The Challenge of Remaining Innovative: Insights from Twentieth-Century American Business

The Challenge of Remaining Innovative explores innovation as a complex phenomenon that may be organizational as well as technological, that operates both within firms and across the broader economy, and that involves matters not only of research and development, but also of marketing, design, and government relations. The contributors explore two main themes: the challenge of remaining innovative and the necessity of managing institutional boundaries in doing so.

The collection is organized into four parts, which move outward from individual firms; to networks or clusters of firms; to consultants and other intermediaries in the private economy who operate outside of the firms themselves; and finally to government institutions and politics. This scheme delineates a variety of ways in which entrepreneurship has persisted across the 20th century--and accentuates how ongoing organizational re-arrangement has contributed mightily to its sustained vitality.

Steven Usselman is Associate Professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society at Georgia Tech. Naomi Lamoreaux is Professor and Vice Chair for Academic Personnel in the Department of History at UCLA. Sally Clarke is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.