What Goes on Under the Hood? How Engineers Innovate in the Automotive Supply Chain

Susan Helper and Jennifer Kuan

No 22552, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The questions addressed in this volume are motivated by the recognition that engineers play an important role in generating innovation and economic growth. In this chapter, we seek to offer some description of engineering work by looking in detail at a specific manufacturing industry—firms that supply automakers—to gain insight into how engineers create innovation. Autos account for 5% of US GDP and in 2011, 70% of auto suppliers contributed design effort, a task typically performed by engineers, making the auto supply chain an important context in which to study engineering and innovation. Some highlights from our original survey data include a wide range in terms of size and strategies of supply chain companies; a majority was small- to medium-sized, often family-owned. We observed barriers to patenting for manufacturing firms developing process rather than product innovations. And interviews revealed the importance of customers for the innovative efforts of supplier firms. Certain Japanese customers were preferred because they shared expertise and helped suppliers improve, while other, American, customers were viewed as having unreasonable demands for regular, incremental price reductions and did not offer technical or organizational support.

JEL-codes: D2 L23 L62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino
Note: PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as What Goes On under the Hood? How Engineers Innovate in the Automotive Supply Chain , Susan Helper, Jennifer Kuan. in US Engineering in a Global Economy , Freeman and Salzman. 2018

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22552.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: What Goes On under the Hood? How Engineers Innovate in the Automotive Supply Chain (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22552

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22552

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().