ABSTRACT
From the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, the Audio Engineering Society (AES), with its journal and conventions, was the key institutional forum for dialogue on the direction of electronic musical instrument design. The investigation of statements made by US engineers at the AES conventions in the late 1960s and early 1970s is juxtaposed with perspectives derived from interviews with their Japanese counterparts working for Yamaha who reflect on the way in which that firm negotiated the transition to the digital age. The chapter looks at the way innovation systems unfold in space during episodes of radical technological change. Much of the geographical literature on industrial learning adopts a place-based perspective on innovation. Innovation has received considerable attention in economic geography. At least implicitly, distinctions between incremental and radical innovations are widely recognized. R. Hudson claims 'the issue of how radically new knowledge is produced and redefines "best practice" as radical innovations are created, is left largely unexplored'.
