazine began
calculating an all-item index in 1845 (Pestieau 1993: 2). Canada has specialized its
international trade in a small range of slow-growth commodities concentrated in the North
American market. Canadian resource firms typically develop firm-specific process
innovations which provide advantage. They maintain technical currency through procurement
of foreign machinery, licenses, patents, and foreign producers, and when they do
undertake R&D it is frequently abroad. Thanks to their cultural or geographic proximity
to American and British technology markets, Canadian multinationals are probably among
the fast 'technology followers' (Niosi 1983, 189). However, compared to their competitors
in other countries, Canadian firms distinguish themselves by choosing to compete more on
the basis of cost than on the basis of innovation. For example, a recent study of
innovation strategies in the Canadian non-ferrous metals sector found that R&D spending
had declined in the 1980s, remaining at less than one percent of sales, while R&D
spending in comparable Japanese and European firms had doubled to more than two percent
of sales (SCC 1992b). This behavior reflects deliberate strategy, not just costs of
production. According to Japanese and Finnish managers of mining companies quoted in the
study, conventional business operations generating half or more of total revenues
received only a small fraction of the R&D budget, while research on higher value-added
activities - new materials and new products - received up to ninety percent of the R&D
budget.3 
A second key shortcoming of the Porter model when applied to small, open economies,
according to Rugman and D'Cruz (1993), is that one cannot measure the international
competitiveness of smaller countries in terms of export shares because much of the
business of smaller countries is conducted abroad (through foreign direct investment)
within the larger triad markets of the United States, E.C. and Japan - where the action
is. Porter does not count overseas sales by the subsidiaries of Canadian-owned
multinationals in export share data, giving the impression of poor Canadian export
performance. Dunning (1993) points out that there are three kinds of cross-border
commercial interactions: arm's length trade, inter-firm cooperative agreements, and
foreign direct investment. He argues that Porter has substantially underestimated the
importance of globalized production, especially the cross-border value added activities
of transnational firms, much of which takes place as intrafirm trade. 
Canada is an important exporter of capital. Canadians invest abroad almost as much per
capita as Americans. Between 1987 and 1991 about $5.4 billion was invested in the country
annually, while about $6.6 billion was invested outside the country annually. In 1990 the
foreign direct investment stock in Canada stood at $125.3 billion and the Canadian direct
investment stock abroad stood at $86.7 billion (U.N. 1993). In 1990 Canada had some 1300
indigenous MNCs. Even the resource industries are footloose. Between 1980 and 1990,
incoming foreign direct investment stock in the primary sector in Canada increased only
slightly from $4.6 billion to $5 billion, while Canadian outward direct investments in
the primary sector increased from $2.7 billion to $5.7 billion. The largest increases in
outward FDI in the past decade are not in the primary sector however, but in low
value-added segments of the secondary sector and in parts of the tertiary sector. In the
former, the Canadian outward FDI stock increased from $17.3 to $46 billion between 1980
and 1990, with huge increases in FDI stock in food and beverages ($2.3 to $5.8 billion),
paper ($2 to $10.5 billion), coal and petroleum products ($.9 to $6.5 billion), metals
($5.5 to $14.2 billion), and other manufacturing ($.9 to $3 billion). Canadian outward
FDI in the tertiary sector increased from $7 to $34.9 billion, with the largest increase
in the financial and insurance industries ($3.7 billion to $24.7 billion between 1980 and
1990). In 1990 Canada had $86.7 billion of FDI outside the country, of which 61% was in
the U.S., 21% in Western Europe, and 13% in developing areas (United Nations 1993). 
Porter's model raises questions about how two-way FDI contributes to a small country's
competitive advantage. This is a critical issue for small countries. In the past,
incoming FDI has been considered much more significant than outward FDI in discussions of
Canadian economic competitiveness. This is especially true in the context of
understanding the accumulation of technological capability. A long debate within Canada
has considered the pros and cons of incoming FDI and, in particular, its effects on
domestic innovatory capability. Porter believes that outward FDI is valuable in creating
competitive advantage, but that foreign subsidies are not sources of competitive
advantage and that inward FDI is not entirely healthy (as cited in D'Cruz and Rugman
1993). The opportunity to centralize operations and rationalize production in a regional
market is especially attractive to manufacturing MNCs in mature or price-sensitive
industries which are among the leading proponents of the strategy to narrow product mix
and expand production runs (Litvak 1990, 118). However, a closer look at the often
conflicting set of pressures toward globalization and localization shows that the
strategic consequences of these pressures are not identical across industries. Some firms
develop multinational or global, highly rationalized structures, and others develop
transnational structures or purely local structures (Crookell 1990; Eden 1991).
