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Revue d'économie industrielle
145 | 1er trimestre 2014 Manufacturing Renaissance (2/2) Sector-Specific Structural Changes
Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rei/5722 DOI : 10.4000/rei.5722 ISSN : 1773-0198
Éditeur De Boeck Supérieur
Édition imprimée Date de publication : 15 mars 2014 ISBN : 9782804187941 ISSN : 0154-3229
Référence électronique Revue d'économie industrielle, 145 | 1er trimestre 2014, « Manufacturing Renaissance (2/2) » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 15 mars 2016, consulté le 27 novembre 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rei/ 5722 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/rei.5722
Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 27 novembre 2020.
© Revue d’économie industrielle 1
SOMMAIRE
Comment la production modulaire transforme l’industrie automobile Vincent Frigant et Bernard Jullien
Reshoring: Opportunities and Limits for Manufacturing in the UK – the case of the Auto Sector David Bailey et Lisa De Propris
Interrelated Diversification and Internationalisation: Critical Drives of Global Industries Mario Davide Parrilli et Jon Mikel Zabala-Iturriagagoitia
Structural transformations in clusters: the cases of biomedical and ceramics Sandrine Labory et Giorgio Prodi
« Ceci tuera cela » ? Dynamique des changements dans l’industrie du livre Christian Longhi et Sylvie Rochhia
A New Industrial Policy for Europe: Reinforcing Europe’s Industrial Base to Create Employment and Growth Daniel Calleja et Francisco Caballero
Convergence of EU and US Industrial Policy: “The obsession of Competitiveness” Sarah Guillou
Revue d'économie industrielle, 145 | 1er trimestre 2014 2
Comment la production modulaire transforme l’industrie automobile
Vincent Frigant et Bernard Jullien
Les auteurs tiennent à remercier les participants au workshop « Manufacturing Renaissance? Structural changes and consequences for industrial Economics », organisé par le Dipartimento di Economia e Management, Università di Ferrara (Italie) les 17-18 mai 2013, pour leurs remarques et commentaires. Nous remercions en particulier Patrizio Bianchi et Sandrine Labory pour leur invitation au workshop.
1. Introduction
1 Depuis la fin des années 1990, l’industrie automobile s’est engagée dans un processus de mise en modularité des produits qu’elle réalise : voitures particulières et véhicules utilitaires légers. Définie pour l’instant de manière générale, la modularité relève d’une règle de conception (design) visant à concevoir l’architecture d’un produit en une série de sous-systèmes hiérarchiquement emboîtés, reliés les uns aux autres par des interfaces, physiques et informationnelles, stabilisées et le moins nombreuses possibles. L’objectif premier d’une telle architecture est de réduire la complexité systémique (Simon, 1962) et, à ce titre, elle a d’abord attiré l’attention des ingénieurs d’autant plus intéressés par ces principes que le progrès technologique conduit à sophistiquer les produits et surtout à intégrer des technologies de nature différente dans un même produit final (par exemple dans l’automobile croisement des technologies mécanique et électronique).
2 Toutefois, la problématique de la modularité ne se réduit pas à des enjeux technologiques. L’évolution de l’architecture produit requestionne l’organisation même de l’industrie. Expliquer comment et pourquoi constitue l’objectif de cet article.
3 D’un point de vue théorique, la question de l’impact organisationnel de la modularité peut être rattachée aux travaux interrogeant la relation technologie-organisation. Ainsi, une partie des analyses sur les dominant designs a repris la notion d’architecture, dans la lignée de Henderson et Clark (1990), afin de préciser la définition d’un dominant
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design et de mieux expliciter la dynamique des cycles technologiques internes à un produit global (Tushman, Murmann, 1998 ; Murmann, Krenken, 2006). C’est toutefois au sein d’une littérature spécifique que la question a davantage été explorée. C’est à ce second courant que nous nous rattacherons dans ces lignes.
4 Le point de départ de ces approches se situe dans l’ouvrage de Baldwin et Clark (2000) qui montrent comment le choix d’IBM, en 1961, de concevoir un ordinateur modulaire a radicalement modifié la trajectoire organisationnelle de l’industrie informatique. En concevant une architecture produit modulaire, l’informaticien a rendu possible un approfondissement de la division du travail (interne à la firme dans un premier temps) qui s’est ensuite traduit par une externalisation croissante au profit de start-up et spin- off dont certaines ont grandi (comme Microsoft ou Intel). Finalement, selon leur relecture de l’histoire de l’industrie informatique, la structure industrielle contemporaine (y compris dans sa dynamique actuelle) se situe dans son ADN modulaire.
5 L’informatique doit cependant être traitée comme un cas particulier pour deux raisons. D’une part, parce que l’adoption de l’architecture modulaire fut réalisée alors que l’industrie n’était qu’émergente. Par opposition, nous y reviendrons, l’adoption de la modularité dans l’automobile se fait au sein d’une industrie mature, largement structurée d’un point de vue économique et technologique. D’autre part, la thématique de la modularité amène à considérer les propriétés technologiques des produits. Et, à ce niveau, un ordinateur possède des caractéristiques techniques qui sont et demeurent fondamentalement distinctes de celles d’une automobile, d’un avion, d’un missile, etc. Bref, si les travaux sur la modularité cherchent à caractériser des mécanismes généraux de transmission du fait technologique au fait organisationnel, il convient de ne pas négliger les spécificités sectorielles. Dans cette perspective, le cadre analytique actuellement dominant consiste à réfléchir en termes d’hypothèse miroir (Colfer, Baldwin, 2010 ; Campagnolo, Camuffo, 2010). Évitant le piège d’un déterminisme technologique (dans lequel certains travaux initiaux en termes d’isomorphisme organisationnel avaient pu tomber [Sanchez, Mahoney, 1996]), il s’agit d’appréhender les relations entre architecture produit et architecture organisationnelle en reconnaissant que les mécanismes de transmissions sont pluriels (organisationnels, institutionnels et non exclusivement technologiques) et que causalités circulaires et formes de congruence existent. C’est dans cette perspective plus complexe que nous allons étudier les manières dont le transfert du concept de modularité à l’automobile a contribué à transformer sa trajectoire industrielle.
6 Dans une première partie, nous reviendrons sur le concept de modularité afin de préciser la manière dont il se décline dans l’automobile. Ensuite, nous montrerons comment l’architecture industrielle s’est transformée, puis comment les constructeurs renouvellent actuellement les architectures en voie de modularisation.
2. Architecture modulaire : principes et appropriation dans l’automobile
7 Depuis sa conceptualisation initiale par Simon (1962), la modularité a donné lieu à plusieurs définitions dont la plus reprise est sans doute celle d’architecture produit proposée par Ulrich (1995). Après avoir explicité ses contours, nous expliquerons
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comment l’automobile s’est approprié le concept initial et insisterons sur son interprétation procédurale.
2.1. Gestion de la complexité et quasi-décomposabilité
8 La modularité vise à réduire le degré de complexité qui affecte tout système technique complexe par deux biais. Un biais quantitatif qui provient du nombre de composants qui contribuent à la fonctionnalité du système global. Un biais qualitatif qui découle de la nature des interactions physiques et informationnelles qu’entretiennent entre eux les composants. Concevoir une architecture modulaire consiste à travailler sur ces deux niveaux 1) en reconcevant les composants sous forme de modules agrégeant des composants élémentaires et surtout correspondant à des unités fonctionnellement autonomes et 2) en concevant des interfaces qui cristallisent les interactions entre modules. Selon Ulrich (1995), une architecture est modulaire dès lors que les modules constituent des entités fonctionnelles autonomes (une fonction = un module, ce qu’on dénomme mapping one-to-one) et lorsque les interfaces sont préalablement fixées : l’architecture générale est définie, les règles d’interactions également, et les équipes/ firmes développent alors indépendamment les modules intégrés au système global.
9 La figure 1 illustre de manière simplifiée l’opposition canonique entre architecture modulaire et son contraire, architecture intégrale. Dans cette dernière, le produit système est la somme de composants élémentaires mutuellement en interaction et redéfinir un composant implique de reconsidérer la manière dont il interagit avec les autres, et de facto, l’architecture générale. Dans l’architecture modulaire, une hiérarchie des sous-systèmes a été conçue de sorte que le produit global n’est désormais plus que la somme de deux modules reliés par une interface spécifiée ex ante.
10 Une telle architecture présente trois grands avantages. En premier lieu, la phase d’intégration finale est simplifiée puisqu’elle ne consiste plus qu’en l’assemblage de deux modules et non d’une multitude d’éléments séparés. En deuxième lieu, la stabilisation des interfaces permet de remplacer un module par un autre (et bien souvent leur performance fonctionnelle et/ou économique, par exemple en modifiant un matériau entrant dans la constitution des composants) par un simple jeu de substitution. En troisième lieu, elle suscite une diachronie des actes tant au niveau de la conception que de la production. Détaillons ce point crucial.
Figure 1. Architecture intégrale vs architecture modulaire
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11 Dans une architecture modulaire, l’acte de conception se décline en trois temps distincts et, nous y reviendrons, potentiellement, en plusieurs acteurs. Tout d’abord, l’architecte du produit définit l’architecture générale du produit qu’il souhaite réaliser au double plan fonctionnel et physique. Il définit un cahier des charges fonctionnel du produit global qu’il décline en fonctionnalités modulaires. Il procède de même pour la description physique du produit. Ensuite, il définit les interfaces qui assurent la mise en compatibilité des différents modules, ce qui renvoie aux règles physiques de connexion (comment les modules sont concrètement intégrés entre eux, leurs compatibilités et incompatibilités physiques ; par exemple émission de chaleur, dilatation…) et aux règles de communication entre les modules. Enfin, il diffuse cette double information aux acteurs qui ont en charge de concevoir les modules, ce que nous appellerons l’architecture détaillée du produit (composants constitutifs et leurs interactions).
12 L’acte de production recouvre une dissociation temporelle symétrique. Dans une architecture intégrale aussi simplifiée que celle de notre figure, tous les composants doivent être fabriqués simultanément, livrés et intégrés au même moment sur une chaîne unique de production. Dans le schéma modulaire, la logique même de hiérarchie emboîtée suggère une séquentialité des moments entre assemblage final, fabrication/ livraison des différents modules et réalisation des composants.
13 Dès lors, on perçoit que l’architecture modulaire déborde d’une dimension purement technologique car la double dissociation temporelle comporte une charge organisationnelle flagrante. Précisons-la.
2.2. De l’approfondissement de la division du travail au recentrage de la firme architecte
14 Une architecture modulaire permet d’approfondir la division du travail. Une fois définie l’architecture générale et les interfaces, il est aisé de confier la conception détaillée des modules à des équipes dédiées. C’était d’ailleurs un des objectifs affichés par IBM dans le choix de l’architecture du 360 (Baldwin, Clark, 2000). En effet, les équipes auxquelles on confie la conception d’un module possèdent toute la structure informationnelle pour mener leur travail indépendamment des autres équipes et de l’architecte : elles possèdent les données physiques sur leurs modules et la manière dont ils s’interfacent avec les autres modules et le système global. Certes, on peut supposer surtout lorsque l’architecture générale émerge que des interactions denses entre équipes existent pour finaliser le mode de fonctionnement des interfaces et corriger des interactions physiques inattendues (ceci expliquera les retards de l’IBM360 d’ailleurs), mais globalement l’architecture modulaire est censée fournir toutes les données pertinentes pour un travail séparé et indépendant entre équipes en charge d’un module singulier. En outre, une fois l’architecture éprouvée, celle-ci pourra être reconduite d’un modèle à l’autre : la modification des modules suffit à assurer une amélioration des performances technologiques et économiques des produits auxquels on peut ajouter certains sauts technologiques dans la définition des interfaces.
15 Cette description renvoie singulièrement bien à l’histoire de l’industrie informatique dont les produits progressent incrémentalement par amélioration des modules (lecteur de disquette remplacé par un lecteur de CD-Rom puis de DVD) et par quelques ruptures d’interfaces (port PCL remplacé par port USB, etc.).
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16 D’un point de vue organisationnel, la stabilisation des interfaces limite les risques de dysfonctionnements cognitifs et donc facilite la division cognitive du travail. Si ceci constitue une condition nécessaire à l’externalisation, l’externalisation et la désintégration verticale de la firme architecte s’enclenchent par la mise en œuvre de quatre mécanismes complémentaires.
17 En premier lieu, l’architecture modulaire stabilise le marché, et ce d’autant plus que les architectes publicisent largement les caractéristiques de l’architecture (générale et interfaces) afin de susciter la concurrence chez les offreurs. Ce mécanisme structure le marché et fixe les normes de la rivalité concurrentielle dans l’industrie. En effet, et en deuxième lieu, la dynamique concurrentielle s’oriente vers la création d’innovations sur les modules (amélioration et création de nouveaux modules qui viennent se greffer à l’architecture générale) de sorte que de nouveaux entrants viennent nourrir l’industrie. En troisième lieu, l’extension de la taille du marché, selon des mécanismes très classiques d’économie d’échelle (et de gamme), améliore le différentiel de coûts de production chez les fournisseurs de modules aux dépens d’une stratégie d’internalisation. Enfin, à la fois parce que le marché s’étend et parce que les interfaces cristallisent l’information utile, les coûts de transaction s’abaissent car les actifs perdent en spécificité (Veloso, Fixson, 2001) et car les coûts de communication inter- firmes s’amenuisent d’autant plus que les TIC suffisent pour échanger des connaissances transformées en information (Sanchez, Mahoney, 1996). Au total, la modularité réduit les coûts d’une gouvernance externalisée (contrainte cognitive, coûts de transaction…) tout en générant des avantages propres à celle-ci (rivalité concurrentielle exacerbée, innovations, économies d’échelle et de gamme…). Ce puissant effet de ciseau milite pour une désintégration verticale poussée (Langlois, 2003).
18 Là encore, l’informatique illustre bien cette dynamique industrielle. Partant de l’IBM360, des start-up émergent pour proposer initialement de nouveaux modules ou des modules plus performants (cas du système d’exploitation de Microsoft) à l’informaticien. Ce dernier commence à externaliser la réalisation desdits modules pendant que de nouveaux constructeurs émergent en profitant de la réduction des barrières à l’entrée dont ils bénéficient grâce à l’existence d’une architecture connue et à l’existence d’offreurs de modules. Ensuite, à l’image du modèle de simulation de Ethiraj, Levinthal et Roy (2008), les dynamiques s’emballent, rendant de moins en moins pertinentes les solutions internalisées au fur et à mesure que l’industrie se dote de fournisseurs spécialisés sur chaque type de modules.
19 Sans détailler davantage, ce qui nous éloignerait de notre propos, notons quelques points clés pour la suite. En premier lieu, il faut prendre en compte le moment historique où émerge la modularité. L’architecture produit apparaît dans une industrie nouvelle faiblement structurée et dont la taille du marché est encore balbutiante. Autrement dit, la trajectoire de l’informatique est quasiment vierge lorsqu’elle choisit l’architecture produit modulaire. En deuxième lieu, le modèle général souffre d’exceptions. Des stratégies alternatives ont perduré pendant une période relativement longue, comme l’illustre le choix de l’intégration verticale et de la fermeture de ses interfaces par Apple durant deux décennies. En outre, tous les ordinateurs ne sont pas construits selon cette logique et les modèles les plus complexes ainsi que certains prototypes sont intégraux et leur production internalisée (Sturgeon, 2003). Le même auteur observe en outre que la Silicon Valley a offert une configuration unique pour
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mettre en place le couple architecture modulaire/externalisation grâce à l’exceptionnelle concentration spatiale de moyens intellectuels tournés vers la conception d’architecture visant à approfondir l’externalisation. Enfin, technologiquement, et ceci est en partie la conséquence du point précédent, les produits informatiques sont d’une complexité relativement faible selon un critère de combinaison des bases de connaissances. Et c’est à ce niveau que la limite d’une généralisation transectorielle des architectures modulaires conduisant à la désintégration verticale apparaît en premier lieu.
20 Au début des années 2000, des auteurs travaillant sur des Complex Product Systems (CoPS) (combinant des domaines technologiques dissemblables) soulignent que la désintégration verticale n’est pas une solution efficace (Brusoni, Prencipe, 2001 ; Brusoni, Prencipe, Pavitt, 2001 ; Hobday, Davies, Prencipe, 2005). Pour ces produits, plusieurs problèmes sont soulevés réduisant les velléités d’externaliser : en particulier, réduction de la capacité d’absorption chez l’architecte et risque de figer l’évolution radicale du produit (Brusoni, Prencipe, Pavitt, 2001), entrée horizontale sur le marché de nouveaux concurrents, stratégie de verrouillage et bottleneck chez les offreurs de modules (Mouchino, Sautel, 2007 ; Fixson, Park, 2008). Cette littérature se montre sceptique envers la modularité à deux niveaux : d’une part, la possibilité même de généraliser des architectures produits de type modulaire dans toutes les industries ; d’autre part, elle conteste une partie des conclusions concernant les mécanismes de transmission du fait technologique au fait organisationnel. Reste que cette position est ambiguë car, tout comme les travaux sur la modularité pure, ces auteurs considèrent la modularité comme un état. Les débats se focalisent sur une architecture achevée et non pas sur son processus d’émergence. Processus qui guide les comportements des agents. Dans un article récent, McDuffie (2013) insiste sur la nécessité de considérer cette distinction. Il propose le terme de « Modularity-as-a-frame » qui synthétise notre proposition : la mise en modularité est un objectif pour certaines industries et, à défaut d’être une architecture atteinte et atteignable, elle structure le modèle de conception du produit, ce qui contribue à former la trajectoire de l’industrie. C’est ce que nous observons dans l’automobile.
2.3. La mise en modularité de l’automobile : l’imperfection d’une architecture modulaire en cours de modularisation
21 On a souvent avancé que l’automobile relève des Complex Product Systems, mais à partir d’un argument fondamentalement technologique tenant à la manière dont se conçoit une automobile (Sako, 2003 ; Takeishi, Fujimoto, 2003). L’argument mérite d’être explicité, car certes l’automobile est un produit imparfaitement modulaire du point de vue de son architecture, mais il n’empêche qu’elle connaît un processus de mise en modularité ou modularisation.
