Saturday, July 03, 2010

Innovation, Scaling, and the Industrial Commons

When Yves Smith makes a strong reading recommendation, I usually take notice. Today she directed her readers to an article by Andy Grove calling for drastic changes in American policy towards innovation, scaling, and job creation in manufacturing. The piece is long, detailed and worth reading in full, but the central point is this: an economy that innovates prolifically but consistently exports its jobs to lower cost overseas locations will eventually lose not only its capacity for mass production, but eventually also its capacity for innovation:
Bay Area unemployment is even higher than the... national average. Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn’t been creating many jobs of late -- unless you are counting Asia, where American technology companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.

The underlying problem isn’t simply lower Asian costs. It’s our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs... Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs...

There’s more at stake than exported jobs... A new industry needs an effective ecosystem in which technology knowhow accumulates, experience builds on experience, and close relationships develop between supplier and customer. The U.S. lost its lead in batteries 30 years ago when it stopped making consumer-electronics devices. Whoever made batteries then gained the exposure and relationships needed to learn to supply batteries for the more demanding laptop PC market, and after that, for the even more demanding automobile market. U.S. companies didn’t participate in the first phase and consequently weren’t in the running for all that followed...

How could the U.S. have forgotten [that scaling was crucial to its economic future]? I believe the answer has to do with a general undervaluing of manufacturing -- the idea that as long as “knowledge work” stays in the U.S., it doesn’t matter what happens to factory jobs... I disagree. Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution... our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don’t just lose jobs -- we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.
Grove recognizes, of course, that companies will not unilaterally change course unless they face a different set of incentives, and that this will require a vigorous industrial policy:
The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars -- fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations. Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability -- and stability -- we may have taken for granted... Unemployment is corrosive. If what I’m suggesting sounds protectionist, so be it... If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us.
Neither Grove's diagnosis nor his proposed solutions will persuade those who are convinced that protectionism of any kind is folly. I am not entirely convinced myself, and suspect that he may be underestimating the likelihood (and consequences) of cascading retaliatory actions and a collapse in international trade. But the argument must be taken seriously, and anyone opposed to his proposals really ought to come up with some alternatives of their own.

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Update (7/4). In an email (posted with permission) Yves adds:
On the one hand, you are right, any move towards protectionism (or even permitted-within-WTO pushback against mercantilist trade partners) could very quickly get ugly. But the flip side is I wonder if we have a level of global integration that is inherently unstable (both for Rodrik trilemma reasons, international economic integration with insufficient government oversight creates political problems, plus the Reinhart/Rogoff finding that high levels of international capital flows are associated with financial crises). If so, we may have a short run (messiness of reconfiguration) v. long term (costs of really big financial crises) tradeoff.
This is a good point. The purpose of my post was to highlight Grove's analysis of the symbiotic relationship between innovation and scaling (which I think is both interesting and valid), and to challenge those who are opposed to his reform proposals to explain how they would deal with the situation in which we find ourselves. Passive tolerance of mass unemployment, widening income inequality, and withering innovative capacity is not an option.

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Update (7/4). Tyler Cowen is predictably dismissive of Grove's article, but (less predictably) seems not to have read it very closely. What Grove means by scaling is the process by means of which "technology goes from prototype to mass production" as companies "work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands." This is not about increasing returns to scale as economists normally use the term (declining average costs as a function of output). So Tyler's claim that "at best, given the logic of [Grove's] argument, this would imply a tax only on the increasing returns industries" is not correct. And I cannot imagine what he means when he says that the "big exporting success these days is Germany, which has less "scale" than does the United States." Less scale in what sense? Population or per-capita income differences between the two countries are entirely irrelevant here. Is he trying to say that Germany engages in less scaling (and hence more offshoring) than does the United States? This would be relevant, but is empirically dubious.

Like Tyler, I am not convinced that Grove's policy proposals are wise. But his analysis of the relationship between innovation and scaling and the need for a policy response really does deserve to be read with more care.

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Update (7/6). Tim Duy follows up with a characteristically detailed and thoughtful post. His bottom line:
Something more than cyclical forces is weighing on the American jobs machine. Here I have tried to extend the Grove/Smith/Sethi discourse with additional focus on absolute declines in manufacturing jobs and distressing declines in capacity growth rates. These trends may be critically important in understanding the dismal performance of US labor markets. If they are in fact critical, they raise serious questions about US trade policy – questions that few in Washington want to address. Given the extent to which manufacturing capacity has already been offshored, those questions go far beyond the recently announced tiny shift in Chinese currency policy. Simply put, accepting the importance of manufacturing capacity and the possibility that offshoring has had a much more deleterious impact on the US economy than commonly accepted would require a significant paradigm shift in the thinking of US policymakers. If you scream “protectionist fool” in response, then you need to have a viable policy alternative that goes beyond the empty rhetoric of “we need to teach better creative thinking skills in schools.” That answer is simply too little too late.
It's worth reading the entire post to see the data and reasoning that drives him to this conclusion.

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I'll be away at a (very interesting) conference for the next couple of days and will be slow to respond to comments and emails.

4 comments:

  1. I am glad that some economists (you, at least) are taking this seriously.

    I've been in Silicon Valley tech for 25 years and I've seen the outsourcing up close.

