IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/entsoc/v3y2002i02p247-284_01.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cold War Armory: Military Contracting in Silicon Valley

Author

Listed:
  • Heinrich, Thomas

Abstract

Silicon Valley is frequently portrayed as a manifestation of postindustrial entrepreneurship, where ingenious inventor-businessmen and venture capitalists forged a dynamic, high-tech economy unencumbered by government's “heavy hand.” Closer examination reveals that government played a major role in launching and sustaining some of the region's core industries through military contracting. Focusing on leading firms in the microwave electronics, missile, satellite, and semiconductor industries, this article argues that demand for customized military technology encouraged contractors to embark on a course of flexible specialization, batch production, and continuous innovation. Thriving throughout much of the Cold War, major military contractors fell on hard times when defense markets started to shrink in the late 1980s, because specialized design and production capabilities were rarely applicable to civilian product lines. But Pentagon funding for research and development helped lay the technological groundwork for a new generation of startups, contributing to Silicon Valley's economic renaissance in the 1990s.

Suggested Citation

  • Heinrich, Thomas, 2002. "Cold War Armory: Military Contracting in Silicon Valley," Enterprise & Society, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 247-284, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:3:y:2002:i:02:p:247-284_01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1467222700011666/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David R. King & John D. Driessnack, 2007. "Analysis Of Competition In The Defense Industrial Base: An F‐22 Case Study," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(1), pages 57-66, January.
    2. Malmio, Irja, 2023. "Ethics as an enabler and a constraint – Narratives on technology development and artificial intelligence in military affairs through the case of Project Maven," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    3. Peter Adjei‐Bamfo & Hadrian Geri Djajadikerta & Ferry Jie & Kerry Brown & Reza Kiani Mavi, 2023. "Public procurement for innovation through supplier firms' sustainability lens: A systematic review and research agenda," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 387-407, January.
    4. Mu-Jeung Yang, 2021. "The interdependence imperative: business strategy, complementarities, and economic policy," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 37(2), pages 392-415.
    5. Christopher R. Esposito, 2020. "The Emergence of Knowledge Production in New Places," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2046, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Sep 2020.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:3:y:2002:i:02:p:247-284_01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/eso .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.