22 Du point de vue de l’architecture produit, l’automobile est imparfaitement modulaire à cause d’un fort degré d’interdépendance systémique. Le problème se saisit en statique, en « statistique comparative » et en dynamique. En statique, les propriétés fonctionnelles attendues d’une automobile impliquent une interdépendance de quasiment tous les éléments d’un véhicule de sorte qu’atteindre la propriété d’indépendance entre modules est (quasiment) impossible. Deux niveaux sont en jeu ici. Tout d’abord, une automobile est plurifonctionnelle : certes, il s’agit de se déplacer
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mais également de procurer un certain statut, d’offrir (ou pas) des loisirs à bord, de la communication externe, etc. Ensuite, ces différentes sous-fonctions se matérialisent par différentes unités physiques qui sont en interdépendance mutuelle dans le sens où modifier une unité requiert de modifier les autres. Par exemple, la tenue de route est déterminée par l’empâtement du châssis, mais également la position du centre de gravité de la voiture : dès lors que l’on change de manière significative la masse d’un élément, ce centre de gravité évolue, amenant à reconcevoir l’empâtement, les caractéristiques des pneumatiques, la puissance du moteur et la transmission, les amortisseurs, etc. Bref, les jeux d’interaction entre les éléments sont si nombreux que concevoir une architecture respectant les propriétés élémentaires d’indépendance et d’autonomie fonctionnelle des éléments est impossible. En « statique comparative », c’est l’impossibilité de concevoir une architecture déployable sur plusieurs modèles qui est en cause. Certes, les constructeurs ont pour la plupart conçus des plates-formes1 sur la base desquelles ils déclinent plusieurs véhicules, mais celles-ci ne constituent que des briques élémentaires sur lesquelles ils doivent adapter et reconcevoir la plupart des éléments. En dynamique, le problème provient du progrès technologique qui conduit à des substitutions dans les matières, les composants, les technologies de communications entre éléments (électrique vs hydraulique pour prendre un exemple caricatural), les procédés de production… Ceci explique que d’un modèle à un autre les propriétés physiques et informationnelles des éléments se modifient. Comme l’observent Brusoni, Prencipe et Pavitt (2001), les rythmes différenciés des progrès technologiques dans les éléments empêchent de figer les architectures produits au risque de créer des interactions inattendues dysfonctionnelles.
23 Face à ces problèmes technologiques, on serait tenté de dire que l’automobile n’est pas un produit modulaire et, en quelque sorte, que le dossier est clos. Une telle proposition est néanmoins abusive, car il existe bien une démarche modulaire. L’automobile a adopté des principes modulaires que l’on peut comprendre en revenant sur leur origine/ genèse. Dans l’informatique, l’architecture a été modularisée primitivement selon un objectif-produit. Il s’agissait de rompre avec l’architecture intégrale qui ne permettait pas un usage suivi du produit. Autrement dit, c’est pour des motifs de marché et de diffusion du produit qu’a été conçu l’ordinateur modulaire. Dans l’électronique, c’est également pour des raisons liées directement au produit (progrès rapide des composants constitutifs) que l’architecture a été modularisée (Langlois, Robertson, 1992). Dans l’automobile, la démarche modulaire trouve ses fondements dans une volonté d’optimiser le processus de production (McDuffie, 2013) : les constructeurs cherchent à raccourcir les cycles et à externaliser davantage pour gagner en flexibilité. Ceci se traduit par une traduction de la notion de modularité différente en motivation, mais similaire en esprit.
24 La mise en modularité s’effectue par la création de macro-composants (Volpato, 2004). L’industrie renonce à deux propriétés clés de la modularité : le mapping one-to-one et l’indépendance absolue entre éléments. Il s’agit de concevoir des voitures comme des sous-ensembles physiquement compacts, mais plurifonctionnels, connectés par des interfaces instables d’un modèle à l’autre. On parle alors de module arrière, de module avant, siège, portière, cockpit, etc. Certes, les composants élémentaires n’ont pas disparu mais tout le travail des firmes consiste à réduire leur nombre en vue de concevoir des « briques » assemblables (en production). McAlinden et al. (1999) fournissent l’exemple du macro-composant cockpit qui était chez un constructeur réalisé à partir de 104 éléments différents assemblés en 22,4 minutes ; modularisé, il ne
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s’agit plus que d’un élément unique assemblé en 3,3 minutes. Pour le vice-président de GM, l’automobile devient « like the definition of a Lego set » (Financial Times, January 28, 2004 cité in Klier, Rubinstein, 2008, p. 18).
25 La dimension modulaire de ces macro-composants se saisit à deux niveaux. D’une part, d’un point du vue architectural, il s’agit de concevoir une architecture emboîtée de sous-systèmes : un macro-composant livré directement au constructeur sous forme de module unique (dédié au constructeur), un second niveau correspondant à des méso- composants (architecture générique à partir de laquelle sont spécifiés les modules dédiés), des composants élémentaires constitutifs des premiers et deuxièmes (cf. figure 2). D’autre part, les constructeurs et fournisseurs de modules revoient leur processus de conception en considérant que figer les interfaces est au cœur de leur travail. Bien qu’instables d’un modèle à l’autre, raisonner en termes de fixation des interfaces devient une des clés de la conception. Elle devient une étape pleine de la conception bien que, selon les constructeurs, elle se réalise différemment (Cabigiosu, Zirpoli, Camuffo, 2013).
Figure 2. Déclinaison du concept de modularité dans l’automobile
2.4. Les transformations des architectures organisationnelles chez les constructeurs
26 À la fin des années 1990, le travail de reconception des éléments pour les transformer en macro-composants s’accélère (Autobusiness, 2004) et ses effets sur l’organisation des constructeurs se dessinent clairement.
27 Un premier point notable concerne l’amplification du mouvement d’externalisation et la réduction du nombre de fournisseurs directs. Ce qu’on appelle la pyramidalisation de la chaîne d’approvisionnement. Pour les constructeurs occidentaux, le premier processus s’était amorcé à partir des années 1980, mais il s’accélère de sorte que de nos jours on estime que le coût des achats représente de l’ordre de 75 et 90 % du prix de revient fabrication selon les modèles. Chez un constructeur généraliste comme FIAT, la part de la production externalisée passe ainsi de 50 % à 72 % entre 1982 et 2000 et la
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part de la conception de 30 % à 72 % (Whitford, Enrietti, 2005). Entre 1987 et 2001, le même FIAT réduit le nombre de ses fournisseurs directs de 1 200 à 330 ; mouvement que l’on retrouve chez tous les constructeurs (entre 1986 et 2000, PSA réduit ses fournisseurs directs de 1 229 à 500 ; BMW de 1 400 à 600 ; Ford de 2 400 à 1 200 ; Chrysler de 3 000 à 600) (ibid. ; Veloso, Kumar, 2002).
28 Une des conséquences de cette externalisation croissante concerne la reconfiguration des usines. La plupart des sites (à volume et nombre de modèles équivalents) sont restructurés afin de réduire les surfaces occupées pendant que le nombre de salariés diminue, donnant parfois l’impression de friches. Les usines nouvelles ou celles reconstruites sont plus compactes et d’autant moins dotées de personnels qu’elles sont plus automatisées2. Parfois, cette réduction de la taille des usines s’effectue en trompe- l’œil. En effet, les sites nouveaux ou modernisés sont souvent dotés de parcs fournisseurs où se localisent des unités de production externalisées destinées à l’assemblage final des macro-composants, voire dans certains cas à l’intérieur même des usines des constructeurs (le cas de l’usine de Smart à Hambach est frappant avec davantage d’ouvriers des fournisseurs que du constructeur présents au sein même de l’usine). Initié au Brésil où s’engagent les premières expérimentations en grandeur nature de la modularisation (Lung et al., 1999), le modèle se diffuse au reste du monde au fur et à mesure que l’automobile modularisée se généralise. Les motifs de cette concentration spatiale sont de trois ordres : assurer la coordination logistique dans une industrie où la tension des flux est cruciale, favoriser l’apprentissage inter- organisationnel, lutter contre les risques de prises d’otages bilatérales dans un contexte de spécificité de site des actifs (Frigant, Lung, 2002).
29 Les centres de conception sont également reconfigurés. Le centre de Renault- Guyancourt ouvert en 1998 illustre ce mouvement d’une recomposition des sites visant à regrouper l’ensemble des métiers autour de projets et rompre avec une division tubulaire des tâches (Carrincazeaux, Lung, 1998). Un autre objectif est d’intégrer physiquement les équipementiers aux équipes de conception des constructeurs. Les plateaux de conception se généralisent : il s’agit de créer une co-localisation de tous les acteurs impliqués dans le projet le temps de mener celui-ci à terme.
30 Que ce soit en production ou en conception, on perçoit que la désintégration (capitaliste) verticale empruntée par l’externalisation semble posséder sa propre limite : les firmes doivent créer de nouveaux dispositifs pour pallier les risques d’incohérence dans les flux productifs ou cognitifs. La co-localisation en production et en conception constitue une forme de réintégration concrète entre des personnels relevant désormais d’employeurs différents, mais qui sont condamnés à travailler de conserve et dont l’efficacité commande qu’ils adoptent des modes de fonctionnement partagés. Réintégrer concrètement les fournisseurs est essentiel, car ils occupent désormais un rôle majeur et croissant dans l’industrie automobile.
3. La transformation de l’architecture industrielle
31 La notion d’architecture industrielle renvoie à la composition des acteurs présents dans l’industrie étudiée et à la manière dont structurellement et fonctionnellement ils s’agencent les uns avec les autres (Jacobides, Knudsen, Augier, 2006). Contrairement à la notion de structure de l’industrie, il s’agit de conjuguer caractéristiques des agents (leurs capabilities et leurs comportements) et règles de gouvernance inter-firmes dans
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une perspective d’industrial dynamics. Le parallèle formel avec la notion d’architecture produit n’est pas le fruit du hasard, car en mobilisant cette notion, il est analytiquement possible de travailler l’hypothèse d’une homologie entre architecture produit et organisation de l’industrie : les entreprises constituent l’équivalent fonctionnel des modules et le système de coordination inter-firmes l’équivalent fonctionnel des interfaces.
3.1. La transformation de l’objet échangé et l’émergence des mega- suppliers
32 La croissance de l’externalisation ne s’est pas faite de manière homothétique : il s’est agi d’externaliser davantage certes, mais des objets différents. Cette rupture va bouleverser l’architecture industrielle dans le sens où le type d’acteurs présents diffère ainsi que leurs fonctions dans les chaînes de valeur.
33 La création des macro-composants s’est traduite par une profonde évolution de l’objet de l’échange entre donneurs et preneurs d’ordres. Brièvement, durant la période pré- modulaire, les constructeurs achetaient essentiellement des composants, des matières, recouraient à la sous-traitance (travail à façon notamment) ainsi que quelques sous- ensembles. Cet ordre s’est globalement inversé : l’essentiel des achats concerne désormais des macro-composants (les sièges constituent souvent le principal poste d’achat chez les constructeurs), des matières (sidérurgiques essentiellement), des composants (électroniques notamment), et les activités de sous-traitance (sur spécification ou à façon) sont devenues marginales en volume.
34 Cette transformation dans la composition de l’objet de l’échange s’est effectuée en outre dans un contexte d’internalisation croissante où les constructeurs ont demandé/ exigé de leurs fournisseurs de macro-composants qu’ils les accompagnent et les approvisionnent en macro-composants identiques dans toutes les usines du monde où ils fabriquent tel ou tel modèle de véhicule. Dans les faits, les équipementiers ne suivront pas forcément les constructeurs (la taille du marché, l’enjeu stratégique du constructeur pour le preneur d’ordres, les barrières à l’entrée peuvent limiter l’implantation des fournisseurs), mais néanmoins l’orientation est donnée. Ceci participe d’une consolidation mondiale du marché des principaux macro-composants favorisant les équipementiers traditionnels des constructeurs en croissance au détriment des fournisseurs locaux qui tendent à être évincées des premiers rangs et passent, lorsqu’il n’existe pas de législations protectionnistes à l’instar du Brésil, sous la coupe des grands fournisseurs occidentaux (Humphrey, 2000).
35 Ces acquisitions à l’étranger illustrent en fait un processus plus général de croissance externe et interne. Une priorité pour les équipementiers est de développer leurs capacités productives et en RD. Au niveau productif, réaliser des macro-composants implique d’assembler de nombreux éléments qu’il s’agit en outre de maîtriser technologiquement, ce qui milite pour un degré d’intégration relativement élevé. En RD, en sus du problème évoqué d’être capable d’intégrer, il s’agit de concevoir les modules, ce qui les amène à développer des compétences technologiques et organisationnelles importantes dont le but est de créer des centres de RD autonomes des constructeurs. D’autant plus que ces derniers souhaitent également externaliser la conception et donc que les équipementiers doivent inventer les macro-composants. Un point commun avec l’informatique est que la conception des modules échappe de plus
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en plus aux constructeurs au profit des équipementiers qui se lancent d’autant plus rapidement dans la démarche qu’il s’agit de « construire le marché ». Les premiers à dessiner les macro-composants disposent de l’avantage du premier entrant, mais ils réalisent également en premier les apprentissages technologiques et organisationnels qui construisent des avantages concurrentiels pérennes.
36 Dans la mesure où le spectre des compétences à développer est important et qu’en plus il convient d’opérer dans un nombre croissant de pays, un important mouvement de fusion/acquisition se développe. Les méga-fusions se multiplient tout au long de la décennie 2000 alors qu’elles étaient davantage nationales lors de la décennie précédente et que les acquisitions d’entreprises plus petites se poursuivent à l’étranger, essentiellement pour accéder à de nouveaux clients, parfois pour accéder à des technologies complémentaires nécessaires à la production des macro-composants3.
37 Le jeu croisé des forces précédentes s’est traduit par une reconfiguration radicale du statut des preneurs d’ordres mobilisés par les constructeurs avec le développement d’une nouvelle catégorie d’entreprises qualifiées de mega-suppliers (Donovan, 1999). Ces firmes sont caractérisées par quatre éléments :
38 – elles sont de taille importante (que ce soit en effectif, en chiffre d’affaires ou encore en nombre d’implantations, cf. Frigant, 2009) et connaissent une croissance forte (sur la période 1999-2010, le chiffre d’affaires moyen des 100 plus grands équipementiers mondiaux a progressé de 76 % – ces chiffres excluent les activités hors automobiles et les pièces de rechange)4 ;
39 – elles maîtrisent les technologies clés permettant de fabriquer une automobile de sorte que les constructeurs ne peuvent plus indépendamment prétendre concevoir totalement un véhicule et qu’ils sont obligés de les intégrer de plus en plus précocement dans leur processus de développement (Midler, Maniak, Beaume, 2012) ;
40 – la rivalité concurrentielle entre elles se fonde essentiellement sur l’innovation afin de constituer des rentes d’innovation en proposant aux constructeurs des sous- systèmes novateurs (start & go de Valeo, ABS de Bosch…). Cette rivalité explique que le marché pour nombre d’équipements se structure autour d’oligopoles resserrés (Sutherland, 2005) ;
41 – elles sont assez fortement intégrées verticalement et pilotent une longue chaîne d’approvisionnement interne et externe structurée de manière pyramidale.
42 Il ne faut cependant pas en conclure que les constructeurs ont perdu toute initiative. La modularité demeure imparfaite et l’automobile n’est pas un jeu de Lego. Il reste des éléments qui sont directement achetés par les constructeurs et ceux-ci continuent à faire appel à un tissu de petites et moyennes entreprises. Certes, les constructeurs ont pyramidalisé leur chaîne d’approvisionnement, mais celles-ci comportent des interstices dans lesquels s’immiscent les PME et aussi de grandes firmes spécialistes, quelque peu en marge du secteur automobile comme les fournisseurs de composants électroniques, de sorte que la pyramide est davantage de style aztèque qu’égyptienne (Frigant, 2011, Figure 4). En outre, ils continuent à acheter des flux de matières importants au premier rang desquelles l’acier et demain davantage l’aluminium voire les composites. Enfin, un dernier type d’entreprises a vu son rôle se renforcer ces dernières années : les entreprises de RD et d’ingénierie. Pour gérer la complexité croissante du produit automobile et l’insertion de technologies faisant appel à des bases de connaissances nouvelles (par exemple en matière d’électronique, en concepts
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architecturaux…), les constructeurs (avec des intensités et des priorités différentes) se sont engagés dans l’Open innovation (Chresbrough, 2003). Les collaborations avec des entreprises d’ingénierie spécialisées et avec des laboratoires publics de recherche permettent d’explorer des voies nouvelles sans grever les coûts fixes. Les interrogations sur les nouvelles motorisations, sur les manières de respecter les nouvelles réglementations sécuritaires et environnementales, d’intégrer de nouvelles fonctionnalités au véhicule (communication et couplage au réseau mobile, divertissement à bord…) constituent autant de renouvellements dans les concepts et les produits que les constructeurs ne pensent pas pouvoir gérer en interne compte tenu de leur routine organisationnelle et de leurs lacunes dans les bases de connaissance utiles.
43 Au total, les quinze dernières années sont quelque peu paradoxales. D’un côté, l’architecture industrielle s’est profondément restructurée au profit des mega- suppliers qui sont devenus des acteurs centraux de la filière. De l’autre, émergent de nouvelles entreprises qui participent du renouvellement de la base industrielle. Le point de convergence se situe dans un relatif déclin des constructeurs à demeurer au centre de l’ensemble du dispositif en termes de pouvoir de marché dans la relation verticale et dans la manière dont se conçoit l’automobile.
