Restoring American Competitiveness by Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih

963 Words2 Pages

According to the article “Restoring American Competitiveness” by Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih, the United States industries have worn down competition through the damages from outsourcing manufacturing. There are several issues that have caused serious problems to the U.S. economy, which have caused the decline of trade due to shortage of innovation and competition. Theses problems are lack of funding for research and development by government and businesses and poor financial decisions made by management for outsourcing. There are several recommendations that the government and business executives can do to rebuild U.S. industries.
The U.S. industries have been outsourcing manufacturing for several decades now. U.S. companies thought they were reducing costs by outsourcing development, manufacturing, and process-engineering abilities. Consequently, U.S. corporations’ knowledge, skilled workers, and supply chain, which are the necessities to producing advanced products, have vanished. For example, almost all notebook computers, cell phones, and handheld devices, which were once created in the U.S., are now designed in Asia. When a major U.S. company outsource, it pressures their rivals to do the same thing. They also lose the expertise of process engineering, which would interact with manufacturing on a daily basis. Minor companies and skilled workers go to where the jobs and knowledge networks are no matter where they are geographically in the world. This decline of trade in the U.S. has caused a negative chain reaction to their suppliers of sophisticated materials, tools, production equipment, and components. U.S. industries do not have a way of coming up with new ideas for the next generation of high-tech products...

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...tly governing its scientific and technological company successfully to gain a competitive advantage. These recommendations will help U.S. businesses to rebuild the competitive advantage they once had.
This article revealed how outsourcing manufacturing damaged U.S. industries’ competitiveness and innovative abilities. There were several problems that affected the U.S. economy, like the decline of trade, lack of research and development funding, and poor managerial decisions. Several government and businesses’ recommendations were made to restore U.S. industries’ competitiveness and innovative capabilities. Simply by restoring U.S. innovative abilities will the industrial commons bounce back and there will be economic growth.

Works Cited

Pisano, Gary P., Shih, Willy C. (2009, July-August). Restoring American Competitiveness.
Harvard Business Review, 114-125.

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