Advantage

Adam Segal presents a startling new viewpoint to the debates about the technological and economic rise of Asia - and what it means for the U.S.'s economic leadership and interests. Drawing from vital statistics and intriguing case studies, Segal persuasively argues that by examining what drives innovation and what constrains it, we can see what advantages the U.S. has to leverage. His case rests on what he calls a gap between Asian 'hardware,' their increased investment in communications, education, basic research, and infrastructure, coupled with low-cost labor, and American 'software,' that complex web of institutions, relationships, and understandings that moves ideas from the lab to the market. The U.S. alone can count on developed software of innovation; India, China, Japan, and South Korea all suffer from underdeveloped private sectors and lack the underlying cultural framework that fosters great cooperation between academic, industry, and government. An example of the disconnect present in Asia's system of innovation is Chen Jen, dean at the School of Microelectronics in Shanghai, whose work on China's first digital signaling processing computer chip made him a national star before it was revealed that the chip was a fake. Advantage presents a realistic view of the emerging world of globalized innovation, fully explicating the extent to which the globalization of science and technology is a social and political process. Relying on extensive and up-to-the-minute economic and political data, Advantage upends conventional thinking on the decline of the U.S. and the rise of Asia in powerful, concise prose.