Figure 3. Organisation typique de la chaine de valeur d’un constructeur occidental jusqu’aux années 1990
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Figure 4. Organisation typique de la chaine de valeur d’un constructeur occidental de nos jours
3.2. Recomposition géographique des chaînes d’approvisionnement et division internationale du travail
44 Pour s’adapter à la modularisation, les mega-suppliers ont profondément modifié leur organisation interne qui, initialement, était conçue pour fournir des composants aux constructeurs et au marché de la rechange. Ils ont dû recomposer leurs divisions internes d’autant plus massivement que les multiples fusions/acquisitions les dotaient de nouvelles unités. Ceci s’est traduit par d’importantes restructurations industrielles : fermetures et ouvertures de sites, spécialisation des usines, mise en réseau des unités… Par exemple, sur la période 2001-2006, l’équipementier français Valeo, a fermé 59 de ses 170 sites, en a ouvert 29, cédé 26 et acquis 13. Si l’objectif premier est d’aligner l’appareil de production et de conception aux nouveaux objets à vendre et aux implantations des clients, ces recompositions fournissent une opportunité majeure pour modifier la géographie de l’industrie équipementière.
45 Les analyses de la géographie des mega-suppliers confirment un large mouvement de relocalisation des appareils productifs, dont la tendance majeure consiste en un déplacement vers l’Est du tissu productif en Europe et vers le Mexique pour les États- Unis (Frigant, 2009 ; Frigant, Layan, 2009 ; Klier, Rubinstein, 2008, 2011). S’il existe dans ce mouvement des stratégies de délocalisations, celles-ci ne sont pas seules en cause car, parallèlement, l’Europe de l’Est et le Mexique deviennent des lieux majeurs d’assemblage des véhicules. En fait, une analyse fine de la nature des sites permet de mettre en évidence que les mega-suppliers instaurent une division internationale de leur processus productif combinant recherche de localisation dans les pays à bas coûts, consolidation des bases industrielles et de conception dans leurs pays d’origine et
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recherche d’une étroite proximité avec les centres de RD et les usines d’assemblage des constructeurs.
46 Nous avons déjà expliqué que la modularisation de l’automobile, contrairement à l’informatique ou l’électronique, favorise la recherche d’une proximité géographique étroite des équipes de conception en charge des modules, mais aussi des unités d’assemblage des macro-composants. Ici, se situe une force centripète solide que confirme la généralisation des suppliers parks et de la co-localisation des équipementiers – temporaire autour d’équipe plateau ou pérenne par l’implantation d’unités de développement. Parallèlement, les mega-suppliers exploitent la décomposition hiérarchique des macro-composants pour localiser les unités en charge de la production des composants dans des espaces de production à bas coût. En effet, les caractéristiques de ces productions et la manière dont elles s’insèrent dans le processus de production en aval permettent de relâcher les contraintes de proximité géographique que ces activités soient internalisées par le mega-supplier ou qu’il fasse appel à la sous-traitance. Enfin, les unités des usines de méso-composants tendent à être localisées au barycentre géographique des sites en charge de l’assemblage des macro-composants pour respecter des contraintes d’économie d’échelle, de livraison et d’apprentissage (Frigant, Layan, 2009).
47 Au total, les mega-suppliers structurent désormais l’internationalisation de la chaîne de valeur davantage que ne le font les constructeurs. Si les éléments pour automobile s’échangent peu à une échelle intercontinentale, on observe la création de cluster dans les nouvelles régions productrices d’automobile et une consolidation dans les anciennes tout en assistant à l’approfondissement de la division du travail à l’échelle intra- continentale (Sturgeon, Van Biesebroeck, Gereffi, 2008).
48 Cette structuration réticulaire sous forme gravitaire (autour des usines des constructeurs et de leurs centres de RD) n’est pas neutre pour les industries nationales. En effet, les délocalisations pour des raisons de coût conjuguées aux relocalisations des sites d’assemblage des constructeurs vers l’Est en Europe, vers le Sud-Est des États-Unis et le Mexique en Amérique du Nord, fragilisent nombre d’espaces mal positionnés. Prenons le cas de la France.
49 Depuis le pic de 2005, la production en France d’automobiles est en déclin, ce que vient quelque part acter la fermeture du site PSA d’Aulnay. Dans cette perspective, c’est la production de macro-composants et la légitimité des unités qui les produisent qui fait question. Parallèlement, les volumes produits en Espagne et en Italie déclinent également alors que la production à l’Est et en Allemagne augmente : le cœur de l’assemblage d’automobiles se déplacent vers l’Est (Jullien, Lung, 2011 ; Klier, Rubenstein, 2011) entraînant à sa suite les usines produisant les macro-composants et, de plus en plus, les usines produisant les méso-composants. Les différentiels de coût demeurant favorables aux pays de l’Est alors que les unités utilisatrices tendent elles- mêmes à se localiser dans ces espaces (celles produisant des macro- et méso- composants), les mega-suppliers renforcent leur présence à l’Est tout en faisant davantage appel à des sous-traitants locaux et en demandant à leurs propres fournisseurs de s’y implanter. Au total, les forces convergent pour amplifier les suppressions de sites et d’emplois industriels dans la filière, du moins tant que la production d’automobiles ne se redresse pas en France5.
50 Au total, les mega-suppliers ont pris une place centrale dans l’industrie automobile parce qu’ils contribuent activement à en définir le futur technologique, parce qu’ils
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représentent un poids économique important dans la filière directement et indirectement par les injonctions qu’ils donnent au tissu amont, parce qu’ils sont au cœur de la redistribution des localisations et donc des emplois relocalisés à l’échelle continentale. Dans une large mesure, cette transformation de l’architecture industrielle découle de la mise en modularité des années 1990 qui pourrait s’amplifier à l’avenir compte tenu des initiatives en cours chez certains constructeurs.
4. Dialectique des enjeux stratégiques de la modularisation chez les constructeurs
51 Initialement, les constructeurs ont perçu la modularisation comme une opportunité pour optimiser leur processus de production. Ensuite et très vite, et parce que les mega-suppliers émergent, elle constitue une formidable opportunité d’accroître le degré d’externalisation et, de ce fait, elle participe du mouvement de désintégration verticale des constructeurs, que ce soit en conception ou en production. Il reste cependant un point sur lequel la modularité ne s’est pas (encore) concrétisée : la fabrication d’une variété de modèles sur la base d’une architecture unique. Tel est l’objectif poursuivi par Volkswagen.
4.1. Recherche voiture modulaire mondiale (désespérément)
52 Le concept d’architecture modulaire repose sur l’idée qu’il est possible de concevoir une plate-forme sur laquelle se greffent des modules différenciés qui apportent, par un jeu de combinaison, des fonctionnalités différenciées au produit final. Par exemple, une même unité centrale d’un ordinateur peut se brancher sur des écrans de taille et de qualité différentes (l’interface physique et informationnelle représentée par le câble et les progiciels reliant les deux modules étant identiques).
53 Pour les raisons évoquées plus haut, dans l’automobile, une indépendance similaire entre modules est difficile à réaliser, bien que certains éléments obéissent à une logique proche. Par exemple, un même modèle est offert avec plusieurs motorisations ou encore plusieurs types de selleries. C’est dans cette perspective que Volkswagen et Peugeot Citroën6 ont annoncé en 2012 le lancement des premières plates-formes réellement modulaires.
54 Depuis plusieurs années, Volkswagen s’est engagé dans un objectif de mise en modularité encouragé par sa structure organisationnelle. En effet, Volkswagen possède huit marques commerciales (VW, SEAT, Škoda, Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche), à la différence de Peugeot Citroën, clairement différenciées : outre les marques de très grand luxe, Audi, Volkswagen, SEAT et Škoda opèrent sur des marchés prix/qualité différenciés, mais qui se recouvrent, partiellement, en termes de segments (identifiés par la taille et le type de carrosserie7). Ce recouvrement a motivé l’engagement de VW dans une démarche de mise en modularité d’abord déclinée comme un partage de plates-formes correspondant chacune à un segment de marché, sur lesquelles se bâtissait la spécificité de chaque marque. L’étape suivante vise à développer des modules qui puissent être utilisés sur plusieurs segments de véhicules. Toutefois, compte tenu des problèmes d’intégrité systémique, cette démarche se heurtait à des contraintes technologiques et le partage d’éléments entre segments demeurait limité à des segments voisins et pour un nombre limité.
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55 En 2012, le groupe a lancé la plate-forme MBQ (Modularer Querbaukasten) qui ouvre une nouvelle ère dans la modularisation de l’automobile en remplaçant d’un seul coup trois plates-formes préexistantes. Copiant l’informatique, il s’agit désormais de concevoir une plate-forme qui est conçue pour recevoir différents types de modules partagés. Quatre modèles utilisent actuellement cette plate-forme : Audi A3, SEAT Leon, VW Golf, Škoda Octavia et cinq sont annoncés : Audit TT, VW Sirocco, SEAT Altea, VW Touran et Caddy. L’objectif annoncé à terme est de proposer 40 modèles vendus sous les quatre marques ! D’après Volkswagen, près de 80 % des éléments de ces véhicules seront partagés et les processus de production harmonisés, ce qui permettrait de produire les différents véhicules sur une même chaîne d’assemblage. Le constructeur allemand espère ainsi réduire ses coûts d’ingénierie pour développer un nouveau véhicule de 30 %, ses coûts d’investissement et ses coûts de production de 20 % par véhicule.
56 Les deux stratégies de Volkswagen et de PSA témoignent d’une volonté partagée de rentrer dans une troisième ère de la modularisation : après une première étape où il s’agissait de concevoir un nombre réduit de plates-formes afin de chercher des synergies entre marques, puis de chercher des synergies entre segments via quelques modules partagés, il s’agit désormais de disposer de quelques plates-formes (deux pour Volkswagen MBQ et MBL selon l’orientation du moteur) à partir desquelles on assemble des modules en plug and play afin de construire des véhicules différenciés dans des usines partagées. Selon un expert du secteur, « the idea heralds a return to basic principles of mass production in an industry where over the last 100 years, complexity has spiralled out of control. By creating a standardised, interchangeable set of parts from which to build a variety of cars, (the company) plans to cut the time taken to build a car by 30% » (Jesse Crosse, Car, 23 February 2012, http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Community/Car-Magazines-Blogs/ Jesse-Crosse/Tomorrows-world-Volkswagens-new-MQB-platform-tech-explained/, consulté le 17 avril 2013).
57 L’analyse fait sens si on se souvient que les premières automobiles (croisement du monde des calèches et des cycles) étaient construites comme un jeu d’assemblage de composants achetés à diverses filières (Abernathy, 1978). Pour une bonne part, la révolution fordienne a consisté à rendre spécifique la production des composants autour d’un concept unique de véhicule. La Ford T est une voiture mondiale destinée à un marché unifié. Toutefois, lorsque P. Sloan oriente GM vers une organisation multi- divisionnelle structurée autour d’une différenciation des produits en jouant sur des marques distinctes et cherchant l’efficacité coût davantage par les économies de gammes que d’échelle, c’est la pertinence même du modèle de voiture mondiale qui s’effondre en même temps que les parts de marché Ford. Depuis, et en dépit d’expériences récurrentes, particulièrement chez Ford ou FIAT de recréer une voiture mondiale, l’hétérogénéité persistante des préférences des utilisateurs n’a fait que valider les stratégies de différenciation (Jullien, Lung, 2011). Conceptuellement, la modularité doit pourtant permettre d’atteindre la mass-customization (Pine, 1993) : grâce à une plate-forme modulaire, il serait possible de concevoir des macro- composants distinctifs se basant sur une architecture générale identique et des composants voire méso-composants similaires produits à une large échelle. Dans les visions les plus avancées, une même plate-forme modulaire permettrait même d’accroître les adaptations locales. Des niches de marché mal captées pourraient être remplies par un jeu de suppressions, ajouts ou substitutions entre modules. Un modèle low cost pourrait ainsi être conçu à partir d’une plate-forme commune en supprimant
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les éléments jugés inutiles (radar de recul…) et en substituant des modules réalisés à un certain niveau de qualité par d’autres architecturalement identiques, mais physiquement distincts (modification de la qualité des plastiques sur un cockpit par exemple).
58 Le fait que VW se positionne en leader sur cette stratégie ne doit évidemment rien au hasard. La dimension multimarque du constructeur et sa forte internationalisation justifient son intérêt pour la plate-forme « unique » malgré tout destinée à couvrir l’hétérogénéité des consommateurs.
59 Un autre enjeu d’une telle plate-forme modulaire est d’harmoniser les processus de production au niveau mondial. En effet, les sites de production, quand bien même ils produisent des modèles analogues, ne sont pas identiques : leur processus de production et leur degré d’intégration verticale diffèrent, en particulier car les fournisseurs domestiques diffèrent. Un des espoirs de recourir à une plate-forme modulaire unifiée est de tendre vers une standardisation des sites productifs et de leurs chaînes d’approvisionnement. Or ceci supposerait que les mega-suppliers suivent systématiquement leurs clients à l’international puisque les macro-composants subissent des contraintes de proximité fortes. Il n’est guère évident que les logiques économiques et institutionnelles soient compatibles avec une telle croyance imprégnée de technologicisme.
4.2. Les limites intrinsèques de la plate-forme modulaire mondiale
60 Les réponses stratégiques apportées par les constructeurs diffèrent. Si VW et PSA semblent à la recherche d’une plate-forme mondiale déclinable en modèles hétérogènes grâce à une conception modulaire, Renault par exemple se fixe comme objectif de renforcer les synergies sur la base de plates-formes par marque. Le pari du low cost se décline autour de la gamme Dacia alors que Renault se positionne sur des clientèles au pouvoir d’achat plus élevé pour des segments similaires de véhicules8.
61 Le cas Dacia mérite d’être développé, car il illustre une stratégie alternative à la plate- forme modulaire de VW. Dans leur analyse du projet Logan, Jullien, Lung et Midler (2012) soulignent que la réussite du projet a découlé de la faculté du constructeur de rompre avec ses routines organisationnelles. Les processus de conception chez les constructeurs se sont fortement stabilisés au cours du temps de sorte que la hiérarchie du cahier des charges techniques est considérée comme un acquis difficilement dépassable. Or inventer un véhicule à bas coût exige de rompre avec une conception réglée (Midler, Maniak, Beaume, 2012) afin de renverser considérablement les paramètres caractérisant le produit et les moments où ils sont figés. Pour ne donner qu’un exemple, la prise en compte dès le lancement du projet, des caractéristiques des usines où allait être produit le véhicule (au double sens des processus de production interne (degré d’intégration verticale, degré d’automatisation…) et des capacités technologiques et organisationnelles des fournisseurs locaux a conduit à redéfinir certains choix en conception réputés tranchés par les apprentissages passés. À ce niveau, Dacia illustre une logique inverse par rapport à la stratégie de VW : partir des propriétés locales pour définir le produit et non l’inverse, définir un produit unique destiné à être produit de manière similaire dans les différents espaces. Mais les différences vont au-delà, car le projet Logan en fixant un nouvel ordre des priorités au cahier des charges fonctionnel (coût, habitabilité et fiabilité/durabilité) a abouti à la
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réalisation d’un véhicule inédit à partir duquel se dessine une lignée de modèles, à vocation mondiale. De facto, l’exemple de Dacia illustre une conception intégrale de l’automobile nourrie d’une forme de modularité dans l’idée de mobiliser des modules partagés entre modèles. On est loin de la plate-forme modulaire mondiale à partir de laquelle on pourrait fabriquer aussi bien des modèles bas de gamme que haut de gamme en « variant » les modules.
62 Un des paris de la stratégie de plate-forme mondiale repose sur l’idée que les caractéristiques des processus de production et d’approvisionnement sont standardisables au niveau mondial. Or les analyses sur la transférabilité des modes d’organisation ont montré que le transfert du modèle japonais d’organisation a nécessité des adaptations locales, ce qui a été qualifié d’hybridation des modèles (Boyer, 1998). La plate-forme modulaire mondiale risque de se heurter à des problèmes similaires d’organisation de rapports salariaux largement encore définis au niveau national. En outre, dans la mesure où elle repose sur un degré d’externalisation élevé, elle suppose que les chaînes d’approvisionnement puissent être déclinées de manière similaire dans les différents espaces de production. Ceci pose deux problèmes. En premier lieu, il faut supposer que les mega-suppliers sélectionnés pour réaliser un module acceptent de déployer leur propre organisation productive et logistique auprès des différentes usines des constructeurs. Usines qui plus est, si on suit la logique revendiquée par VW, produisant plusieurs modèles. Compte tenu des contraintes de proximité géographique de l’assemblage modulaire, on peut douter que les mega- suppliers se plient à une multiplication de leurs sites de production – ce qui nuirait aux économies d’échelle – sauf à obtenir des marges accrues – ce qui en contrepartie réduirait les gains escomptés par le constructeur. En deuxième lieu, il demeure dans nombre de pays des réglementations spécifiques en matière de contenu local minimal d’éléments et des barrières douanières de sorte que les possibilités de standardiser les modèles d’approvisionnement restent incertaines.
63 Un dernier problème concerne l’évolution du produit. Une leçon des travaux sur la modularité est d’avoir montré qu’une fois l’architecture produit figée, le progrès technique s’effectuait de manière incrémentale (au sens de Henderson et Clark, 1990) sur les modules. Certes, si l’architecture comporte peu de sous-systèmes hiérarchiquement emboîtés comme dans l’informatique, les progrès techniques peuvent être importants et le rythme d’introduction des innovations rapides. Mais dans l’automobile, les solutions modulaires reposent sur des grands blocs constitués de sous- systèmes eux-mêmes profondément systémiques et constitués d’éléments étant eux- mêmes des sous-systèmes. Pour le dire autrement, la série de sous-systèmes emboîtés est bien plus longue que dans l’informatique. En figeant l’architecture générale, VW et PSA vont se trouver face à un dilemme mis en évidence dans les travaux sur les CoPS (Hobday, Davies, Prencipe, 2005). Soit ils restent figés sur leur architecture et ils ne pourront faire évoluer leur véhicule que dans les marges (incrémentales) permises par l’évolution des sous-systèmes compatibles avec l’architecture générale. Soit ils reconsidèrent régulièrement leur architecture générale afin d’introduire des progrès significatifs concernant les sous-systèmes, mais, dans ce cas, le gain monétaire n’est guère évident, car concevoir une nouvelle architecture complète présente un coût élevé.