    The way economists have treated outsourcing reminds me a lot of the housing bubble. A seemingly invincible conventional wisdom turns back any and all common sense reports from the front. What is it with economics? When I have brought up the issues Andy Grove addresses with economists, I have gotten 'Ricardian equivalence' thrown at me, along with the earnest admonishment that it is really terribly difficult to understand, so I should take it on faith.

    I am an engineer and I don't take the applicability of 'Ricardian equivalence' on faith. I also understand it.

    This gives you a sense of the scale of the devastation: "Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000 -- lower than it was before the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975. Meanwhile, a very effective computer-manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers -- factory employees, engineers and managers."

    The same people who have cheered this development puzzle about the demise of the 'Great American Jobs Machine.' It makes me sick to think about it.

    I have been skeptical since the inauguration that this administration understood what was going on with this economy. So far, I am proving right. I think unemployment will not get better, and in fact will slowly get worse until the system blows up.

    Sad, that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am glad that some economists (you, at least) are taking this seriously.

    I've been in Silicon Valley tech for 25 years and I've seen the outsourcing up close.

    The way economists have treated outsourcing reminds me a lot of the housing bubble. A seemingly invincible conventional wisdom turns back any and all common sense reports from the front. What is it with economics? When I have brought up the issues Andy Grove addresses with economists, I have gotten 'Ricardian equivalence' thrown at me, along with the earnest admonishment that it is really terribly difficult to understand, so I should take it on faith.

    I am an engineer and I don't take the applicability of 'Ricardian equivalence' on faith. I also understand it.

    This gives you a sense of the scale of the devastation: "Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000 -- lower than it was before the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975. Meanwhile, a very effective computer-manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers -- factory employees, engineers and managers."

    The same people who have cheered this development puzzle about the demise of the 'Great American Jobs Machine.' It makes me sick to think about it.

    I have been skeptical since the inauguration that this administration understood what was going on with this economy. So far, I am proving right. I think unemployment will not get better, and in fact will slowly get worse until the system blows up.

    Sad, that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. While economists may not like protectionism for good reasons, there is push back coming politically. The present course is politically unsustainable as unemployment remains stuck at high levels. There is an increasing demand to shut the borders and bring the jobs home. Unless there is a viable alternative, protectionism of some sort is in the cards without a timely recovery, which seems unlikely at this juncture.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The point that off shoring can reduce innovation is well taken. Ethnographic accounts of both the rise of Japanese manufacturing and of the U.S. manufacturing industry before it was dominated by publicly held companies discuss how important foremen and experience workers on the factory floor are to innovation.

    The literature of economic development is also replete with examples that show that communities of people in growing industries cross-fertilize ideas and encourage further growth. Workers in Asia and Mexico don't socialize and informally exchange information and connections with distant overlords innovators.

    Some of this happens in surprising places. For example, personal relationships with and an understanding of the businesses of small Jewish factory and store owners was important in the development of a cadre of Jewish lawyers in New York City who went on to become prominent innovators in that legal community. Similarly, in Silicon Valley and the biotech industry, financial backing at the key bridge stage between start ups and venture capital investment typically comes from people who made their wealth working in the industry and networking with others who did, so that they can invest with less risk of surprise because they understand to the work and know what questions to ask.

    The idea that customs duties are a good way to achieve the desired goal is doubtful by comparison. Centers of economically important regularized American innovation like the Bay Area, New York City, and Boston, for example, tend to be places with a high tax burden, not a low one. The same can be said of centers of innovation and economic development abroad. Tweaks in customs duties only impact marginal industries where a modest difference in price while move the playing field, but the innovative growth industries are high profit, not marginal profit industries.

    Rather than focusing on keeping the product of foreign labor out, we should focus on letting sources of innovation in. Our immigration laws should be welcoming anyone who can contribute to the economy and their families into it. The classic example is that in the run up to World War II and afterwards, many of Eastern Europe's great minds moved to the U.S., while the Communists got the investment in infrastructure that was left behind; with the U.S. getting the much better side of the deal.

    Unemployment is not about a shortage of jobs. Jobs can be created and destroyed quickly; it is not a fixed quantity. Unemployment is about a failure to find worthwhile things for the people that you have to do, a failure to creativity. The more talented people you have in a country, the more opportunities for job creation you have.

    At the tax level, a better incentive change is to rebalance tax incentives between physical capital and labor (which now decisively favor investments in physical capital). All other things being equal, if work can be done by a person or a machine at the same cost, the person may be the better choice, because the person can innovate and pass along ideas while the machine won't.

    Yet another way to encourage innovation is to reduce the cost of failure. Innovators often fail before the succeed. But, without a social safety net, and the U.S. safety net is particularly weak, the cost of failure can be excessively high; hence the anemic U.S. small and medium sized business environment compared to its competitors. We also need to develop tools that allow innovators to start businesses without excessive risk to their personal assets through a network of personal guarantees that make limited liability illusory.

    War is a poor metaphor for economic competition. Economics is about win-win solutions and about thinking about how to make yourself better off rather than worrying that someone else will also profit. Economics is fundamentally a collaborative and cooperative enterprise.

    ReplyDelete