ABSTRACT
This chapter works with global production network (GPN) as compared to global innovation network (GIN) theory focused on the global ICT and specifically the hard disk drive (HDD) aspects of that system. In this respect it has a double distinction to examine: it concerns complex socio-economic and political governance processes focused upon innovation, argued by many to be the guiding principle of the construction of economic advantage in the contemporary era and it utilises theory to capture important contrasts in the condition of key and changing building blocks in the global ICT industry. Methodologically, it is qualitative and necessarily so, based in this instance on much secondary information interpretation and some interviews. The larger project of which these findings are a small part had a balance of the two methods of inquiry. Empirically, the paper finds that GPN set-ups are not particularly innovation-inducing, tend to stabilisation over the long term and firm growth is largely by acquisition. The contemporary global ICT system is, by contrast, endogenously innovative, far from stable and has greater developmental potential because of its key GIN characteristic, which is its capacity for novelty.