64 Il en résulte que la plate-forme modulaire mondiale puisse ne pas s’imposer à l’avenir comme un dominant design. Un frein à sa généralisation provient de la trajectoire passée
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de la mise en modularité. En effet, les constructeurs n’ont pas géré de manière similaire leurs compétences et le développement de celles-ci dans la phase antérieure de modularisation. Ainsi, le nombre et la nature des grey-box modules (Morris, Donnelly, 2006) – ces modules sur lesquels les constructeurs ne possèdent qu’une maîtrise approximative de leur spécification détaillée et de leur possibilité d’évolution – diffèrent selon les constructeurs. En outre, au-delà des pratiques affichées communes en matière d’externalisation, les procédures concrètes de conception diffèrent également (ce qui explique également le point précédent puisque ces pratiques déterminent en partie la capacité d’absorption (Cohen, Levinthal, 1990) de la firme). Ainsi, Cabigiuso et al. (2013) montrent qu’un même équipementier travaillant sur un même macro- composant avec deux constructeurs différents est confronté à des routines organisationnelles en matière de conception fort distinctes, ce qu’ils imputent essentiellement à une maîtrise différente des compétences chez les constructeurs concernant les propriétés du macro-composant. Or concevoir l’architecture d’un produit complexe exige de maîtriser un haut niveau de compétences sur l’architecture générale du produit et les architectures détaillées des modules (Brusoni, Prencipe, 2001) ; il en résulte que les facultés à imiter les stratégies de VW et PSA ne sont pas communément partagées chez les constructeurs. À un certain degré, certains constructeurs relèvent plus de firmes architectes coordonnant leur réseau de mega- suppliers de modules que de véritables intégrateurs systèmes pour reprendre un clivage issu du débat sur les formes organisationnelles de la modularité (Frigant, 2005).
65 Une des raisons, en amont, qui explique l’état actuel des constructeurs en termes de compétence résulte de la manière dont ils ont géré par le passé leurs fournisseurs. Le mouvement général d’externalisation s’est fait selon des formes de gouvernance différenciées, car les motifs stratégiques octroyés au couple modularisation/ externalisation ont différé (Gadde, Jellbo, 2002 ; Sako, 2003). Les constructeurs qui y ont perçu une modalité de réduire les coûts fixes en conception et en production sont ceux qui ont perdu le plus de compétences. Ceux pour qui c’était surtout l’occasion de bénéficier d’économie d’échelles, de gamme et de substitution9 en s’appuyant sur des firmes de taille croissante au portefeuille de clients diversifiés et de stimuler l’innovation grâce à la rivalité concurrentielle qui se nouait entre mega-suppliers, mais sans chercher à réduire leur capacité d’absorption et donc en conservant des doublons en matière d’équipes de recherche et développement, ont pour leur part préservé leurs capacités et donc leur liberté pour s’orienter vers un modèle organisationnel ou un autre. Dans ce contexte, Toyota demeure réticent à une mise en modularité qui réduirait sa faculté d’absorption. Ainsi, lors de l’étape initiale de mise en modularité (guidée par la production), Toyota achetait essentiellement des composants et méso- composants et procédait lui-même à l’intégration des macro-composants. En outre, il s’approvisionne encore de nos jours largement auprès de ses filiales équipementières. Filiales qui développent des compétences en conception et production modulaire lorsqu’elles voyagent à l’étranger et approvisionnent les constructeurs européens et américains ! Cette volonté de conserver un contrôle étroit sur sa chaîne de valeur implique que Toyota ne penchera que très lentement vers une modularisation croissante et, le cas échéant, il y a fort à parier que cela se nouera essentiellement au sein de son Kereistu.
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5. Conclusion
66 L’analyse de l’impact de la modularité dans l’industrie automobile a souvent été mal positionnée et du coup son effet a été minoré. En effet, les termes initiaux du débat entre des auteurs comme Sanchez, Mahoney, Langlois, Ulrich… et ceux défendant l’hypothèse CoPS (Prencipe, Pavitt, Brusoni, Hobday, Sako, Fujimoto…) se sont noués autour d’une analyse de l’architecture produit en elle-même, dont il s’agissait de débattre de son éventuelle généralisation à tous les produits d’assemblage. Ce faisant, l’enjeu crucial était passé sous silence : dans l’automobile, l’enjeu n’est pas de bâtir une architecture produit pure au sens d’Ulrich (1995), mais de tendre vers des principes organisationnels et technologiques de mise en hiérarchie emboîtée des sous-systèmes. Plus que l’objectif final, ce qui guide le comportement des acteurs depuis deux décennies désormais, c’est le processus de hiérarchisation des éléments constitutifs.
67 Ce processus est né pour répondre à des objectifs d’optimisation de production, relayés ensuite, plutôt à l’initiative des mega-suppliers, par des objectifs d’optimisation de la conception des sous-systèmes, et c’est seulement de nos jours que commence à émerger sous l’impulsion de VW et de PSA une nouvelle forme plus conforme à la modularité connue dans l’informatique : une architecture produit véritablement modulaire à partir d’une plate-forme mondiale répondant aux besoins de gérer plusieurs marques opérées sur l’ensemble des continents.
68 Dans cette perspective, la modularisation a constitué un vecteur majeur d’une externalisation croissante en production, chez tous les constructeurs, et en conception avec des degrés plus variables selon les firmes. Ce mouvement a bouleversé l’industrie amont en favorisant l’émergence puis le renforcement de mega-suppliers qui à leur tour ont déstabilisé les tissus productifs nationaux en évinçant une partie des PME sous-traitantes et en internationalisant leur propre appareil productif désormais organisé selon une division internationale des processus productifs facilitant les délocalisations dans les pays à bas coûts et le recours à la sous-traitance internationale.
69 Les deux phases antérieures ont permis de développer de forts apprentissages organisationnels et technologiques sur ce qu’est une automobile modulaire et de mieux cerner ses limites (résistance sur l’intégrité du produit, difficulté à couvrir l’ensemble des préférences hétérogènes des consommateurs). C’est pour dépasser ces limites qu’une nouvelle génération de plate-forme modularisée émerge. Mais son avenir demeure incertain. En effet, l’industrie automobile s’est par le passé montrée rétive à l’adoption d’un modèle organisationnel unique (Freyssenet et al., 2000) ; la différenciation des modèles productifs (Boyer, Freyssenet, 2000) est un trait récurrent de cette industrie parce que les manières d’appréhender les marchés et les manières de nouer des compromis de gouvernement diffèrent selon les stratégies des dirigeants et le contexte dans lequel les entreprises évoluent. Construire une plate-forme modulaire mondiale n’est qu’une des manières de répondre au défi de l’internationalisation des marchés et de rechercher des économies d’échelle, de gamme et de substitution. Outre que tous les constructeurs ne possèdent pas toutes les compétences requises pour développer une telle architecture, la dépendance du sentier d’ordre technologique que fait peser une telle architecture sur la trajectoire d’évolution du produit (nécessairement incrémentale par définition) suggère que des constructeurs proposant des produits intégraux spécifiquement conçus pour un segment de marché ciblé seront mieux à même de satisfaire des préférences des consommateurs nécessairement
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évolutives et/ou d’intégrer de manière performante les innovations technologiques. Ainsi, si l’automobile se modularise depuis la fin des années 1990, il est fort probable qu’une architecture complètement modulaire ne s’imposera pas avant de nombreuses années.
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NOTES
1. La notion de plate-forme dans l’automobile correspond à l’architecture générale du produit, son système de propulsion (moteur et transmission) et son soubassement (essieux, liaison au sol…). 2. L’histoire du site PSA Sochaux illustre bien cette modernité du couple compacité/ externalisation qui succède au modèle des méga-usines intégrées verticalement (Belot, Lamard, 2007). 3. Il serait trop long d’établir la chronique des fusions/acquisitions : sur la période 1989-2003, nous avons recensé 953 opérations de fusions/acquisitions réalisées par les 30 plus importants fournisseurs de l’époque. Le français Faurecia, neuvième équipementier mondial actuellement, peut illustrer ce fait : il naît de la fusion de Ecia et Faure en 1998, s’est développé en achetant l’américain APAS en 1999 pour 340 M$, puis le français Sommer Allibert en 2001 (1,5 Mds€), l’américain EMCON technologies en 2009 (350 M$) et l’allemand Plastal en 2010 (49,9 M€) pour se limiter à ces principales opérations. 4. Pour ne citer que les cinq plus importants mega-suppliers mondiaux (nous considérons uniquement ici leurs ventes automobiles en première monte en 2011) : Bosch 34,5 Mds€ (soit une croissance depuis 1999 de 121 %) ; Denso 32,8 Mds€ (+161 %) ; Continental 24,8 Mds€ (+410 %) ; AisinSeiki 24,6 Mds€ (+227 %) ; Magna 23,6 Mds (+162 %). Source : base de données auteurs à partir données AutomotivesNews. 5. Selon la FIEV, depuis le pic de 2002, 47 000 emplois ont disparu dans l’industrie équipementière française (-36 %). Si on prend les effectifs inscrits des mega-suppliers français, Valeo a supprimé 9 160 emplois en France entre 2002 et 2010 (-38,8 %) alors qu’il les augmentait de 4 792 en Europe de l’Est (+99,8 %) ; Faurecia a parallèlement supprimé 9 965 emplois en France (-40,5 %) alors qu’il construisait de nouvelles unités en Europe de l’Est. 6. Chez PSA, la plate-forme se nomme EMP2, introduite en 2013 pour la C4 Picasso et Peugeot 308. L’architecture prévoit un bloc amont unique et s’articule autour de trois couples de modules définissant la spécificité des véhicules selon un principe annoncé de plug and play : bloc arrière court/long ; poste de conduite haut/bas ; train arrière multibras/traverse déformable ; groupe moto propulseur/adaptation GMP. Grâce à ce jeu de substitution, la plate-forme permettra de
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construire des SUV, berlines courtes et longues, monospaces, véhicules utilitaires. Si PSA semble aller pour l’instant moins loin que VW dans l’intersegment, la trajectoire est néanmoins proche. 7. L’industrie distingue 8 segments : A [ex. chez Peugeot : 107], A-électrique [Ion], B [206/207/208], C [301/307/308], D [408/5008/405/407], E [807/508], Media van [Boxer], Small van [Bipper/Partner/Expert], SUV [3008/4007/4008]). 8. Nous simplifions ici quelque peu, car les modèles Dacia sont vendus sous la marque Renault dans plusieurs pays pour des raisons d’image. 9. Les économies de substitution découlent de la possibilité d’intégrer au produit des éléments déjà développés, testés et industrialisées antérieurement. C’est un des grands avantages des architectures modulaires que d’augmenter la réutilisation d’éléments préalablement conçus pour un nouveau projet (Garud, Kumaraswamy, 1995).
RÉSUMÉS
L’objectif de cet article est d’expliquer pourquoi et comment le développement d’une architecture produit modulaire transforme l’organisation des industries. À partir de l’exemple de l’automobile, nous montrons que la mise en modularité du design du produit est venue impacter la trajectoire de l’industrie chez les constructeurs (mouvement de désintégration verticale, réorganisations internes), chez les preneurs d’ordres (émergence d’une nouvelle classe d’équipementiers) et à l’inter-firmes (nouvelles formes de relations verticales et division internationale du travail). Les restructurations de l’industrie automobile ces dernières années sont ainsi reliées à la modification endogène des caractéristiques techniques des produits, ce qui au niveau théorique vient étayer l’hypothèse miroir développée par Colfer et Baldwin. Dans la dernière partie, nous expliquons qu’une nouvelle période modulaire est en cours d’ouverture chez certains constructeurs et nous évaluons de manière critique la portée de cette nouvelle phase.
In this paper, we explain why and how the adoption of a modular product-architecture transforms the organisation of industry. Considering the auto industry, we show that modularity-as-process transforms the overall automobile industry: carmakers, suppliers and buyer/suppliers relationships. Modularity-as- process is a key driver of carmakers’ vertical disintegration, growth of suppliers and emergence of mega- suppliers, international division of labour and delocalizations. This single-industry case study provides some evidences of the ‘mirroring’ hypothesis (Colfer and Baldwin). In the last part of the paper, we stress that some carmakers develop a new generation of modular platforms. We examine their motivations but also the limits of these platforms and the risk of new unfilled promises.
INDEX
Keywords : Modularity, Modularisation, Industries Transformations, Mirroring Hypothesis, Technology-Organisation Relationship Mots-clés : automobile, modularité, modularisation, restructuration des industries, hypothèse miroir, relation technologie-organisation
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AUTEURS
VINCENT FRIGANT GREThA UMR CNRS 5113, Université de Bordeaux
BERNARD JULLIEN GERPISA-ENS Cachan
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Reshoring: Opportunities and Limits for Manufacturing in the UK – the case of the Auto Sector
David Bailey and Lisa De Propris
1. Introduction
1 In recent years, ‘offshoring’ and ‘outsourcing’ have transformed fundamentally nationally based auto sectors into global networks of design, production and distribution across the global value chains coordinated by the major automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). As manufacturing activities tended to be shifted to low-labour cost locations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, high-end design, R&D, product development have stayed anchored mostly to high-cost and high knowledge-intensive home economy locations (perhaps with the except of some design and styling activities which are often located in major end markets around the world).
2 However, very recently the weaknesses of and risks inherent in such global value chains (GVCs) have been exposed, triggering attempts to rethink their nature and also raising possibilities to reshore some manufacturing activities to ‘home’ countries. A combination of a more competitive exchange rate (despite the very recent appreciation of sterling), increased transport costs, rising wages in key areas of China, and a greater awareness of supply chain resilience have all contributed to a perceived change in some business ‘fundamentals’. The potential for some supply chain relocalisation also links in with the ‘servitisation’ of manufacturing including the auto sector and shift to a hybrid model where manufacturing and services are increasingly intertwined. However, there are limits as to how far this can go and these raise some important questions and issues over the possible role for industrial policy.
3 The paper traces ‘reshoring’ trends in manufacturing and in particular in the auto sector and explores what are the implications for the UK given the apparent desire of government to ‘rebalance’ its economy towards a more desirable coupling of manufacturing and services. The paper will proceed as follows. Section 2 presents some
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general recent trends on ‘reshoring’ comparing US and UK. Section 3 will ‘drill down’ into his phenomenon and explore the drivers behind reshoring and what bottlenecks or limits it faces in particular in the auto sector. Section 4 will conclude by discussing what lessons to be learnt from the UK case and by formulating some policy implications.
2. Homeward bound?
4 ‘Offshoring’ and ‘outsourcing’ have dominated much of the discourse on British manufacturing over the last decade, with many UK-based manufacturing firms shifting sourcing to low-labour cost locations such as China, with the latter running hefty trade surpluses with the UK. The two terms have often – albeit mistakably – been used interchangeably since the process of outsourcing has proceeded alongside that one of offshoring, i.e. the relocation of manufacturing tasks mostly to East Asia driven by cost- saving strategies. However, the two have quite different meanings. The disintegration of the production process in the post-Fordist era has been driven by efficiency gains related to external and agglomeration economies that required nevertheless geographical proximity. This is evidenced by the huge literature on clusters and industrial districts that has developed since the 1990s (Becattini et al., 2009). The offshoring of outsourced manufacturing functions coincided with either the choice of cheaper suppliers located in lower labour cost countries or the shift of production activities to the same lower labour costs countries through foreign direct investment. Between the 1990s and 2000s, Asia, and China in particular, became the ‘workshop of the world’.
5 However, in recent years this shift of activity overseas has cooled and there have been some tentative signs of ‘reshoring’, in certain sectors at least, as the factors which propelled such outward shifts, notably low labour costs, have been eroded. A number of other reasons also have contributed to change the perceived benefits of offshoring and have alternatively exposed its costs. Some of these costs are related to exchange rates uncertainty, volatile transportation costs, rising wages overseas not matched by equal rises in productivity, and inventory or supply rigidities associated with the physical distance across stages in the value chain. In addition this this, there has been greater awareness of the cost of supply chain disruptions. All this has contributed to a perceived change in some business ‘fundamentals’ as firms re-evaluate their cost calculations.
2.1. US Experience and Debates
6 The policy debate around reshoring has been especially lively in the US where a concert of opinion leaders has advocated for an explicit policy commitment to re-invigorate the US manufacturing sector. Here, the repatriation of manufacturing jobs has been driven by changes in the global economy, in particular in China, as well as by domestic pull factors (see Sirkin et al., 2011, 2012). On this, the attraction of offshoring has recently faded due to the erosion of some Asian economies’ key location competitive advantages. These includerising wages in key areas of China where the differential between US and Chinese wages narrowed from 1/40 to 1/10 in 2012 (Dolega, 2012). In addition to this, the Renminbi is judged still to be undervalued and it is expected to
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appreciate eroding further China’s cost advantage; at the same time, the US government policy of devaluing the dollar to ease exports is also favouring local production by domestically located firms. Companies could also be seeking the next cheap production location that may be shifting around Asia in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. The geographical reconfiguration of global value chains within Asia would be an option for firms if it was not for other crucial pull and push factors that are somewhat attracting activities back ‘home’ for some multinational firms. Indeed, transport costs have risen substantially in recent years due to higher energy costs, and more importantly firms are increasingly appreciating the pecuniary costs derived from the time lag in shipping, inventory costs and loss of flexibility. Overall, a Deloitte (2009) report suggests that the cost gap between US and China narrowed from 32% to 17%.