Multinational firms respond to changes in terms of ownership advantages, internalization
advantages, and locational advantages; new information-based manufacturing technologies
and trade policy changes also influence locational decisions (Eden 1991). 
Because of these factors and the importance of the U.S. market, the Canadian diamond is
not necessarily of primary significance to Canadian firms. They also must take into
account the U.S. diamond and for this reason small trade-dependent countries like Canada,
Denmark, and New Zealand must look at their competitive advantages in terms of the
domestic diamonds of their principal markets. This requires a double diamond strategy
(Rugman and D'Cruz 1993). I have described at some length one of the debates on Canadian
competitiveness to illustrate some of the ways that transnationalized production within
the continental economy complicates the analysis of competitiveness. Integration into a
larger system of innovation raises questions of how to make the best of proximity to this
larger system. 
4. Green Industrial Innovation
Although alarms about global environmental degradation have been sounded for the past
three decades, the environmental situation today is different in four new ways (Rath and
Herbert-Copley 1993: 7): * rapid increase in the scale of pollution has accelerated loss
of soil, species, clean water, and natural environments. * tens of thousands of synthetic
chemicals, most of which are untested as to toxic or environmental effects, are replacing
natural pollutants. * the transboundary impacts of environmentally disturbing human
activities require international or transnational remedies that can be long and complex
to put in place. * because the various environmental threats are inextricably linked,
both in their causes and effects, they cannot be addressed or solved in isolation one
from the others. There is growing acceptance of the precautionary principle and the clean
production paradigm in environmental management. The precautionary principle, which was
endorsed by the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, discourages attempts to establish
environmental management strategies based on calculation of the pollution carrying
capacity of the environment, with innovation aimed at waste management and production of
end-of-pipe pollution abatement techniques. Instead, the precautionary principle
advocates reduction to zero of all emissions of substances that are persistent, toxic and
liable to bioaccumulate...even where there is no scientific evidence to prove a causal
link between emissions and actions (Jackson 1991: 8). 
The clean production paradigm advocates approaches such as product lifecycle assessment
and closed-cyle industrial ecological design to foster across-the-board prevention of
pollution in industrial systems (Dethlefsen, Jackson, and Taylor, 1993; Hirschhorn,
Jackson, and Baas, 1993). The principles of clean production are precaution (i.e.
reduction of anthropogenic inputs into the environment), prevention (i.e. extend the
analysis of environmental implications of production as far upstream as possible), and
integration of environmental protection measures across system boundaries (i.e.
integration of protection measures into the production process) (Jackson 1993b). 
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines pollution prevention as source reduction
that eliminates or reduces pollutants through improvements in equipment, technology,
processes or procedures, redesign or reformulation of products, substitution of raw
materials, and improvements in housekeeping, maintenance, training and inventory control.
Recycling, re-use, and end-of-pipe pollution control are excluded. The Technology
Innovation and Economics Committee of the U.S. National Advisory Council for
Environmental Policy and Technology advocates a hierarchy of technological approaches to
environmental improvement: in order of desirability, these are: technologies that prevent
pollution (including waste minimization and source reduction technologies), recycling
technologies, environmental control [i.e. end- of-pipe] technologies, and cleanup [i.e.
remedial] technologies (EPA 1991). Distinctions between minor and major forms of
technological innovation suggest ways of distinguishing between tactical and strategic
approaches to technological change. Tactical interventions aim to accelerate the
incremental improvement of the environmental efficiency of existing industry by reducing
wastage and increasing recycling. They would put in place policy and economic incentives
and disincentives, management paradigms, and investment and training strategies to
produce many small improvements on a broad front. Strategic interventions would aim to
innovate substantially improved technologies, radically improved technological systems,
or new technoeconomic paradigms. 
