ABSTRACT
Most European suppliers of semiconductors are facing a declining relative competitive position in a sector of critical strategic importance. SGS-Thomson (a Franco-Italian consortium), a firm which is one hundred per cent European-owned, provides an exception to this trend. As will be seen below, the reasons for this success are multiple. Broadly speaking, they can be summarised as follows: in recent years, the firm has learnt how to combine and add a systematic search of usual advantages linked to this field (concentration, specialisation, economies of scale) with an audacious policy built around organisational changes, aiming at taking advantage from the most up-to-date experiments about present sources and criteria of innovation and competitivity.
