http://economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/index/ EENet News en {username} Copyright 2009 2009-01-17T21:29:00-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/january_18_2009/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/january_18_2009/#When:21:29:00Z The Economist describes how the current strength of the the jet engine business come about. An understanding of the firm’s success requires some understanding of the technology that goes into its civil-aircraft engines. This is not just Rolls-Royce’s biggest business, it is also the one that both felled the company in 1971 and proved to be its salvation two decades later, Rolls-Royce’s triumph was not to build a slightly better engine and thus earn a temporary technological edge, but to design a completely different one. Remarkably, it did so from a position of weakness. Until the late 1960s the market for big jet engines was dominated by Pratt & Whitney, with a share of about 90%. Rolls-Royce played a bit part, making engines mainly for European aircraft manufacturers. These were losing, bit by bit, to America’s biggest aircraft-makers, which had the benefit of a much larger domestic market and substantial military orders. Rolls-Royce realised that unless it could develop a large jet engine that would fit an American-made airliner, its sales of jet engines would collapse within a decade.It bet everything on two revolutionary technologies. The first was to use carbon composites to make fan blades (the big ones you do see) far lighter than the metal ones of the time. The second was to change the basic architecture of jet engines by using three shafts instead of two. Both tasks turned out to be harder and costlier than Rolls-Royce thought. Its composite blades shattered when hit by hail or birds. Eventually it had to abandon them for the tried and tested metal ones. And by then an embarrassing series of delays and missed performance targets had caused it to run out of cash. A Conservative government nationalised the company in 1971. Although the new design broke Rolls-Royce, it also proved to be the base for a whole family of winning engines. These were more complex to design, build and maintain than those of rivals, but they also used fuel more efficiently and suffered less wear and tear. Much more importantly, they could be scaled up or down to fit bigger or smaller aircraft. As a result, Rolls-Royce did not have to design a new engine from scratch each time a new airliner came onto the market, allowing it to compete for sales across a far wider range of aircraft than its rivals. This was a huge advantage because the main determinant of whether a jet engine sells well is whether the aircraft it is married to sells well. Rolls-Royce can sell across the board. It is the only one of the three main engine-makers with designs to fit the three newest airliners under development, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the Airbus A380 and the new wide-bodied version of the Airbus A350. Of the world’s 50 leading airlines, 45 use its engines. You can read the full article at Economist.com. 2009-01-17T21:29:00-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/april_20_2008/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/april_20_2008/#When:02:47:00Z A symposium on the Varieties of Knowledge in the Economy with Carliss Baldwin, Richard Langois, Johann Peter Murmann and Richard Nelson will take place at the Schumpeter Conference in Brazil.  More Details. 2008-04-19T02:47:00-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/december_29_2004/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/december_29_2004/#When:10:39:00Z For a number of years, we have planned a complementary website to Evolutionary Theories in the Social Sciences that would serve as a central resource and meeting place for people who interested in empirical research on economic change. The English language features of Economic-Evolution.Net are now fully implemented. We recently finished the EEpedia, which functions as a collaborative encyclopedia collecting empirical facts on economic evolution.  We have also added a software tool for a collaborative bibliography. Finally, we have created a convenient list of data sources to be used in research on economic evolution.  Explore these feature by clicking on the menus to your left. To allow people who are not comfortable writing in English to participate in the EEpedia project, we are presently creating the German, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish language versions of the EEpedia. Other language versions will follow later.  If you want to receive automatic emails about new book reviews, data sources, conferences or working papers, can you subscribe to this service here. 2007-07-17T10:39:00-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/july_15_2007/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/july_15_2007/#When:10:26:02Z Robert Solow reviews Thomas K. Mccraw’s new biography of Joseph Schumpeter in the New Republic. Read the review of Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction. Richard Langlois has also published a very useful review on EH.net. 2007-07-15T10:26:02-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/the_comparative_industry_studies_cis_project/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/the_comparative_industry_studies_cis_project/#When:14:32:00Z The Comparative Industry Studies (CIS) Project Evolutionary economists have articulated powerful theories about how industries change. During the last twenty years economists, sociologists, and business school scholars have begun to study empirically how particular industries develop over long periods of time. Because scholars frequently do not analyze the same aspects (variables), it often difficult to compare systematically across industries and figure out what causes lie behind the similarities and differences in patters of industry evolution. To make it easier in future studies to compare across industries and come up with causal explanations, we need to formulate an analytical framework, i.e. a common list of characteristics that future studies could trace. Such a framework needs to combines concepts from traditional industrial organization economics, evolutionary economics, innovation studies, and institutional theory broadly defined. Participate in formulating this framework by going to the Comparative Industry Studies Project page in the EEpedia. 2006-07-31T14:32:00-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/august_2004/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/august_2004/#When:20:11:38Z Timur Kuran has written a fascinating paper on Why the Middle East is economically underdeveloped.  Anyone interested in social evolution will find this timely paper worth reading.  Download Paper About Us Main 2004-08-26T20:11:38-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/june_2004/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/june_2004/#When:22:07:47Z A Workshop on Adaptation vs. Selection in Industrial Change will take place at the Academy of Management Meeting in New Orleans, August 7, 2004. 2004-06-20T22:07:47-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/september_2002/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/september_2002/#When:22:08:45Z A Workshop on Cognitions and Capabilities is taking place at Harvard. Click here for details. About Us Main 2002-09-27T22:08:45-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/may_2002/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/may_2002/#When:22:17:35Z A workshop on “Empirical research on routines in business and economics: Towards a research program” will be held on the November 3-4 in Odense, Denmark. Click here for a call for papers. About Us Main 2002-05-27T22:17:35-06:00 http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/april_2002/ http://www.economic-evolution.net/index.php/weblog/newsarticle/april_2002/#When:22:19:10Z The Fourth International Workshop on Institutional Economics will be held on the July 3 and 5 at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Click here for details. About Us Main 2002-04-27T22:19:10-06:00