7 At the same time, the 2008 financial and economic recession has highlighted the difficulty of some advanced western economies in ‘kick-starting’ their economies in the presence of a very small tradable sector, namely manufacturing. The US government articulated a manufacturing friendly strategy that included tax relief and cheap energy that gave impetus to the pull factors attracting reshoring activities. These included the availability of US talent with a 30% wage reduction, better IP protection and quality control and short lead time along the value chain (ibid.).
8 The policy commitment to manufacturing in the wake of the economic crisis resonated well with the public perception that manufacturing is important: indeed a survey carried out by Deloitte-MI Report (2009) found that for 80% of respondents manufacturing was judged to be important to guarantee US living standards and economic prosperity; and two third therefore supported the position of the government of investing in it and taking a strategic approach towards it (ibid.). A recent report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG, 2013) found that of the US companies surveyed, the proportion of them considering repatriation has grown from 37% in 2012 to 54% in 2013. The bold estimate is that by 2020, higher U.S. exports, combined with production work that will likely be reshored from China, could create 2.5 million to 5 million American factory and service jobs associated with increased manufacturing. Newspaper scouting is still a good way to find out what activities US firms are actually reshoring. Examples of this includes K’Nex, the toy manufacturer; Trellis Earth Products, makers of bioplastic goods such as bags and utensils; Handful, a bra manufacturer; General Electric, which moved manufacturing of washing machines, fridges and heaters from China to Kentucky; Google, which is making Nexus Q, a new media streamer, in San Jose and reshored from China and Mexico to Ohio and Michigan. These are just to mention few.
2.2. UK Experience and Debates
9 In the UK debate, the policy debate around manufacturing reshoring has been linked to the broader post-recession discourse on ‘rebalancing the UK economy’. The term rebalancing here was meant in relation to an attempt to tackle the painful consequences on the ‘manufacturing hollowing out’ of the 1980s and 1990s and to increase the weight of the tradable sectors, namely manufacturing, in an economy dominated by services. This process is evidenced by the drop in manufacturing employment during the two decades that was worse for the UK than other European economies, especially Germany, Italy and Finland which maintained a share of manufacturing employment
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around 20% of total employment. Only the US experienced a contraction of manufacturing employment comparable to the UK. Equally UK and US – together with France – are the only advanced economies that have witnessed the erosion of manufacturing GVA contribution to the total economy. The unhealthy dominance of finance and retailing in the UK economy has been made worse by the fact that what is left in term of manufacturing sectors is foreign owned due to the passive sale of valuable chunks of the UK manufacturing base over the very same period.
Figure 1. Manufacturing Share of Total Employment
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Figure 2. Manufacturing as a Share of GVA
10 The possibility of reshoring the sourcing of manufacturing production back in the UK presents appealing prospects for two orders of reasons. Firstly, it is perceived as a way of possibly addressing the issue of rebuilding some of the UK’s fractured supply chains. Secondly, there is the associated hope that it could contribute to ‘re-populating’ the UK’s business ‘underwood’ with domestic small and medium sized firms in the manufacturing supply chain, in the past squeezed out by financialised large corporations. Indeed, both have been identified by researchers – such as those at the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) – as a key weakness of the UK’s manufacturing base. Froud et al. (2011), for example, note that in the UK’s largely foreign owned branch assembly plants, broken supply chains effectively undermine high British content and limit domestic backward linkages.
11 The danger here, however, is that attempting to foster ‘rebalancing’ and manufacturing revival is superficially attractive but could simply mean more assembly in the UK, with increased spending on components and other intermediate products then leaking abroad. In a recent paper, CRESC notes that in the case of JCB, where the British content of its diggers declined from 96% by value in 1979 to just 36% by 2010. Another example highlighted by CRESC is the case of Bombardier in the train industry; while arguing for a more sophisticated government procurement policy to support jobs at Bombardier jobs, it also stresses the effects of broken supply chains which limit the upstream national benefits of the firm’s activities in the UK (Froud et al., 2011a).
12 Of course, increased international trade coordinated by multinational firms across borders has been a key feature of the ‘deeper’ form of globalisation witnessed in recent years, that has led to more sourcing of components by manufacturers across borders through foreign direct investment or outsourcing arrangements. The CRESC research is however especially interesting in highlighting that the trend of overseas sourcing from UK based firms has been especially pronounced. In British machinery and vehicles
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some 50% of intermediate purchases are imported as against just 30% in Germany where the propensity to import is much lower (Froud et al., 2011). The implication of this is that German supply chains are closer to home especially for the higher value added functions which are also the most costly. This suggests more effective control over the supply chain in relation to technology and quality, but more importantly the opportunity for domestic small and medium sized firms to constantly – albeit indirectly – connect globally. In contrast, the aggressive offshoring of large chunks of supply chains across UK manufacturing has caused deep fractures in supply chains.
13 More recently, however, given the changes in cost calculations noted earlier, British OEMs had begun to re-evaluate the nature of GVCs. For example, an Engineering Employers’ Federation (EEF) survey found that even during the 2008-2009 recession some 60% of British firms had concerns over the vulnerabilities of overseas suppliers, as against 20% being concerned over domestic suppliers. Not surprisingly, around two thirds of firms had re-evaluated their supply chains to minimise such risks, with some bringing production back to the UK and other sourcing more components locally.
14 Yet more firms would ‘buy British’ if the components were available from local suppliers, and if end users and component suppliers could be ‘matched up’ in the UK, thereby offering the potential for some supply chain activity to be repatriated. Rebuilding supply chains locally can also offer customers greater flexibility and reliability in production. This issue of reliable delivery was highlighted in a 2007 EEF survey; high-technology firms in particular saw logistics as a key competitive strength, and the auto and electronics sectors saw this as increasingly important in the future (EEF, 2007). This should not be a surprise, as proximity often matters in just-in-time processes. A more recent EEF (2011) survey of 150 firms found that in the wake of recent supply chain disruptions, two fifths of companies were bringing some production back in house, and one quarter had increased their use of local suppliers.
15 The potential for some supply chain relocalisation also links in with the ‘servitisation’ of manufacturing and shift to a hybrid model where manufacturing and services are increasingly intertwined. As Merlin-Jones (2012) notes, many British manufacturers have been well placed to develop the sort of services and system solutions that end users are looking for, and this is one way in which they can differentiate themselves from rivals. This in turn could offer the prospect of such firms co-locating such activities so as to maximise the quality of offering to customers in the UK and Europe, giving ‘onshorers’ a potential competitive advantage.
3. The automotive global value chian
3.1. Long-term Trends: Offshoring and Outsourcing
16 As noted, we have in fact seen a number of GVC trends – including offshoring and outsourcing – which have effectively combined to threaten established automotive production systems and GVCs such as that in the UK. Under the ‘lean manufacturing’ model OEMs have for some years demanded high ‘QCD’ (quality, cost and delivery) performance and have sought to deal with fewer suppliers to ease coordination costs in managing the supply chain (in effect passing these on to first tier suppliers). This longer-term outsourcing trend by OEMs was also illustrated by a number of OEMs spinning off their internal parts divisions as global players in their own right (see Ford
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and GM with Delphi and Visteon respectively) from the late 1990s onwards (Sturgeon et al., 2008), although not without significant challenges. The overall effect has been to force suppliers to become ‘world class’, leading to a wave of consolidation similar to that for OEMs, with first tier suppliers taking on greater R&D roles (Bergner, 2000) and, in some cases, responsibility for whole systems (e.g., drives or steering), modules (e.g., interiors, ‘front ends’ or ‘corners’) or even assembly work. Such first tier suppliers in turn exert greater power over lower level suppliers (McIvor et al., 1998) as they themselves outsource a range of design and development functions. Thus a ‘post- Japanisation’ phase characterised as ‘at supplier cost’ has arguably emerged where innovative capability is required at all levels in the GVC (Wells and Rawlinson, 1994).
17 In addition, as noted above, the internationalisation of component sourcing by assemblers has accelerated. Thus, GKN, one of the largest suppliers based in the UK, had by the late 1990s shifted over 80% of its purchasing outside the UK (Financial Times, 24/6/99). Of course modularisation, and the outsourcing of bulky components, inevitably resulted in major first tier often suppliers setting up in geographic proximity to the vehicle makers. Thus the list of major suppliers was replicated in most automotive regions including where new assembly capacity was built such as in Central and Eastern Europe, China and India. However, component sourcing for these plants enabled low cost imports to Western Europe and actually changed the supply ‘filière’ (Lagendijk, 1997). Those local firms, for example in the UK,that concentrated on high volume, single material and single process parts were at particular risk in this scenario. As Larsson (2002) noted, first tier suppliers had little incentive to source components locally for the modules they prepare for the OEMs. Indeed, Sturgeon et al. (2008) highlighted that (first tier) suppliers with global operations were able to focus the production of high volume key components in a few locations and then transport these parts close to the OEMs’ final assembly plants (which are located near to the end market). Here sub-systems and modules were completed for and moved to the proximate assembly plants of the OEMs.
18 A number of key points should be highlighted from these long term trends in the auto industry. Firstly, increasingly global sourcing, and a shift to lower wage cost locations, threatened established automotive ‘clusters’ such as that the West Midlands (during the 2000s the collapse of MG Rover and the closure of the Peugeot plant in Coventry and the shift to smaller scale higher-value production was itself evidence of this). Secondly, even major firms were put under intense pressure given the rising costs of new model development, necessitating large scale production, platform sharing strategies and/or joint ventures in order to survive. Thirdly, at the local level, local production systems range from low-tech ‘metal bashing’ to high-tech composite materials, engines and environmental technologies, with a series of interlinked networks ranging from local supply to GVCs dominated by the big players with technological ‘pipeline’ connections to other connections. This is indicative of the broader nature of the auto industry; as Sturgeon et al. (2008) indicate, it “is clustered and dispersed, rooted and footloose. The industry can be usefully conceived of as a network of clusters” whilst recognising the significance of structures operating at the continental-scale region. In this connection, Yeon Kim and McCann (2008) argue that regions which benefit from the immigration of integrated supply-chain networks will tend to maintain their advantageous position over time, as such clustered systems will be less sensitive to factor price variations than standalone facilities in other locations.
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For such ‘winning’ regions, this is a positive development. However, on the downside, those regions which lose such supply-chain systems, as has been the case in recent decades in many parts of the US, UK and Australia, the prospects for redeveloping such systems via policy initiatives looked limited, until relatively recently at least.
3.2. Recent shifts – Towards Reshoring?
19 These longer terms trends left a UK automotive industry with fractured supply chains. Thus while the news in 2012 of GM’s Ellesmere Port being ‘saved’ from closure after a landmark deal on flexibility and wages was welcome, it was reported that only 25% of the components going into the Astra cars assembled at Ellesmere Port actually came from the UK. This puts into stark view how fractured and weakened local supply chains have become as GM – like other assemblers – had shifted sourcing out of the UK. That needs to change if the UK is genuinely to engage in a process of ‘rebalancing’, and there is a degree of optimism that this could be possible if a more supportive policy regime is adopted. Under GM’s latest plans for the plant, costs will be reduced by running three shifts a day, increasing output, more flexible working but also by sourcing more parts locally in the UK – a very recent trend given higher transport costs making local sourcing a more competitive option. In fact, Ellesmere Port was seen as vulnerable to possible closure in part precisely because it had become dependent on sourcing a large proportion of components from mainland Europe and exports assembled cars back to the continent. As well as a major effort by workers and unions to work flexibly in order to save the plant, government support was also important, and the challenge for the future is to use that support so as to foster spillovers in terms of wider capacity building in the supply chain.
20 Of course, auto firms will still look to establish new production facilities overseas when they are expanding into new markets (such as Jaguar Land Rover expanding into the Indian and Chinese markets) but there appears to be less impetus to then import the goods produced back to the UK. In fact, repatriating activity – including some sourcing – to the UK is very much on the agenda, although the debate has yet to catch up with that in the United States where it has become a major policy issue (Financial Times, 20 May 2012). In this sense the UK needs to consider how it can tailor an industrial policy focused on building manufacturing capacity, particularly in the supply chain.
21 In the last few years, there appears to be a real opportunity to rebuild some of the UK’s fractured automotive supply chains given recent shifts in exchange rates, transport costs, rising wages overseas and heightened concerns over supply chain resilience. There have been a number of cases of auto supply chain firms winning back orders that had previously gone overseas. Furthermore, the ‘resilience’ issue has had particular resonance in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Toyota for example was much more dependent on Japan for car assembly and component sourcing, and fared less well in the wake of the disaster than Nissan which had shifted more production nearer to end markets and which had second-sourcing options through its tie-up with Renault. In the wake of the tragedy, Toyota has shifted more production to Europe, and in so doing has favoured the UK. However, there are severe limits as to how far this can go, particularly given issues over access to finance for smaller firms, and challenges in finding skilled workers, one of the key messages emerging is that this
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is not going to happen on a significant scale without a major policy effort, as has been recognised in the US.
22 On the latter, the current UK Coalition government has made a start through its £125 million Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) to help develop local suppliers around the UK’s major manufacturers (including auto). The fund is aimed at supply chain companies and can be used for capital expenditure, skills and training, and R&D projects. The scheme aims to build on an earlier auto-focused Regional Growth Fund bid by several Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). While a welcome start, the overall amount of funding on offer, £125 million, is limited, and due to the minimum project threshold value of £2 million, bids often need to be from several companies clustering together. Extending the scheme so that smaller firms can directly access the support available seems critical, especially when the lack of access to finance is a major issue for such firms.
23 Another interesting effort to reshore auto component sourcing is the work undertaken by the Automotive Council (the joint industry-Government partnership) to map the supply chain’s relative competitiveness and to identify opportunities where capabilities can be retained and built upon, looking at manufacturers’ sourcing ‘wish lists’, and where suppliers envisage growth. Its 2011 report (Holweg et al., 2011) identified over £1 billion worth of potential contracts which auto manufacturers would like to place in the UK. Building on such trends, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has tried to bring together assemblers and suppliers to see how they can be ‘matched up’. The Automotive Council released a 2012 update which identified some £3 billion of new purchasing opportunities for the UK based supply chain (Automotive Council, 2012). As the Automotive Council found, the main reason why auto assemblers purchase in the UK is proximity (including lower logistics cost, the configuration of parts, and the support of UK-built vehicles). But quite what components suppliers consider as their competitive advantage, and whether that matches what assemblers think, is far less clear. More broadly, the work of the Council can be seen as a good example of how industrial policy can help firms and government together learn about underlying costs and opportunities and engage in strategic coordination. Such activities could usefully be extended, both in the auto case and to other industries (think of the Marine Industries Leadership Council, the Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum or the Aerospace Business Leaders group), with such groups helping to identify key fractures in industry supply chains and how to address them.
24 This is no longer about industrial policy ‘picking winners’ but helping the private sector identify weaknesses and then addressing them, and ties in with perspectives on industrial policy as a process of discovery requiring strategic collaboration between the private sector and the state in unlocking growth opportunities (see Rodrik, 2008). Under this approach, industrial and regional policies which facilitate this process of discovery through strategic collaboration are seen as relevant and require appropriate institutions to engender this. However, in this regard, there is a noted institutional and capacity failure at the national level in England through the lack of resources to design industrial policy interventions (see Froud et al., 2011b, p. 20). Most recently, given the capacity constraints of many Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) outside of major UK cities, there would therefore appear to be a role for an intermediate tier in terms of industrial and regional policy development (see IPPR and Northern Economic Futures Commission, 2012). Similarly, Aiginger (2007) characterises ‘systemic industrial policy’
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as that which “goes beyond combating market failures. It acknowledges limited knowledge of policy makers, mutual learning and co-operation between firms, institutions and government” (Aiginger, 2007: 297). In this sense, commonly adopted definitions of industrial policy may be seen as too narrow, and there is a need to recognise that ‘good practice’ industrial policy is much more ‘holistic’ in its approach and focuses simultaneously on both demand and supply side factors of industrial development.
25 Overall, the UK automotive sector offers a good example of what can be done, up to a point. Take the case of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) setting up a new engine plant in the West Midlands (itself a local ‘win’ – the investment could have gone overseas). While the plant itself will create up to 1500 jobs directly, critical will be maximising the benefits for the supply chain and the wider economy. The new plant will require components from the auto components industry, creating new jobs in the supply chain. Suppliers with expertise in areas such as gears and engine controls, right through to specialists in castings, valve systems and fluid transmission could potentially benefit. Quite how many jobs will be created in the supply chain will depend on how much JLR will source locally, and on that is still very early days. JLR itself has simply said – realistically – that ‘hundreds’ of jobs are likely to be generated in the wider economy. The Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) is already trying to raise awareness in component manufacturers so that they are in a position to bid for new orders. But even if successful such firms need access to finance to gear up to produce and access to skilled workers.
26 Critically, access to finance remains a major issue for many firms in the auto supply chain and, no doubt, in other manufacturing sectors. The Smith Institute and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (Rumfitt, 2012) recently highlighted a ‘window of opportunity’ to create thousands of new jobs in the auto supply sector but that access to finance remained a real problem which was effectively thwarting the realisation of such potential. Drawing on a major survey of firms operating at different levels in the UK auto supply chain, the report found some 60% of firms were aspiring to grow in the future, one third so rapidly (ibid.). But they faced significant financial challenges, including: relationships with the banks; a gap in growth finance (many have to fund investment through internal cashflow); problems in funding tooling development costs; payment and finance across the supply chain; and the nature of SME owner mangers. The report stresses that, on the whole, banks have a poor understanding of the sector. In tackling such issues, the report calls for a ‘step change’ in the engagement of the UK financial sector with the automotive industry, a bringing together and streamlining of financial initiatives by the government, a new taskforce to look at finance for tooling up, a move towards more long-term policy arrangements to make sure finance is available, and for owner managers to better assess the range of financial support available, with outside help where needed (ibid.).
