Making It: The Rise of Asia in High Tech

In 2003, consumption of IT goods worldwide was ＄1.5 trillion. Asia represented twenty percent of this total. Even more telling, Asia produced about forty percent of these goods. The continued rise of Asian IT innovation will pose a challenge to the eminence of traditional IT centers, notably Silicon Valley.

Making IT examines the causes as well as the major consequences of the dramatic rise of Asia in this industry. The book systematically analyzes each country’s policies and results, on both a national level and, more importantly, in the innovation regions that have developed in each country: Japan’s excellence in technology and manufacturing skills; Bangalore, India’s late start and sudden explosion; Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science-based Park’s entrepreneurship and steady growth; Korea’s Teheren Valley’s impressive development of large companies; Singapore’s initial reliance on multinational firms and its more recent switch to a home-developed strategy; and China’s Zhongguancun Science Park’s encouragement of investment from foreign firms while also promoting a domestic IT industry.

The book outlines the difficulties in the IT industry, including Japan’s tendency to keep out most foreign firms and China’s poor protection of intellectual property. Developed by the team that brought readers The Silicon Valley Edge, Making IT analyzes why this region has an advantage in this industry, the similarities and differences in the countries’ strategies, why companies have clustered in specific localities, and most important, what will be changing in the coming years.

Making IT should leave no doubt that the United States and other countries competing in the global economy will face enormous challenges--and opportunities--responding to the rise of an innovative Asia.

Henry S. Rowen is Director Emeritus of the Shorenstein Asia/Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. He is also Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Public Policy and Management Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Marguerite Gong Hancock is Associate Director of Stanford University’s Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE), and is coeditor of The Silicon Valley Edge (Stanford University Press, 2000). William F. Miller is Co-director, SPRIE, Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management Emeritus at the Graduate School of Business, Professor of Computer Science Emeritus, and former Provost at Stanford University.