The distinction between innovation of minor and major magnitude is being taken up by
national and international policy and program agencies. For example, the OECD advocates a
three-pronged transition to the fourth industrial revolution, the clean industrial
production revolution comparable to the steam, steel- electricity, and electronics
revolutions. * The first thrust is to induce incremental improvements in industrial
performance by acting to identify, deploy and implement existing cleaner technologies
through provision of information, removal of barriers to trade and implementation,
government purchasing programs, and so on. * The second thrust is to accelerate technical
and technological change by acting to promote innovative development and widespread
implementation of new generations of cleaner technologies, through enunciation of
coherent goals and policies such as Japan's New Earth 21 Plan or the Netherlands'
National Environment Policy Plan Plus, which sets long term environmental quality goals;
* The third thrust is to sustain environmentally sound industrial innovation by acting to
ensure that cleaner technologies become and remain the basis for economic development in
the long term through education and collective action, innovation of cleaner
technologies, etc. (OECD 1993, ix-x). 
The conjunction of innovation policy and environmental policy is relatively recent.
Environmental sustainability has not been a major consideration among mainstream
innovation policy and management researchers. Winn and Roome (1993) recently searched the
core R&D management literature of the past two decades for work on environmental issues,
and identified only nine articles. Clarke and Reavely's (1993) 10,000-item bibliography
of core science and technology management literature contains references to only 31
documents that focus explicitly on environmental issues. Similarly, the literature on
green innovation policies is relatively small and dispersed among the literatures on
environmental management, environmental economics, risk assessment, and economics of
innovation. 
As in any policy area, one wishes to know what the policy objectives are and what they
should be, which instruments are deployed and why, and what are their effects, including
costs and benefits; one also wishes to understand the policymaking process. Key
environmental policy instruments for industry are regulations, technical assistance to
firms, economic instruments such as tax and liability arrangements, consensus-building
processes such as roundtables, and international agreements.1 A comprehensive pollution
prevention environmental policy regime should include 1) technical assistance programs;
2) education and training; 3) financial incentives; 4) increased use of liability
regulations; and 5) regulations specifically requiring the development of waste reduction
plans and the submission to governments of regular reports on their progress in waste
reduction (Baas et al. 1992: 14; Yakowitz and Hanmer, 1993). 
Regulation is the most widespread mechanism of public control of industrial environmental
performance. Most research on the effects of environmental, health, and safety regulation
is designed to determine its effects on productivity and profitability. In a review of
this research, the Office of Technology Assessment (1994) concludes that environmental
regulation was responsible for 10 to 15 percent of the productivity slowdown in the U.S.
in the 1970s, but that other factors (such as technology changes, investment, and
training) were more important (p. 325). Of growing interest is research on the effects of
environmental regulation and standards on the rate and direction of innovation for the
improvement of the design of regulations and standards. Promotion of acquisition of
environmentally improved industrial technology is becoming an important environmental
policy goal. The structure of incentives and disincentives to invest in minor or major
forms of industrial innovation having some relation with environmental sustainability is
clearly of central importance. The design of environmental policy from an innovation
policy perspective must ensure that counterproductive policy measures from other domains,
such as subsidies for energy, water, or local raw materials, are detected and dealt
with.2 
The traditional approach to control of industrial pollution is through implementation of
end-of-pipe (EOP) technologies, the main effect of which is to displace the pollution
charge from one medium to another. Concomitant with this approach to environmental
industrial technology policy are regulatory regimes based on concepts of environmental
assimilative capacity or critical pollution loads.3 
Historically, technology diffusion has played a limited and subordinate role to
regulation, permitting, and compliance in the regulation-based environmental management
system (EPA 1992: 15). This is because the regulation-based environmental policy systems
of the 1970s encouraged investments in pollution control technologies rather than in
environmental improvement of processes, products, housekeeping, and materials handling.