27 More generally, in auto the UK could learn from policy initiatives in the US where,as noted above, the government has been active in encouraging US-based manufacturing firms to relocate some activities back to the US. Earlier this year President Obama created tax incentives that for example offered a 20% income tax credit to allow for the expenses of shifting operations back to the US. The US government has also funded a ‘Reshoring Initiative’, including an online costs calculator, based on the premise that manufacturers able to calculate costs more fully are more likely to outsource to
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domestic firms rather than overseas. Possibilities for repatriation of manufacturing to the UK and Europe may be more limited, as the Boston Consulting Group has concluded, in part because the wage cost differential (adjusted for productivity) between Europe and China may not be close enough to create a ‘tipping point’ in some sectors as in the US. But this still raises the issue of what policy can do to push the process along as far as possible. That’s not going to be easy, and means recognising that smaller firms often followed larger firms in offshoring production as they wanted to be near their customers. So attracting them back means relocating not just individual firms but whole segments of the supply chain, and means support for smaller firms especially which face high costs when moving operations.
28 While we have seen some welcome moves by the government in encouraging the process, these have been small scale and often don’t reach smaller firms in particular. A much more concerted effort is needed as part of a wider industrial policy that looks to build manufacturing capacity. That means one that backs investment in new technologies (for example through better capital allowances), that provides accessible finance for small and medium sized firms, that backs high growth firms and exporters, that encourages manufacturers to increase output and employment through tax breaks, and which supports better skills formation. Overall, there appears to be a real opportunity to rebuild some of the UK’s fractured manufacturing supply chains given recent shifts in exchange rates, transport costs, rising wages overseas and heightened concerns over supply chain resilience. But the key message is that this is not going to happen on a significant scale without a major policy effort, as has been recognised in the US.
4. Conclusions
29 In recent years, ‘offshoring’ and ‘outsourcing’ have transformed previously nationally based auto sectors into global networks of design, production and distribution across the global value chains coordinated by the major automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). As manufacturing activities have shifted to low-labour cost locations in Central and eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America, high-end design, R&D, product development have stayed anchored in the main to high-cost and high knowledge-intensive home economy locations (perhaps with the except of some design and styling activities which are often located in major end markets around the world). However, very recently the weaknesses of and risks inherent in such global value chains (GVCs) have been highlighted, stimulating a reassessment of their nature and also raising possibilities of ‘reshoring’ or ‘onshoring’ some manufacturing activities to ‘home’ countries. In the UK, a combination of a more competitive exchange rate (despite the very recent appreciation of sterling), increased transport costs, rising wages in key areas of China, and a greater awareness of supply chain resilience have all contributed to a perceived change in some business ‘fundamentals’. The potential for some supply chain relocalisation also links in with the trend of the ‘servitisation’ of manufacturing including the auto sector and shift to a hybrid model where manufacturing and services are increasingly intertwined.
30 However, despite hopes for ‘reshoring’ to contribute to a ‘rebalancing’ of the UK economy, particularly with regard to the auto industry, we argue that there are severe limits as to how far this can go. In particular, firms in the automotive sector face a
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number of barriers to repatriating activity, in regard to issues relating to finance and skills, especially in the context of deep fractures in the supply chain. Despite some recent policy successes in the case of the UK’s automotive policy, addressing such issues requires a more proactive and holistic view of industrial policy for rebalancing the economy than has been recognised thus far.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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IPPR and the NORTHERN ECONOMIC FUTURES COMMISSION (2012), Northern prosperity is national prosperity: a strategy for revitalising the UK economy, London: Institute for Public Policy Research.
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MERLIN-JONES, D. (2012), The Boomerang Economy: Why British offshored manufacturers are returning home and how to encourage this further. London: Civitas.
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RUMFITT, ANDREW (2012), Give them some Credit! A survey of the barriers to funding the UK’s auto supply chain. The Smith Institute and & the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
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SIRKIN, H. L., ZINSER, M., HOHNER, D., & ROSE, J. (2012), U.S. Manufacturing Nears the Tipping Point: Which Industries, Why, and How Much? Boston Consulting Group.
STURGEON, T., VAN BIESEBROECK, J., & GEREFFI, G. (2008), “Value Chains, Networks and Clusters: Reframing the Global Automotive Industry”, Journal of Economic Geography, Vol. 8, No. 3, 345-367.
WELLS, P. & RAWLINSON, M. (1994), The New European Automobile Industry, New York: St Martin’s Press.
ABSTRACTS
In recent years, ‘offshoring’ and ‘outsourcing’ have transformed fundamentally nationally based auto sectors into global networks of design, production and distribution across the global value chains coordinated by the major automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). As manufacturing activities tended to be shifted to low-labour cost locations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, high-end design, R&D, product development have stayed anchored mostly to high-cost and high knowledge-intensive home economy locations (perhaps with the except of some design and styling activities which are often located in major end markets around the world. However, very recently the weaknesses of and risks inherent in such global value chains (GVCs) have been exposed, triggering attempts to rethink their nature and also raising possibilities to reshore some manufacturing activities to ‘home’ countries. A combination of a more competitive exchange rate (despite the very recent appreciation of sterling), increased transport costs, rising wages in key areas of China, and a greater awareness of supply chain resilience have all contributed to a perceived change in some business ‘fundamentals’. The potential for some supply chain relocalisation also links in with the ‘servitisation’ of manufacturing including the auto sector and shift to a hybrid model where manufacturing and services are increasingly intertwined. However, there are limits as to how far this can go and these raise some important questions and issues over the possible role for industrial policy.
Ces dernières années, l’offshoring et l’outsourcing ont transformé les secteurs nationaux de l’automobile en des réseaux mondiaux de design, de production et de distribution, à travers des chaînes globales de valeur coordonnées par les constructeurs. Alors que les activités manufacturières tendaient à être délocalisées dans les pays à bas coût de main-d’œuvre en Asie, en Afrique et en Amérique Latine, les fonctions de design, de R&D et du développement des produits sont restées principalement ancrées dans les pays d’origine, aux coûts élevés et à forte intensité de connaissances (excepté quelques activités de design spécifiques aux marchés finaux).
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Très récemment les faiblesses et risques de ces chaînes globales de valeur ont été mis en évidence, impliquant leur redéfinition et des mouvements inverses de « reshoring » dans les pays d’origine. La combinaison d’un taux de change plus compétitif (en dépit de l’appréciation de la livre Sterling), de coûts de transport plus élevés, de salaires croissants dans des zones clés de la Chine, et la nécessaire résilience des chaînes de fournisseurs ont contribué à une révision des fondamentaux des modèles d’affaire. La question de la relocalisation des chaînes d’approvisionnement est aussi liée à l’importance croissante des services dans les activités manufacturières, y compris l’automobile, et se traduit par celle de la mise en place d’un modèle hybride combinant les activités manufacturières et les services. Ce processus a néanmoins des limites qui soulèvent des questions importantes sur le rôle de la politique industrielle.
INDEX
Keywords: Manufacturing, Reshoring, Onshoring, Global Value Chains, Rebalancing, Automotive Industry Mots-clés: industrie manufacturière, relocalisation, externalisation locale, chaînes de valeur globales, industrie automobile
AUTHORS
DAVID BAILEY Aston Business School [email protected]
LISA DE PROPRIS Birmingham Business School [email protected]
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Interrelated Diversification and Internationalisation: Critical Drives of Global Industries
Mario Davide Parrilli and Jon Mikel Zabala-Iturriagagoitia
1. Introduction
1 We are currently witnessing an international economic situation where new emerging economies are challenging the old global equilibria between the formerly leading Western countries and the rest of the world. In order to gain momentum, Western, and particularly European firms, industries, regions and even countries have to find new ways of competing by adding value to their products (i.e. by means of novelties and higher quality standards), by sophisticating their processes, organisational and commercial structures, and by forming coordinated systems of production and innovation at multiple levels (e.g. local and regional clusters, regional and national innovation systems) (Porter, 1998; Cooke, 2001; Parrilli, 2004; Menzel and Fornhal, 2010; Martin and Sunley, 2011). In this way, some Western economies have to some extent been able to maintain their competitive edge over the past twenty years.
2 However, global dynamics have not only changed as a result of the threats and challenges associated with the economic power of emerging countries. During these last decades the large Western corporations have also internationalized their operations to such an extent that jeopardizes the resilience1 of their local supply chains and production systems. Global or multinational companies are increasingly moving their operations to new markets (e.g. emerging economies) in which the hosts have a leading edge (Dunning, 2008; Elola et al., 2013). This means that Western small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), their local production systems, and their regional innovation systems need to undergo substantial changes as a means to cope with the challenges derived from these global dynamics. This is true in the case of the clusters that are studied in this paper, but the reflections made may also apply to other local
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production systems, particularly across the EU space (Menzel and Fornhal, 2010; Boschma et al., 2013; Elola et al., 2013).
3 The main focus of this paper lies in the local production systems and the SMEs embedded in two clusters located in the Basque Country region: the ‘furniture’ industry and the wind energy sector. The goal of the manuscript is to illustrate the impact of two crucial trends affecting local and regional development. On the one hand, the capacity of local firms and systems to diversify their productions along the ‘related varieties’ angle. On the other, the capacity of local firms to internationalize their operations while keeping their regional innovation system (RIS) active and supportive. This might occur when the RIS is capable of both absorbing knowledge from global innovation networks, and of transferring it to the (regional) firms.
4 The next section introduces the crucial aspects of innovation that are now integrated in a modern approach to innovation (i.e. interactive and systemic). In section 3, we discuss the wider landscape in which the two current industrial trends are identified and discussed, i.e. the integration of industrial opportunities along related varieties and the internationalisation of production and innovation along global value chains and global innovation networks. Section 4 presents two cases selected from the Basque Country in which the previous two trends are shown: the former furniture industry, now integrating more than manufacture of furniture, and the wind energy cluster. Section 5 links the concepts discussed along the paper with the Smart Specialisation Strategies initiative that has in recent years gained considerable attention among European policy makers, in order to provide some policy recommendations as a result of the analysis. A final section of concluding remarks and new research questions closes the paper.
2. The global context and the new challenges
5 The big push to globalisation is driving many firms and industrial sectors to striking changes in their growth prospects. In particular, their own sustainability is at stake since new competitors are coming to the fore with such a strength that allows them to gain important market shares. This presence is in a way shrinking the market available to traditional industries located in Western countries. This is the case of traditional industries such as textiles, clothing, furniture, footwear, tiles, foundries, pulp and paper, plastic and metallic products, machine-tools, etc.
6 As Table 1 shows, East Asian countries have enormously increased their market share, with exports and imports more than 150 times higher than 20 years ago (inter-annual growth rates of about 14%). Noteworthy are also the growth rates observed in low & middle income and South Asian countries. In contrast, the export/import growth for high income countries is four times higher in the same period (Western economies account for inter-annual growth rates around 6%). This might depend either on Western companies facing growing competition from Asian companies (which implies their market shares could shrink in their traditional Western markets), or on Western companies that also have export opportunities in Asian countries, which leads them to rely on the building up of global value chains and global innovation networks, a topic that will be discussed in more depth in the next sections. Overall, the direct effect is that market shares of Western firms and economies are significantly shrinking.
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Table 1. Exports and Imports on a world scale
Exports Imports (current US$ billions) (current US$ billions)
Inter-annual Inter-annual 1990 2010 1990 2010 growth (%) growth (%)
Total 3,473 15,211 7.66 3,551 15,264 7.56
High income 2,903 10,279 6.53 2,992 10,519 6.49
Low & middle income 565 4,929 11.44 547 4,748 11.41
East Asia & Pacific (developing 156 2,282 14.36 161 2,046 13.55 only)
Europe & Central Asia n.a. 830 n.a. n.a. 786 n.a. (developing only)
Latin America & Caribbean 141 862 9.48 119 872 10.47 (developing only)
Middle East & North Africa 76 353 7.98 77 330 7.55 (developing only)
South Asia 28 271 12.02 39 419 10.61
Sub-Saharan Africa (developing 68 333 8.27 58 303 8.62 only)
Source: the World Bank (2013), www.worldbank.org.
7 These new counterparts have acquired an increasing power in global trade, not only by increasing their production facilities and investment agreements, but also in terms of their increasing innovation capacity. This change in world dynamics has had a major effect, with the extension of the G8 group in the wider and inclusive G20, in which a large number of medium-income and low-income countries have been integrated (e.g. China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa, Korea, etc.).
8 Notwithstanding such a big transformation, most lead companies try not to lose their market shares by developing new products and processes which they aim at selling in new and emerging markets. They manage this on the basis of two types of strategies. The first one is the strategic effort in research and development (R&D) and innovation activities more in general, which are considered a priority for upgrading the competitiveness of firms (Griliches, 1979; Rothwell, 1984). This first strategy has a major influence on the production systems of these firms (Lundvall, 1992; Pyke and Sengenberger, 1992), which represent their traditional supply chains and help them retain the advantages of flexibility and fast-to-market processes, socially-embedded cooperation, secrecy on process and product innovation, among others. The second strategy is the internationalisation of production and trade. This strategy is intended to exploit the width of international markets, which also has a direct influence on the previous types of activities, namely R&D and innovation, production value chains and international trade(Dunning, 1988, 2008).
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9 In the next section we will go through these aspects from a more theoretical perspective, before verifying their application in the specific context of two industries in the Basque Country region (section 4).
3. Innovation, knowledge, learning and related- varieties
10 On the basis of this challenging global context, the relevance of innovation as a source of dynamism and economic growth is acknowledged. Many of the current theories and approaches on innovation highlight the difficulties firms often face when generating the technological knowledge required to undertake substantial innovation processes by themselves. Accordingly, firms increasingly need to access external sources of knowledge from other firms or research organisations (e.g. through subcontracting of R&D, technology licensing or bilateral cooperation agreements to name a few).
3.1. Driver I: Innovating through Interrelated Diversification
11 The relevance of external sources of knowledge as determinants of innovation has been emphasized in the literature from a wide variety of approaches. The innovation systems literature highlights innovation as being the result of dynamic social and economic processes based on learning and interaction among actors (Lundvall, 1992). Network theories (Håkansson, 1987) also maintain that companies rarely innovate individually and that the introduction of new products or processes in the market depends on their ability to cooperate with external agents. Similar arguments have also been made from strategic management perspectives, which noted that the search for new ideas, new organisational forms, etc. has gone beyond the boundaries of the organisation (March, 1991). Chesbrough (2003) described this phenomenon as the rise of open innovation modes.
12 One of the key concepts that emerges from the understanding of innovation regarding the internal usability of external knowledge is the ‘absorptive capacity’ (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). These authors noted that internal R&D plays a dual role. On the one hand, it constitutes an essential source of knowledge for innovation. On the other, it increases the company’s ability to identify, assimilate and exploit external knowledge. The empirical studies made in this stream of research illustrate how companies with good levels of absorptive capacity, namely internal R&D capabilities, are more likely to absorb external knowledge through the establishment of cooperation agreements (Vega-Jurado, 2008). These influence the returns these companies get from product and process innovations.
13 The concept of absorptive capacity however suggests that internal capacities can only be improved in the knowledge bases that are relatively close to those available in the firm. In other words, a company will be able to exploit external knowledge as long as the latter knowledge can be identified and assimilated. This has led some scholars to introduce the concept of ‘related variety’ (Frenken et al., 2007). As Asheim et al. (2011) discuss, related variety refers to a set of complementary sectors that share capabilities and competences so that it becomes easier to understand and absorb each other’s knowledge. The underlying idea is that “a region specialising in a particular
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composition of complementary sectors will experience higher growth rates than a region specialising in sectors that do not complement each other” (Frenken et al., 2007: 686). Consequently, related variety driven firms, entrepreneurial ventures, territories, etc. reduce the risk of selecting wrong activities since the existing competences are taken as the point of departure in order to broaden the economic base.
14 The specialisation into certain fields tends to increase the risks associated to potential external shocks due to the lack of diversity. In contrast, one may also argue that the larger the sectoral variety, the higher the probability of promoting economic growth. Accordingly, it has to be taken into account that despite these variety driven spillovers can lead to risk reduction, they may also reduce the probability of getting higher profits. This is what is often known as the ‘unrelated variety’ phenomenon. According to it, when one sector is hit by an economic downturn in a territory with a high degree of unrelated variety, this will not negatively affect the other sectors. Summing up, while unrelated variety safeguards against external shocks, related variety is expected to be beneficial for Jacobs externalities in the form of knowledge spillovers (ibid: 688).
15 Several studies have been conducted on these two concepts, analysing whether territories specialized in certain activities, industries or products (i.e. where related variety is in place) are more conducive to innovation and growth as compared to other locations that count with more diversified industrial structures (i.e. unrelated variety). In this sense, Frenken et al. (2007) found that in the period 1996-2002 Dutch regions with a high degree of related variety showed the highest employment growth rates. Boschma et al. (2011) studied the influence of related variety on regional growth in Spain during the period 1995-2007 with similar results. In fact, their evidence suggests that Spanish provinces with a wide range of related industries tend to show higher economic growth rates. Finally, Saviotti and Frenken (2008) show how related variety in exports is a determinant of GDP per capita and labor productivity growth for OECD countries between 1964 and 2003.
16 From our point of view, these findings seem to reveal that while related variety determines growth in the short run, unrelated variety becomes a determinant of growth in longer time horizons. Making an analogy, in a dry soil a farmer would plant as many different seeds as possible. However, if the same farmer has a fertile soil, he/ she might probably plant similar seeds to those that have already grown. The efficiency in both situations would also be a matter of discussion. In the first case the farmer would get a low efficiency, as his main goal is to be effective in turning the dry soil into a fertile one. In the second situation though, the goal of the farmer would be to be as efficient as possible, as he/she is already aware of the type of plants that may grow under those conditions. We consider more light needs to be shed on the debate between related and unrelated varieties and their positive or negative impact on employment and economic growth. Applying the related varieties rationale to the product and technology life cycles, one may wonder to what extent employment growth could be observed if the dominant industrial sectors in a territory are in a declining process. In the case of old industrial regions then, what would be the most effective strategy, relying on related varieties gaining knowledge from sectors with a similar knowledge base, or trying to diversify as much as possible in an unrelated manner? We will try to address these questions in the concluding section.
