Striving for International Competitiveness: Lessons from Electronics for Developing Countries

Jan Maarten de Vet

No 84, OECD Development Centre Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: Electronics has become critically important in every country's attempt to restructure or build its competitiveness. The developments in electronics have given rise to an industry with an unprecedented growth record in terms of sales and exports, innovative capacity, and spin-off potential for related services. But electronics has also infiltrated into many other industries through the pervasiveness of its application potential. Instead of competing solely on cost, competitive advantage is now often obtained by those who have the (temporary) benefit of having mastered cutting-edge technology. To the fore has come a type of innovation that builds on relations with users, on interaction with suppliers, subcontractors, universities, industry associations, government institutes, and even potential competitors through various kinds of cooperative agreements. Thus, the competitiveness of a firm depends not only on its own strength, but also on the support it receives from the external environment ... Pour chaque pays qui entreprend de restructurer ou de développer sa compétitivité, l'électronique est devenu un secteur essentiel dont l'évolution a donné naissance à une industrie caractérisée par une croissance jamais atteinte en termes de vente et d'exportation, de capacité innovatrice et de prolongements techniques pour les services apparentés. Cependant, du fait de ses multiples possibilités d'application, l'électronique a également touché de nombreuses autres industries. Au lieu de miser seulement sur la concurrence au niveau des coûts, l'avantage compétitif est maintenant souvent acquis par ceux qui détiennent — temporairement — le privilège de la maîtrise de la production de technologies de pointe. On constate désormais un type d'innovation basé sur les liens avec les consommateurs, les échanges avec les fournisseurs, les sous-traitants, les universités, les associations industrielles, les instituts gouvernementaux et, par le biais de divers accords de coopération, même avec ...

Date: 1993-03-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/828011556753 (text/html)

Related works:
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:oec:devaaa:84-en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OECD Development Centre Working Papers from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().