American Technology as a Network Phenomenon

What is the relationship between the performance of business firms and the growth of the national economy? Economists who study economic growth commonly treat nations themselves as the performing units that save, invest, and experience technological change. But business historians following the lead of Alfred Chandler often imply that the record of the national economy is not much more than the aggregation of the successes and failures of its major corporations. To quote Chandler (1994, 57): "First, and most important, the United States is not going the way of the United Kingdom in terms of long-term competitive strength.... Today American companies remain powerful competitors in the most dynamic and transforming industries of the late twenti-eth century." To resolve this dichotomy, we have to ask who does the learning that consti-tutes technological progress for the economy, and how that knowledge is accu-mulated and implemented over time. With specific reference to the American surge into world economic leadership in the decades bracketing the tum of the twentieth century, this paper advances two propositions: First, that technologi-cal progress was a network phenomenon, growing out of the actions of large numbers of interacting people-not necessarily in formally structured institu-tions of coordination. Second, that these networks were strongly national in character. An implication is that American industrial firms were able to institu-tionalize research and development systems after 1900, in large part becaus