One of the most striking developments has been the rise, fall and rise again of the semiconductor industry of the United States, which is, once again, the dominant player in the most advanced semiconductor product-markets.

In fact, technology in, and of, itself does not cause particular kinds of change. It is, essentially, an enabling or facilitating agent. It makes possible new structures, new organizational and geographical arrangements of economic activities, new products and new processes, while not making particular, outcomes inevitable.

Every production network has spatiality - the particular geographical configuration and extent of its component elements and the links between them.

One of the most striking trends, since at least the 1960's, has been for employment in services to grow far more rapidly than employment in manufacturing. It is this trend that has led to the view that developed economies have become de-industrialized and that they are now effectively service economies.

Innovation - the heart of technological change - is fundamentally a learning process.

More broadly, strategic alliances are more difficult to manage and coordinate than single ventures; the potential for misunderstanding and disagreement, particularly between partners from different cultures, is great. Certainly many such alliances are short lived.

Without the parallel development of systems of monetary - and credit-based exchange - there could have been no development of economies beyond the most primitive organizational forms and the most geographically restricted sales.