During the years 1918 to 1941, International Paper (IP) launched a massive product diversification effort. Engineered by three successive presidents, diversification turned the company from a newsprint producer based in the northeastern United States into an international manufacturer of southern kraft grades, Canadian newsprint, hydroelectric power, and specialty papers. With the exception of kraft paperboard and converted products, however, the new product lines failed to provide IP with a firm foothold in markets for consumer nondurables, where nimbler competitors thrived even during the 1930s. IP and firms in other “maturing industries” that clung to traditional products and stagnant markets contributed to the length and severity of the Great Depression.

The state's role in building Japan's telecommunications industry is illustrated by the history of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company (NTT) in the post–World War II period. Several factors explain the state's success in developing one of the world's most reliable and technologically advanced industries: a strong desire for technological self-sufficiency; a favorable international environment; an ability to legally reverse-engineer foreign products; and the existence of a business sector that was willing and able to invest heavily in the human resources and facilities necessary to become global players. Japan also benefited from a consensus among its state and business elite on how to use NTT for the purpose of national development.

International telecommunication is not only a business but also a political enterprise, the subject of great-power rivalries. In the late nineteenth century, British firms held a near monopoly, because Britain had more advanced industry, a wealthier capital market, and a merchant marine and colonial empire that provided customers for the new service. After the 1880s, they encountered increasing competition on the North Atlantic from American, German, and French firms. Elsewhere, the British conglomerate Eastern and Associated retained its hegemony until the 1920s. Following World War I, radiotelegraphy threatened the dominance of cables. In the 1930s, cable companies were almost bankrupted by the Depression and by competition from shortwave radio.