Permitting and compliance regulatory frameworks created a demand for add-on pollution
abatement techniques, a demand reflected in national S&T policies. In the former West
Germany, for example, governmental support for R&D on clean technologies focussed largely
on invention of end-of- pipe pollution abatement techniques (Bongaerts and Heinrichs
1987). Once investments have been made in end-of-pipe pollution control technologies,
there is little incentive to adopt the more comprehensive pollution prevention management
paradigm. 
Furthermore, suppliers of pollution control solutions may resist movement toward a
precautionary policy regime: experience in the U.S. has shown this to be a significant
issue, because the end-of- pipe approach has advocates and a large industry selling the
hardware of pollution control (e.g. scrubbers, incinerators, waste treatment plants)
(Hirschhorn 1992: 11). 
Regulations must be explicitly designed with technological considerations in mind - that
is, they should be fashioned to elicit the type of technological response desired
(Ashford 1993: 296). The regulatory design should combine an assessment of the innovative
capacity of the possible responding industrial sectors with levels and forms of
regulation tailored to that capacity. The entire process should reflect a realistic
evaluation of the best possible achievable technological goal (ibid. p. 289). The EPA's
National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology emphasizes that
disincentives to technological innovation and adoption environmentally improved
technologies must be removed from regulatory permitting and enforcement (EPA 1992, 1991).

Technical assistance to firms for improvement of environmental performance is another
public policy instrument which has led to recent institutional innovation in Canada and
the United States. Technical assistance institutions can be classified on a four-point
scale of increasing involvement in a firm's decision-making (Doyle 1992). At level one,
the technical assistance institution provides information and networking services. There
are many public and private environmental technology databases and referral services
available, including ICPIC, the International Cleaner Production Information
Clearinghouse. At Level Two, in addition to providing information the technical
assistance institution brokers specialized services such as business planning, market
assessment, and identification of financial sources. Many Chambers of Commerce and
Business Innovation Centers operate at this level. At Level Three, the technical
assistance institution provides technical and financial infrastructure support, including
(for example) operation of incubators, prototyping services, technical services, and
arm's- length financial assistance. This is a hands-on technical assistance role that
requires proactive behavior on the part of the institution. An example of a Level Three
institution in the United States is NETAC, the National Environmental Technology
Applications Corporation. NETAC provides business evaluations, technology evaluations,
regulatory and intellectual property assistance, training, and technical services such as
testing and demonstration. It also has a product evaluation center specialized in
bioremediation technologies. At Level Four, the institution participates directly in the
firm through equity investments and close technical and management ties. An example is
the Finnish National Fund for Research and Development (SITRA), an independent public
fund of about US$ 100M with the mission to take research to market. It supports new
ventures through minority equity participation (Doyle 1992). 
Overall, an important lesson from the United States is that cleaner production outreach
programmes can take many different forms. There is considerable variation in the
pollution prevention programmes managed by the 50 states. The programmes are located in a
variety of institutions and provide a diverse array of services (UNIDO/UNEP 1992: 7). 
Deliberate transition to cleaner production at the firm level can begin with a waste
audit, the first step in an on-going programme designed to achieve maximum resource
optimisation and improved process performance. It is a common sense approach to problem
identification and problem solving (UNEP/UNIDO 1991b). The waste auditing procedure
advocated by the United Nations agencies: * defines sources, quantities and types of
wastes being generated; * collates information on unit operations, raw materials,
products, water usage and wastes; * highlights process inefficiencies and areas of poor
management; * helps set targets for waste reduction; * permits the development of
cost-effective waste management strategies; * raises awareness in the workforce regarding
the benefits of waste reduction; * increases management's knowledge of these processes; *
helps to improve process efficiency (UNEP/UNIDO 1991b: 3-4). The result of a waste audit
is the development and implementation of an action plan to reduce waste and improve
production efficiency which, if implemented, can provide significant economic benefits to
the firm, as indicated by the findings of the Dutch PRISMA program, one of the
programmatic models for UNEP/UNIDO cleaner production programs. The PRISMA waste auditing
procedure identified about 200 hundred pollution prevention options among a group of
corporate participants. Only 30% of these options implied technological modifications;
30% implied improvement in housekeeping procedures, 30% implied changes in materials and
raw materials, and 10% implied product modifications (Huisingh and Baas 1991: 28; see
also Dieleman and de Hoo, 1993). 
