Introduction

In the half century of its existence, the business of semiconductor manufacture has come to capture the popular imagination as few others have. Starting with only the most common of raw materials – silicon and aluminum – this industry constructs complex electronic systems performing functions that were science fiction only a few decades ago. Even so, the volume of literature on this industry would no doubt have been smaller if the technological and scientific leadership of the United States in that industry had not come under challenge by the emergence of international competition.

The decline of the global market share of American semiconductor producers in the mid-1980s suggested to many that the days of American dominance of science-based industries might be numbered. Although there is little evidence that international competitors had in mind the annihilation of the American industry, many nonetheless read the situation in terms familiar from the Cold War. The loss of American leadership in the semiconductor industry would be the first domino in a cascading fall of downstream electronic-systems industries. Looking through the other end of this same telescope, America's foreign competitors asked the parallel question: How could one possibly succeed in building electronic-systems industries without developing a robust semi-conductor industry of one's own?

The voluminous literature generated from the rise of foreign – especially Japanese – competition in semiconductors seemed to have one dominant theme: the United States must not merely learn from but closely imitate Japan.