17 As we will see in the case of the HABIC cluster (section 4.1), the regional specialisation observed in the furniture industry in the Basque Country, together with the extra-
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regional linkages local firms have, has induced interactive learning and innovation in local firms within this sector. As a result, local actors have been able to apply their knowledge pool in both related and unrelated industries, identifying those opportunities that may be relevant for them, and thus obtaining a diversified but still related variety of products.
3.2. Driver II: Internationalisation of production and global innovation strategies and networks
18 The second strategic driver of the past few years has been the globalisation of innovation. The globalisation of production has become a relevant field of study since the second half of the 1980s with the transfer of significant phases of production abroad or even the full assembly process. This form of internationalisation developed across a set of industries that did not require advanced manufacturing competences, such as textiles and footwear (to Asia and Central America), the furniture industry (in Eastern Europe), and electronics appliances (again to Asia), among others (Baldwin, 2005).In these sectors and markets, lead companies have internationalized their production as a means to respond to the limitations of their traditional production and commercialisation sites (e.g. cost of personnel, tight regulation, and tax regime), which could no longer guarantee their profitable and sustainable growth. These firms have mostly become internationalized either by breaking their production system into small distinct steps and spreading the physical location of these steps around the world, or by moving the whole production process to different countries (Gourevitch et al., 2000: 302). That way, firms developed a consistent strategy of foreign direct investments, production and sale overseas such as in Asian and Latin American markets (Dunning, 1988, 2008; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994; Kokko and Blomstrom, 2000; Gereffi et al., 2005). The analysis of this phenomenon and the related value distribution across agents and countries has led a number of development scholars to elaborate the concept of ‘global commodity chains’ (GCC), which has later been upgraded to the more comprehensive concept of ‘global value chains’ – GVC (Gereffi et al., 2005). The GVC concept focuses on any production that is developed through different phases and activities that are performed by separate firms in various countries. It analyses the value each production phase adds to the final product and the market power delivered to the different companies, industries and countries involved in such exchange. In this sense, it takes quite a linear perspective, which helps identifying the governance/ power arrangement and dynamics across the different agents that also determine their market power in the whole value chain (Parrilli et al., 2013).
19 From a different perspective, the concept of global production networks (GPNs) has been developed and applied to the analysis of global production dynamics (Ernst and Kim, 2002; Henderson et al., 2002; Coe et al., 2008). It is a concept developed within the economic geography approximation to globalisation, emphasizing the changing integration of new areas, regions and companies in the complex dynamics that involve the most globalized industries such as electronics and ICTs, automotive, biotech or pharmaceuticals (Yeung, 2009; Yang, 2012). This approach takes a much less linear approach than the global value chains´; for this reason, these scholars replace the concept ‘chain’ with ‘network’, which best represents this changing scenario of globalized production. It also focuses on a wider set of competitive drivers (i.e. institutional, cultural, social and political) and mechanisms (e.g. labor and
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environmental regulations) that also help explain constraints, bottlenecks, potentials and opportunities (Coe et al., 2008; Parrilli et al., 2013). In addition, as discussed by Coe et al. (2008: 272), although the core of all three conceptualisations (GCC, GPN and GVC) is similar (i.e. the nexus of interconnected functions, operations and transactions) there are two crucial differences, between GCCs and GVCs on the one hand and these two as compared to GPNs on the other. First, GCCs and GVCs are essentially linear, while GPNs go beyond such linearity and incorporate all kinds of network configurations. In turn, GCCs/GVCs focus on the governance of inter-firm transactions while GPNs attempt to encompass all relevant sets of actors and relationships.
20 Although the previous theoretical approaches focus on different aspects of globalisation, all of them stress the importance acquired by the strategies and practices of internationalization of production devised by the large corporations over the past decades. These frameworks have a variety of possible positive and negative impacts on local production systems (Gourevitch et al., 2000). However, to give a fuller account of their impact, these frameworks need to be discussed in combination with a new one that focuses on the innovation capacities and strategies of both the lead corporations and their local production systems and supply chains.
21 The innovation systems literature recognizes the role played by local skills, institutions, localized learning processes, and the relevance of common social and cultural values, among others (Cooke et al., 1997; Cooke et al., 2004; Uyarra and Flanagan, 2010). Acknowledging that the characteristics of the local environment are a crucial element in this stream of research, we also need to recognize that the competitive forces associated to an increasingly globalized economy drive companies to create strong internal links and pipelines to global knowledge sources in order to strengthen their core competences (Howells et al., 2003; Caloghirou, 2004; Sotarauta and Pulkkinen, 2011). On these bases, a theoretical framework relying on the concept of global innovation networks (GINs) has been recently developed and applied to globalisation processes (Ernst, 2009; Cooke, 2012; Parrilli et al., 2013).
22 GINs can be defined as “globally organized networks of interconnected and integrated functions and operations by firms and non-firm organisations engaged in the development or diffusion of innovations” (Chaminade et al., 2010: 3). Such framework focuses on the specific innovation dynamics that take place within specific industries and that favor changes in market dynamics. Both Ernst (2009) and Cooke (2012) applied it to the electronics industry in Asia, where important investments and upgrading in R&D and innovation activities occur and where such changes affect the competitiveness of leading companies (e.g. the hard disk drive–HDD- electronics industry moving from Singapore to China and other Asian countries, see Cooke, 2012). Elola et al. (2013) studied these innovation dynamics in the global wind energy industry and showed how these can be driven by both the need to develop new value-added products and to get access to new potential markets. In all these cases, the study of production dynamics is complemented by the study of innovation dynamics as these represent the new building block of competitiveness and the necessary (possibly also sufficient) step to modify own competitive position in globalized markets (Parrilli et al., 2013).
23 The crucial factors identified in the rising GIN literature (i.e. innovation strategies and networks) refer to the strategic assets that have been developed and valued over the past few years and that seem to matter when considering the future growth prospects of industries and local production systems. The dynamic innovation strategies
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developed by lead firms are key aspects of their renewed competitiveness. It is the case of innovating business models in case of the aircraft industry towards the low-cost segment, or innovating the commercialisation practice in the publishing industry as done by Amazon with their online sale business model. Fiat takeover of Chrysler or Tata takeover of Jaguar and Land Rover are other of these (innovation and) market strategies adopted as a means to gain free access to new meaningful markets (the US in the first case, and UK-Europe in the second) for further growth prospects of the business group. This aspect of global innovation strategies merge with that of global innovation networks as the latter is strategic in that innovation does not take place through internal R&D activities only, but more and more through cooperation and joint R&D and innovation activities with other agents. As a matter of fact, multinationals have for some years now spread their R&D centres in different countries, doing complementary R&D activities among them. At present times, most large corporations are building up very powerful global networks of agents (usually other corporations and international university centers) in order to develop new product, process and architectural innovations. This strategy helps them to control the most important phase of production, and protecting themselves from a large and undifferentiated set of global competitors and producers that aim at gaining further market shares.
24 The more consolidated regional, sector and national innovation systems respond to this challenge as several agents partner in order to pull together higher capabilities, specialisations and resources to develop new products, processes, market and organisational novelties and arrangements that increase the competitiveness of the participating groups of firms (and territories). It is the case of the Basque Country itself that enjoys the benefits of a strong RIS or of Germany, where a powerful and coordinated national innovation system is at work in order to promote the formation of new capabilities and competitive strengths (Navarro et al., 2009; Koschatzsky and Stahlecker, 2010).
25 However, it is also true that such RIS are under pressure by the above-mentioned new trend of large corporations to form their own GINs, which are replacing the former dense relationships between the large corporations and their own local/regional production and innovation repository (system). A tension is there that needs to be analyzed in depth as the effect on SMEs, which constitute the typical basis of local production systems, can be extremely powerful and jeopardize their own resilience (Elola et al., 2013). The policy-makers themselves are part of this tension as they would like to promote the absorption of knowledge through global pipelines, but simultaneously have to avoid favoring knowledge spillovers from policy-funded initiatives to competing business systems and networks.
26 As we will see (section 4.2), in the wind energy industry in the Basque Country, institutional constrains together with a thriving growth in developing countries have led many of the leading companies to internationalize their operations both by exporting windmills and by investing in new production plants. These production plants and the R&D activities associated to them have also headed some local first tier suppliers to follow the same path, so despite the industry has become much more globalized, it has also become more fragmented, as some of the local firms have been excluded from those networks.
27 The next section will put special attention to such drivers in the analysis of two of the most internationalized industries of the Basque Country region.
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4. Interrelated Diversification and Internationalisation via GINs in two industries in the Basque Country
28 In this section we provide evidence of the trends discussed in the conceptual part (see Sections 2 and 3), and which can be synthesized in: (i) the trend to industrial diversification through related varieties, and (ii) the trend to internationalisation of both production and innovation. In this section we will provide an illustration of two industries that exemplify these trends, the ‘furniture’ industry and the wind energy sector.
29 Companies and territories that are in condition to exploit these new opportunities linked to lateral moves and to globalize their operations in both production and investments are also the ones that guarantee their future in the current environment. In contrast, the firms that respond to the new challenges by closing themselves in their local markets might be saving their short-run competitiveness, although they might jeopardize their future prospects as market growth might take place elsewhere and disconnect their local production system while connecting to another (the risk satellite platforms face, see Markusen, 1996).
4.1. Empirical evidence on related varieties: the HABIC Cluster
30 The furniture cluster is based in Azpeitia and Azkoitia. These two towns are located fifty kilometers in between Bilbao and San Sebastian. For many years it was the base of a relevant number of SMEs devoted to the production of all kinds of furniture, especially wooden ones. In fact, about 13 core production firms (mostly medium-sized companies) employed about 900 employees, 24 small ancillary enterprises hired about 500 workers and another and 24 ancillary enterprises plus three companies devoted to produce machinery for furniture production employed about 200 employees (Parrilli et al., 2010). The specialized training institution LANBIDE HEZIKETA was part of the cluster together with the industry association ENBOR and the technology centre CIDEMCO.2 The critical mass of actors was guaranteed by such numbers that ensured the localisation of furniture production in this cluster for decades. It was a spontaneously-grown type of cluster, perhaps based on the rich endowment of raw material (wood), and the existence of a set of traditional wooden craftshops developed on the basis of a local demand of furniture (Aranguren et al., 2007).
31 Over the past few years, this cluster has suffered a significant competitive pressure from other producers based in other countries and, sometimes, from multinational companies that based their commercial offices in the region (e.g. Ikea, Natuzzi). As a result, it has been losing ground as the following table shows.
Table 2. Employment and Industry GDP in the furniture sector in the Basque Country
2008 2009 2010
Employment (people) 7.434 6.398 5.916
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Industry GDP (million Euro) 269.507 233.613 250.374
Source: EUSTAT, 2012.
32 In collaboration with the Basque government policy of cluster promotion, and following new trends developed in other EU regions (e.g. Catalonia and French West and Alps),some of the local lead companies decided to move a step beyond crossing the landmark of the former ‘mono-sectoral’ basis to transform into a multi-sectoral cluster. A larger and more heterogeneous diversity of firms came together in the brand-new cluster association (HABIC, created in 2011),which involves not only furniture producers, but also producers of plastic toys and structures for kindergartens and playgrounds, companies focused on related components such as coatings systems, floors, ceilings and roofs, illumination and acclimatisation systems, domotic and security systems, and companies focused on architectural services, among others.3 The cluster association is further enriched by the participation of client companies such as schools, hotels, public administrations, gymnasiums, hospitals..., among others.
Figure 1. Complexity of production in the furniture/HABIC cluster
Source: own elaboration on the basis of the association website.
33 This process has been in part promoted by the Basque government policy to support the formation of a broad type of furniture cluster. In addition to the institutional support delivered for the creation of a cluster association (e.g. financing a small management structure that promotes joint initiatives among firms), it boosted a relatively tiny catalytic procurement programme called ‘Renove Muebles’ (‘Renovating Furniture’) through which any consumer and firm would receive a small subsidy of
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between € 300 and 1,000 worth of furniture per household.4 In this program, the Basque government received 50,000 requests that amounted to about € 22 million of subsidies.5
34 In addition to the government efforts, the private sector has been very active in the renewal of this industry. Among others, the private sector developed a set of cooperative actions, such as the creation of the NORA Group (six local firms including Sellex, Treku, Codis, Ondarreta Contract, Ezarri and Group B-Lux) that targets renovation projects for international hotel chains (e.g. Marmari Kos Hotel in Greece, DanHostel in Copenhagen). This particular group includes firms involved in illumination systems, glass mosaics, bathroom furniture, and home furniture in general, among others. Another group of local companies (fifteen) also developed a relevant joint action: they invited about seventy German architects in a Basque artistic venue in order to present the special production features and skills of their firms as well as proposing specific joint projects. Additionally, in collaboration with the cluster association HABIC, a system of competitive intelligence has been developed and made available to the member firms as a means to anticipate changes in market demand and in supply technologies.6
35 This set of initiatives helped the local firms participating in the cluster to fight against the crisis that hit very strongly the Basque economy in 2012. Overall, they were able to generate an increase in sales of about 12% over the former 1,050 million euro generated in 2011.7 The cluster association and its members are also quite active in participating in international specialized fairs and in focusing on the export market. For this purpose, they are forming a consortium that helps them supply furniture and other related goods and services in the global market for hospitals. Simultaneously, they are actively participating in international projects such as Woodtech, which is an EU- Interreg project with other Spanish, Portuguese and French partners who are oriented to develop and commercialize new products as well as to train future entrepreneurs in the creation of new related ventures8.
36 The new complexity of the former furniture cluster is displayed by the identification of new market and development prospects within this industry, i.e. sustainable construction/buildings, bio-products and biomass processing. Once again, this shows how the increasing complexity of this sector is going beyond its traditional production boundaries to integrate a much broader range of industries and services. This conscious effort pursued by the Basque firms associated in ‘Habic’ is in line with the afore-mentioned trend of extending one’s own knowledge and production capacities across related and unrelated varieties9. This seems to pay in terms of increasing current competitiveness while also strengthening the future sustainability of the local production system (for example vis-à-vis other more traditional industries that did not take such a new complex profile, e.g. the pulp and paper cluster in the same region).
4.2. Empirical evidence on internationalisation and GINs: the Wind Energy Industry
37 The large energy industry based in the Basque Country includes more than 300 firms in the different segments of oil, gas, solar and photovoltaic, wind and biomass, among others. However, the development of a significant number of these segments is quite recent. For example, the wind energy industry has developed over the past fifteen years from scratch (i.e. it was from an investment of the lead Danish company Vestas,
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which acquired the local aircraft company ‘Aernnova’, later transformed into the independent company Gamesa). The same applies to the solar and photovoltaic industry, whereas the tide and wave-based industry is in its infancy and it is expected to become economically viable in the next twenty years or so. This ongoing evolution shows on the one hand the relevance of the related varieties framework in the case of the energy cluster in the Basque Country. In fact, twenty years ago there were only the oil industry and some thermoelectric plants, which however created the basis for a group of industries to grow and develop. It is the case of Ormazabal, Arteche, Ingeteam, Oasa, Incoesa or Cegasa, which are specialized in electrical components and systems that could later be transferred and specialized in other segments, predominantly the wind energy and the photovoltaic. A similar industrial extension and expansion applies to a number of other Basque companies that, by and large, operate in energy industries and related business services (e.g. logistics and transportation, operation and maintenance of electric plants, etc.).
38 The development of this wide energy sector by means of an extension across related varieties has been simultaneously promoted by the Basque government and the private sector. The former stimulated the creation of an energy cluster association, in order to promote joint business initiatives for innovation and commercialisation, among others. Recently, the energy cluster association developed a project with the shipbuilding cluster association to identify and boost the opportunities to involve a wide group of local firms in the offshore wind energy production. Simultaneously, the private sector has caught this and other opportunities to expand its activities within new product/ energy markets. It is the case of Ingeteam, which has moved from the wind energy market into the photovoltaic industry, Hine that moved from the hydroelectric industry into the wind energy sector, and Aernnova that expanded in the aircraft industry and transplanted its capacities into the wind energy industry boosting the development of this cluster about fifteen years ago (Parrilli et al., 2012).
39 In particular, the specific segment of the wind energy industry has acquired a special importance over the past ten years. Two multinational companies based in the Basque Country (Iberdrola and Gamesa) contributed to the development of one of the world- class clusters, which currently integrates about one hundred companies in different specialized compartments such as foundry companies producing towers, blades and nacelles, electrical companies producing generators, inverters and transformers, other specialized companies producing components such as cylinders and hydraulic systems, pitch-drives, gearboxes, electronic remote controls; companies specialized in meaningful services such as logistics and transportation, operation and maintenance; and firms (usually the lead company) centred on the sale and distribution of energy to the electric network (Elola et al., 2013).
40 Since 2007, the national market, which promoted the growth of the wind energy cluster, became saturated and restrained by a legislation that did not maintain the subsidisation of the previous years. Simultaneously, a boom in demand has been arising in emerging countries, first of all in China, then followed by India and Brazil, before others. This demand has pushed leading companies such as Vestas, Siemens, GE and Gamesa to internationalize their operations both by exporting windmills (parts and components) and by investing in new production plants abroad (Elola et al., 2013). On these bases, in the last two years Gamesa installed all its windmill production in foreign markets. Internationalisation has become the tool that guarantees the sustainability of
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this company. As a consequence, a set of other first-tier suppliers, such as Ingeteam, Ormazabal, and second tier suppliers such as Hine and Glual invested abroad by setting up new production facilities there (mainly China, but also the USA, Brazil, Argentina and India among others). However, another group of local companies may become redundant in this international business. These are the producers of foundry and other metallic parts (e.g. towers, blades and nacelles) and also service providers (e.g. logistics and transportation, operation and maintenance). In this way, the cluster may break up in two segments, one which is connected to global value chains, whereas the other is excluded (ibid.).