Taken together, housekeeping procedures, material inputs, production technologies, and
product parameters constitute industrial practice. Significant benefits can be gained
from incremental improvements in existing industrial practice, especially in relatively
backward subregions of North America where the stock of equipment and the skill sets of
workers and management are all likely to be farther from good practice than in
technologically dynamic subregions. 
The precautionary principal and the clean production paradigm hint that they can move
toward major changes of technology systems through many incremental improvements in
production and transformation of management philosophy. Also of interest is the
development of new R&D-based production systems in which ecoefficiency is a critical
design parameter. The capacity to create technologies has never been greater in
industrialized countries. The world is currently on the brink of a new technoeconomic
paradigm based upon information and image technologies, biotechnology, new materials, and
a range of improved energy technologies. The technical characteristics of radically
different technologies for long term environmental sustainability are still largely
speculative, and the environmental implications of various configurations of the emerging
technoeconomic paradigm are only beginning to be explored (OECD 1991; Freeman 1992). 
It is not so simple to identify kinds of clean or environmentally sound technologies the
promotion and diffusion of which are to be encouraged. Since no currently known
technologies are perfectly clean or entirely environmentally sound, cleanliness or
environmental soundness are relative. The key characteristic of cleaner technologies is
that they are cleaner than prior technologies with respect to materials flow, energy
efficiency, or toxicity. Cleaner technologies: * extract and utilize natural resources
and prepare products as efficiently as possible; * use as little energy and raw materials
as possible per unit of product output and per unit of utilization (useful lifetime) of
the product; * generate products with reduced or no potentially harmful components; *
minimize releases to air, water, and soil during fabrication and use of product; * ensure
that any residua of production and use which are generated are managed in an
environmentally sound manner; * ensure, for non-perishable goods, that product durability
and lifetimes are maximized insofar as practicable; and, after the useful function is
ended, products or their key components are recoverable insofar as possible (OECD 1993:
2). 
These characteristics can apply to many techniques and practices across the entire range
of industries. As a World Resources Institute report observes, today the climate for
innovation seems uniquely rich, poised between technological revolutions in progress and
others just emerging (Heaton, Repetto, and Sobin 1991: 7). A huge reservoir of untapped
technological potential in biotechnology, materials, and informatics exists which could
increase energy efficiency and reduce waste production. 
A World Resources Institute report proposes environmentally critical technologies for the
United States1 and proposes environmental technology policy initiatives which include a
federal Institute for Environmental Technology, new funding arrangements to support
environmental technological innovation, new missions for national laboratories, new
patterns of R&D cooperation, new arrangements for international cooperation, regulatory
reform, and reorientation of existing programs (Heaton, Repetto, and Sobin, 1992). 
Most industrialized countries have taken measures to stimulate innovation of new
generations of environmentally sound technologies. The Japanese are probably the most
ambitious in this respect. Their New Earth 21 plan aims develop a new industrial paradigm
to restore the Earth's natural functions over the next century by returning the emission
of global warming gases to pre-industrial revolution levels. They have established RITE,
the Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth, for development and global
promotion of next generation environmental technologies. RITE is applying advanced
technologies to problems of renewable energy, energy efficiency, new manufacturing
processes, and capture and fixation of carbon dioxide. Germany, the Netherlands, Italy,
and Canada are other industrialized countries which have established national initiatives
to support development of strategic environmental technologies. 
A number of recent authors incorporate the precautionary principal into frameworks for
action. Simonis (1989), for example, identifies three strategic elements of environmental
modernization of industrial society: ecological structural economic change (notably
actions to delink growth from environmentally relevant input factors); preventive
environmental policy; and ecological orientation of environmental policy. Robins and
Trisoglio (1992) propose ten priorities for an eco-industrial policy: establish a
strategic vision, manage structural change, shift to circular industrial ecosystems,
design products for needs, build human capacity, ensure corporate accountabilty, use
market mechanisms for industrial transformation, guide technological development, foster
sustainable livelihoods, and build global partnerships. 
