Finance and industrial development. Part I: the United States and the United Kingdom

Over time, the innovation process, and the learning process that is its social substance, have become increasingly collective and cumulative and, hence, organisational. The perspective on industrial development taken here identifies organisational integration and financial commitment as the social conditions permitting collective and cumulative learning to take place. Organisational integration describes the social relations that provide participants in a complex division of labour with the abilities and incentives to integrate their capabilities and efforts within organisations so that, potentially, they can generate organisational learning. Financial commitment describes the social relations that are the basis for a business organisation's continuing access to the financial resources required for sustaining the ( development and utilisation of productive resources. In combination, organisational integration and financial commitment provide social foundations for innovative business enterprise. In terms of inputs into the production process, organisational integration supplies knowledge while financial commitment supplies money. By contributing to the innovation process, however, these inputs are not commodities but reflect the social relations to the business organisation of those who supply knowledge and money. The generation of innovation through organisational learning is inherently uncertain. The investment strategy resulting in a higher quality, lower cost product