Learning and path-dependence in the diffusion of innovations: comparative evidence on numerically controlled machine tools

摘要

Before the decline of the U. S. machine tool industry and the rise of the Japanese one over the course of the 1980s, the development and diffusion of numerically controlled (NC) machine tools in the two countries occurred along different trajectories. While the closed-loop design had emerged as the dominant product configuration in the U.S. market since the invention of NC in 1952, advances in component technologies led to the development and commercialization of the simpler open-loop systems in the mid-1960s.