Corporations in the 21st century will find it essential to be able to innovate and
operate competitively while operating in an environmentally responsible manner. Shifts in
thinking about the strategic importance of ecoefficiency are already apparent among
businesses (Davis and Smith, 1994). In one recent survey of 200 senior executives in the
US, 90% said that environmental considerations were part of their strategic planning
process. In another survey of 250 European companies, almost three quarters were found to
have specific plans to improve environmental performance. A 1991 report from the Canadian
Federation of Independent Business states that 99% of their members are concerned about
the state of the natural environment, and that 60% have made, or are about to make,
significant changes to their businesses to respond to environmental concerns. The
Canadian Standards Association has been working to develop environmental management
systems analogous to the ISO 9000 series of Quality Management Standards. 
5. Conclusion
The sustainability and competitiveness agendas are addressed by specialized actors in
policy networks, lobbies, researchers, government agencies, and some non-governmental
not-for-profit institutions. Ultimately, attainment of the twin goals of environmental
sustainability and economic competitiveness may well require a much deepened
understanding of these complex issues among the public. This is partly because movement
toward sustainability and competitiveness requires a multitude of behavioral changes
among citizens, and partly because the magnitude of necessary changes requires
well-informed voters in democratic political systems. While most of the discussions about
sustainability and competitiveness focus on policy and economic incentives, the roles of
the public - as consumers, as voters, as civic actors - are important as well. The
competitiveness agenda makes an strong set of demands on social values and business
culture. If Canada and the United States develop what has been called a high growth, low
employment economic trajectory, successful social adjustment to technological change will
require new social and political skills. The sustainability agenda is analogous. North
American consumers say they want to preserve the environment, but green marketing does
not always elicit the expected responses, and citizens are wary of the environmental
costs they might have to pay as taxpayers, consumers, or workers (MacEvoy, 1992). 
With the exception of markets, mechanisms and instruments of deliberate social choice,
especially ones that are feasible under regimes of democratic governance, are a
relatively unknown part of the selection environment that might lead to ecoefficient
industrial innovation. For example, the notion of cleaner production does not rest upon a
narrow doctrine of technical efficiency, but on a deeper ambition to gauge the social
appropriateness of products (see Jackson 1993b). Philosophers of industrial metabolism
and industrial ecology are attempting to locate principles of extrafirm regulation in
efficient systems of transactions among firms, while a current of research attempts to
locate the principles of a strong socially determined selection environment in processes
of social negotiation of technical change.1 
Freeman (1992) points out that the issue of eco-efficient industrial production hinges on
estimates of the feasibility with which an accelerated orientation of the
science-technology system in the desired direction can be brought about. As far as common
resources are concerned, sustainability of the system wll depend more on social
institutions controlling access than on production technologies (Lynam and Herdt 1989:
396). But we have decreasing degrees of freedom as we move from the scientifically
conceivable to the technologically feasible, and from there to the economically viable
and the socially acceptable (Perez 1983). 
In this paper I've tried to contextualize the competitiveness and sustainability issues
in terms of the North American system of innovation, which is constituted largely of
flows of trade, people, technology, and investment across North America, bilateral
scientific relations between the major regional power and the two smaller countries, and
trade policy rules embodied in a formal agreement. Scientific or technical collaboration
at the North American level is quite modest. Undoubtedly the nodes of the regional
innovation system are in technologically dynamic metropolitan areas. The contours of the
North American innovation system are still indeterminate, depending largely on the
innovation strategies and behavior of the corporate world and governments in the North
American economic space. 
For the smaller countries of the region, integration into a regional innovation system
has particular advantages and disadvantages. Two outstanding questions have to do with
business strategy in the new North American economic space, and the scope, aims, and
ambition of innovation policy within or pertaining to this space. A number of other
issues such as the technological dimensions of regional economic security, the special
problems of less-developed regions of North America, the regulation of competition and
monopolies at the regional level, and the promotion of ecoefficient industrial innovation
remain to be addressed. The ultimate issue is the degree to which ecoefficient industrial
production is competitive in the North American or global context. 
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1 The views expressed here are the author's own and should not be attributed to the
International Development Research Centre. Jose- Luis Solleiro provided useful comments,
for which I am grateful, on an earlier draft. This paper draws on Davis (1993, 1994a and
1994b). 
2 In this text I use the terms science policy, science and technology policy, and
innovation policy interchangeably. 
3 The issue of social sustainability cannot be so simply specified. Insofar as poverty
breeds environmental degradation and environmental degradation breeds poverty, linkages
between environmental and social sustainability are evident. However, high consumption -
as currently practiced, at least - also breeds environmental degradation. In some cases
of traditional societies with extensive knowledge of the natural environment, social and
environmental sustainability are closely linked. 
4 In contrast, invention refers to the creation of originality or novelty. 
5 For example, co-authored U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico scientific publications accounted
for about 12% of Canadian scientific output and about 16% of Mexican output in 1990.
However, these publications only represent about 2% of American scientific output (Davis,
Dufour and Halliwell 1993: 277). Bilateral Canada-Mexico scientific publications and
trilateral Mexico-Canada-U.S. publications are negligible. 
6 The issue is not whether unencumbered inward and outward FDI confers important
benefits. The issue is whether selective intervention to affect the terms of investments
and takeovers in specific cases of strategic importance is warranted (Lipsey 1991). 
7 Faux and Lee (1992: 244); see also the discussion in Herzenberg (1993) and Eden (1994).

8 The issues on the competitiveness agenda range from human resources, science, finance,
and policy processes, to cultural values and rules of international trade. Forty-five
recent reports and studies are described in Prosperity (1992); also useful is SCC
(1992a). 
9 Porter proposes a four-stage model of national competitiveness development in which
capacity to construct advantage grows progressively greater: 1. Factor driven countries
draw most of their comparative advantage from basic factors of production. 2. Investment
driven countries compete on the basis of standardized products on the basis of foreign
technology that has been acquired and adapted. 3. Innovation driven countries appropriate
and improve foreign technologies and also create their own. At this stage local clusters
of industries become wider and deeper. 4. In wealth-driven countries substantial outward
financial investments lead to a loss of domestic clusters and loss of market share. 
10 The clusters are Western forest products, Alberta energy, Prairie farming, metal
mining, Ontario automotive, Ontario manufacturing, Toronto financial, Eastern forest
products, Montreal aerospatial, and Atlantic seafood. 
11 On dematerialization see Ardekani (1990). 
12 Similar trends were found in other sectors in Canada. The Canadian pulp and paper
industry spent about four times less on R&D than its major American and European
competitors. In the forest products industry, which is the largest source of Canada's
trade surplus, relative levels of R&D spending were about half that of major competitors.
Only two forest product firms conducted in-house R&D on solid wood products. Industrial
R&D staffing fell from six hundred in 1980 to five hundred in 1990 (SCC 1992c). 
13 Ashford (1993). A more comprehensive taxonomy of innovation policy measures which
might be applied to environtally sustainable industrial innovation is provided by
Rothwell and Zegvold (1985). 
14 On proposed environmental tax reform in Canada see Gillies (1994). 
15 On attempts to found environmental management regimes on scientific understanding of
the behavior of various pollutants in the environment see Chadwick and Nilsson (1993). 
16 These are: energy capture (photovoltaics, geothermal, solar thermal electricity,
nuclear fission); energy storage and application (batteries, superconductors, hydrogen
storage, heat storage, fuel cells); special energy end-uses (transportation, buildings);
agricultural biotechnology; improved agricultural techniques; manufacturing monitoring,
modeling, and control; catalysis; separations; precision fabricatyion; materials design
and processing; information, communications, and computing; and contraception. 
17 See for example Irwin and Vergragt (1989). Radical social innovation for environmental
sustainability is especially problematic. Massive changes in lifestyles and consumption
would require social engineering, coercive policies, or extremely rapid social learning
on an unprecedented scale. On the efforts (largely in Northern countries) to define
frameworks for green political action see Eckersley (1992) and Dobson (1990). On the
question of the politics of the social transition to sustainability see, for example,
Kassiola (1990), especially chapter 9, Social Transformation into a Transindustrial
Community.