41 Within this context, the growth of global innovation strategies and networks headed by the afore-mentioned lead companies becomes crucial, as well as the discussion of its implications for local development processes. Each individual lead company organizes its own strategy and global innovation network by partnering with leading organisations on R&D activities on water-resistant light materials, electronic controls, deep offshore installations, etc. The lead companies tend to partner with organisations that manage very specialized knowledge that they do not control yet. This is why lead Basque companies in energy distribution connect and work with lead Dutch firms in the construction of offshore wind farms, and also why lead Basque companies in windmill manufacturing and installation partner with a German group specialized in gearbox production. The intention here is to partner on advanced R&D activities in order to increase the competitive edge over global competitors. In addition, these companies try to form implicit consortia to access international markets with a leading edge over other groups of producers. This is the case of the Danish company Vestas that set up a huge R&D facility in China, and it is also the case of Gamesa that set up R&D facilities around a new ‘corporate university’ with bases in Europe as well as in China, India and the USA. In general terms,this is the case of companies such as Gamesa and Iberdrola, which connect with universities and companies from the Netherlands, the USA or Singapore. The results of these strategies are visible in the impressive reorientation of production towards these global markets that accounted for 100% of windmill installation over the past few years.
42 The issue here is the risk that such process, combined with the growing focus on international markets, can lead to disanchoring production from the Basque Country. In this context, the discussion of the role of the RIS matters as this may offer the capacities and incentives to the local firms to start a dynamic of investment in innovation activities and to conquer a more competitive position within the GVC. This means that the various organisations (e.g. technology centres, universities, research centers of excellence, training institutes) should work together with cluster firms and their representative bodies (i.e. business and cluster associations, chambers of commerce), for example by mapping out competences and skills and promoting joint local and international projects that cross-fertilize the cluster firms and help them acquire stronger R&D and innovation capacities that make them more essential to the lead companies. This is likely to be a strategic solution to keep the cluster cohesive and working together in competitive global value chains (Parrilli et al., 2012).
43 This phenomenon can in fact be observed in the case of the leader firm in the wind energy market, the Danish company Vestas (Pedersen, 2009), which is simultaneously creating new global alliances (it just set up the biggest R&D facility in China with over 600 local and international PhDs and engineers at work) while simultaneously
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strengthening its local/national innovation system. Back in Denmark Vestas created a national/sectoral innovation system by integrating firms, universities and public institutes (e.g. the advanced research lab RISØ), as well as by attracting R&D facilities of global competitors such as Siemens, Suzlon and Envision Energy. This is a challenge that the Danish wind energy system led by Vestas seems in condition to face, whereas the Basque still struggles with. In fact, Gamesa did not find a proper balance between the creation of its own GIN and an ongoing effective relationship with regional innovation agents; it worked strongly with them until 2007, and then started focusing on international partners while reducing its local commitment with technology centres and universities.
5. Policy recommendations
44 This section aims at linking the concepts of related variety and smart specialisation, which has gained a lot of attention from the policy-making sphere in Europe. Taking the contributions in the field of innovation systems into account, and incorporating the advances proposed by the management literature in terms of learning modes and absorptive capacity, the European Commission (2010) has recently introduced the concept of Smart Specialisation Strategies (Foray et al., 2009; Navarro-Arancegui et al., 2012). As defined by the European Commission (2010: 7), “smart specialisation involves businesses, research centres and universities working together to identify a region’s most promising areas of specialisation, but also the weaknesses that hamper innovation”. The concept of smart specialisation emerges as a response to the replication and imitation found in regional policies, which often neglect the diversity of their contexts (Navarro-Arancegui et al., 2012). Smart specialisation aims to help regions concentrate resources on key priorities rather than spreading investments across areas and business sectors.
45 In a sense, the concept of smart specialisation strategies is not new, as it shares the rationale of another policy instrument promoted by the European Commission in the mid-1990s, the “Regional Innovation Strategies”. This instrument aimed at “offering regional stakeholders a common platform to promote, design, implement, manage and evaluate the region’s R&D and innovation policy” (Zabala-Iturriagagoitia et al., 2008: 1146). The Regional Innovation Strategies initiative was introduced in 1994 as an instrument to promote STI policy implementation at the regional level aiming at “stimulating the development of clusters… that combine industrial, technological and geographical advantages… [which] requires the active involvement of all the actors concerned… [and in which] the main emphasis should be on a horizontal, trans-sectoral and multidisciplinary approach” (European Commission, 1993: 65).
46 The goal of smart specialisation strategies is the creation of diversity among regions instead of promoting regional science, technology and innovation strategies developed in an imitative manner, in order to avoid duplication and hence contribute to increase the potential for complementarities across the European knowledge base (Foray et al., 2009: 20). The promoters of this specialisation strategy acknowledge that public bodies can play an important role not only as decision bodies (i.e. priority setting) but also in assisting the creation (or strengthening) of connections among regional stakeholders to accelerate the whole process (ibid).
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47 As the reader may note, the smart specialisation and related variety approaches share some common features, as long as they intend to support the economic development of firms/territories in those areas that may be more closely related to their core competences. As Navarro et al. (2012: 4) discuss, smart specialisation is not only interpreted as the impulse towards a pure specialisation that exploits the economics of localisation, but as ‘a specialised diversification that exploits the economies derived from related variety’ (McCann and Ortega-Argilés, 2011).
48 Although it is difficult to assess whether the concept of related variety is at the origin of the smart specialisation policy concept, the overlaps between the two seem reasonable. Hence, according to the rationale of smart specialisation policies, (relational) structural changes in those key industries regarded as strategic for a given territory should be promoted by means of (public) policy support. However, one question that may rise from here is whether related variety emerges because policy is pushing for it, or because industries evolve ‘naturally’? As we have seen in the two cases illustrated in the previous section, the ‘spontaneous’ industrial dynamics coexist with public policy support. Accordingly, if the smart specialisation approach is to gain momentum in Europe, we argue it should try to include both sides. Accordingly, it should acknowledge and deepen the individual strategies followed by firms, as well as create consensus-building scenarios required to leapfrog from firm strategies to territorial strategies.
49 Our arguments are in line with Leppälä and Desrochers (2010), who claim that regional specialisation, and hence its re-structuring, should not be viewed as the ultimate goal for policy-makers due to the heterogeneity among individuals in terms of skills and expectations. Leppäla and Desrochers suggest that a policy driven “regional specialisation would only deliver the optimal outcome when every individual within the region possess the same comparative advantage” (p. 145). It can thus be concluded that individual and regional competitive advantages are two processes that need to go hand in hand, as both complement each other.
50 From our point of view, related variety should be understood as the search for an interrelated diversification of the existing knowledge bases, in case we are referring to firms, or the search for interrelated diversification of the existing industrial structure in the case of a territory, as a means to stop imitation from other spaces or industries and build up new competitive edges over new competitors (e.g. from new emerging economies). We consider that the underlying rationales behind smart specialisation and related variety diverge to a great extent. First, related variety is a theoretical construct while smart specialisation is being used as a policy concept. Second, while related variety highlights that regional growth should be driven by diversifying the existing knowledge bases into different (but related) sectors, the smart specialisation underlines the need for equilibrium between the competitive advantage of regions and the overlaps across sectors. That is, it advocates equilibrium between related and unrelated varieties. It has to be noted that the possible paths to achieve this smart specialisation are multiple and include the retooling, extending, emerging and cross- sectoral strategies, whereas the ways to achieve the related variety are to date not that clear. In line with Navarro et al. (2012), too much specialisation can also hinder diversification and expose the region to the risks of market condition changes or other unpredictable external events. Accordingly, it is not that clear which of the two
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avenues could be more beneficial, not only in the short term, but also for the economic sustainability of European regions.
51 In line with the second focus of this article, GINs, the policy thoughts suggest the importance of complementing the simultaneous working of these global networks with the regional innovation agents. This is theoretically supported by Bathelt et al. (2004) who talk about the importance of combining the rich flow of codified knowledge from global knowledge pipelines with the dense interactive local buzz. It has been partially taken into account in the formulation of transnational innovation programmes, such as the FP7 and a good part of its associated sub-programmes of networks of research excellence (e.g. Marie Curie), and networks of practitioners and policy agents around best practices and successes (e.g. inter-reg programmes).
52 Notwithstanding this clarity of intentions, the combination of global knowledge pipelines with local buzz (and knowledge) networks is a new issue in local and regional production systems traditionally close to powerful RIS agents, but quite distant from global knowledge sources. Such local systems cannot yet find their way across this issue and the negative impact of the lead companies’ strategies to rely more and more on their new GINs and GPNs. Here too, the role of policy-making needs to be reframed, trying to generate the policy spaces (Uyarra and Flanagan, 2010) that lead to a sustainable equilibrium between the further strengthening of the RIS and its growing dependence on GINs, rather than adopting policy decisions that may not involve regional stakeholders (Elola et al., 2013).
53 The Danish wind energy industry seems to find its way across this issue by investing in both (GIN and RIS/SIS), but this requires a thorough thinking together with appropriate strategies and resources. For example, maps of competences and joint innovation projects may help these industries and companies to build up further and coordinated competences and competitive strengths, which might help these firms (particularly the local SMEs)to combine the two approaches fruitfully. Of course, the commitment of the lead industrial companies (e.g. Iberdrola and Gamesa in this case) with the regional development process remains essential to the success of this strategy in the current competitive and globalized economy.
6. Conclusions, discussion and further research
54 This qualitative paper touches upon novel issues (e.g. related variety and global innovation networks) which have not been extensively addressed in the innovation studies literature to date. Hence it raises a number of issues that could be further examined on the basis of the conceptual insights and empirical findings included here. In particular, our analysis reveals the importance of territorial options and strategies focused on diversifying by extending one’s own territorial knowledge to related varieties that are also knowledge-intensive and value added generating. In spite of the significant evidence (see also Asheim et al., 2011; Boschma et al., 2013) about the growth of new industries along this global trend, a more meaningful debate on policy options would be useful. In fact, the current slogan of smart specialisation might not necessarily be based upon the related varieties platform, but on a reasonable attention to the coordination of specialisation across the EU space, which might lead to neglecting the real options of extending one’s own opportunities by following the
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related variety approach. A serious assessment needs to take place to verify whether these two approaches complement each other or create contrasts and contradictions.
55 In this paper, we also highlight a second trend of large corporations to develop global innovation networks that help them acquire strategic knowledge assets even at the cost of weakening their relationship with the regional innovation system. In this context, a challenge is open on how to combine the new GINs developed by lead corporations with the former RIS/NIS approach to local and regional development. A solution to this challenge would help the regional system to combine the absorption of inputs and opportunities offered by global knowledge pipelines with the advantages of cooperating within the local buzz and, in this way, to keep small and medium-sized suppliers integrated in global value chains and international markets. In this sense, a more systematic analysis needs to be thoroughly structured and organized (e.g. in a EU project) in order to verify under what conditions GINs and RISs can work together to strengthen the resilience of clusters and local production systems vis-à-vis cases in which this does not happen and, in contrast, such local systems disintegrate and disappear with their repositories of knowledge and competences.
56 We also consider that the differences and influence of related and unrelated varieties, as well as the plausibility and ease of implementation of smart specialisation strategies need to be addressed in more detail. As we noted, the evidence suggests that related variety has a positive impact on innovation and employment growth as compared to the unrelated variety approach, which leads to a more diversified industrial structure. Despite the relevance of the related variety concept, we do not want to disregard the potential contribution that may also be derived from the analysis of unrelated varieties. From our point of view the conclusions provided by the literature need more depth, since the influence of related variety has to date been studied in periods of economic growth, not in declining economies or industries. Hence, it might be the case that when an economy (sector, region) is facing a declining trajectory, being “unrelated” may provide higher chances to face the risks associated to these economic downturns. As we reflected in the analogy made in section 3.1, it is a matter of finding the balance between effectiveness and efficiency. Accordingly, research needs to dig into the economic impact of these two concepts not only in the short term, but also for the economic sustainability of the territories (i.e. medium to long run). In a similar vein, we still lack knowledge on the degree of operationalisation of the smart specialisation approach. Can all European regions apply this concept to the same extent? As McCann and Ortega-Argilés (2011: 12) indicate, “the regions which appear to be the most conducive and favourable for the operation of smart specialisation-type processes are the buoyant core regions”. Accordingly, the size and diversity in the economic activities carried out in EU regions also needs to be addressed.
57 In addition, we may highlight other related research lines that could be opened and would deserve a more careful attention. These are somehow marginally linked to those mentioned in the conceptual parts of the paper, which is why they have not been studied here in order to provide a message as concise, clear and direct as possible: A) Labor mobility: how has it changed due to the related variety and the global innovation networks? What type of labor mobility can we observe for example in the Basque Country or elsewhere in Europe? In which industries is this phenomenon more observable? Has it had more impact on certain industries over others?; B) Conflict between the policy intervention (aiming at increasing diversity, and new firm and
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employment creation) and the action of large corporations (aimed at increasing their own market shares and reducing competitors).From our point of view these research areas may not only allow to make relevant contributions to the academic community, but could also assist in the setting up more effective policy initiatives and adopting more robust policy making decisions.
Acknowledgements
58 A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Workshop on “Manufacturing Renaissance? Structural changes and consequences for industrial Economics” held at the University of Ferrara (Italy), the 17-18 May 2013. The authors thank the participants to the workshop for their useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. In particular, observations and remarks made by Sandrine Labory have been particularly valuable. The authors acknowledge financial support from the Basque Government Department of Education, Language policy and Culture.
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NOTES
1. Resilience is taken here as a combination of connectedness across the social and economic agents and the potential of the latter to diversify their activities as a means to restore the competitiveness of the local/regional production system (see Cooke, 2012: 2). 2. CIDEMCO is part of powerful technology centres corporation (Tecnalia) that focus their activities on applied R&D in benefit of the regional private sector. They are private foundations created in the early 1990s and financed simultaneously by the regional government together with competitive funding sources and private contracts with firms. 3. ‘The firms of the cluster association Habic sell 1050 million euros’, El Economista, July 9, 2012. 4. http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/09/30/paisvasco/1254303095.html accessed on April 3, 2013. 5. http://www.noticiasdegipuzkoa.com/2010/01/30/sociedad/euskadi/el-gobierno-vasco-ha- pagado-dos-tercios-de-las-facturas-del-renove-del-mueble- accessed on April 3, 2013. 6. http://www.clusterhabic.com/ accessed on August 28, 2012. 7. http://www.finanzas.com/noticias/economia/20121220/cluster-habic-aumenta- ventas-1660391.html, accessed on April 3, 2013. 8. http://asistemes.ctfc.es/woodtech/WOODTECH-%20ESPA%C3%91OL/woodtech- ESPA%C3%91OL-IMPREMTA.pdf accessed on April 3, 2013. 9. Curiously, in this case we observe both related and unrelated varieties at work. Particularly, the recent inclusion of illumination and acclimatisation industries together with domotic and security businesses seem to extend this traditional furniture cluster even beyond the ‘related varieties’ knowledge and industry dynamic into a wider ‘unrelated varieties’ industry framework. More discussion is needed on this relevant aspect.
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ABSTRACTS
This paper discusses the influence of two economic trends that arise as a consequence of globalisation: the industrial interrelated diversification process through related varieties and the internationalisation of both production and innovation. These two trends are evidenced in two industries located in the Basque Country region, the former furniture industry and the wind energy sector. Our study reveals how companies and territories that are in condition to pick up the opportunities derived from the above trends are also the ones that may guarantee their sustainability in the marketplace. In contrast, the firms that respond to these challenges by merely targeting their traditional and/or local markets might be saving their short-run competitiveness while jeopardizing their future prospects.
Cet article analyse l’influence de deux tendances économiques nées de la globalisation : le processus de diversification industriel fondé sur les variétés liées, et l’internationalisation de la production et de l’innovation. Ces deux tendances sont mises en évidence dans deux industries de la région du Pays Basque espagnol, l’industrie du meuble et le secteur de l’énergie éolienne. Notre article montre comment les entreprises et les territoires à même de saisir les opportunités générées par ces tendances peuvent aussi garantir leur viabilité. En revanche, les entreprises qui répondent à ces défis en ne ciblant que leurs marchés locaux et/ou traditionnels pourraient préserver leur compétitivité à court terme mais mettraient en danger leurs perspectives de long terme.
INDEX
Mots-clés: clusters, variétés liées, réseaux globaux d’innovation, énergie éolienne, habitat Keywords: Clusters, Related Varieties, Global Innovation Networks, Wind Energy, Habitat
AUTHORS
MARIO DAVIDE PARRILLI Orkestra-Basque Institute of Competitiveness Deusto Business School, Deusto University Camino Mundaiz, 50, CAP 20012 San Sebastian, Spain Email: [email protected]
JON MIKEL ZABALA-ITURRIAGAGOITIA Deusto Business School, Deusto University Camino Mundaiz, 50, CAP 20012 San Sebastian, Spain Email: [email protected]
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Structural transformations in clusters: the cases of biomedical and ceramics
Sandrine Labory and Giorgio Prodi
1. Introduction
1 Structural transformations discussed in this special issue, due to globalisation and the financial crisis, have also affected clusters1. We examine two particular cases that illustrate the tendencies outlined in the literature regarding clusters and districts, and provide some insights on the conditions in which clusters implement different internationalisation strategies.
2 ‘Globalisation’, intended as changes in the competitive conditions of the world markets in the last 20 to 30 years, has implied deep structural changes for clusters, especially those in mature sectors, with two major implications. First, competition increases in all sectors, due to the arrival of new entrants from emerging and developing economies. Second, the extent of the market substantially increases for firms since the emerging economies represent large and growing markets. These opportunities exist for firms in all sectors and in all types of industrial organisation, including European clusters. However, they also represent a challenge for clusters’ SMEs since they are very distant markets that are costly to reach.
3 The evidence in the literature is that the economic activities of clusters relate more tightly to world production, commercialisation and knowledge creation networks (Bathelt et al., 2004; Audretsch and Lehmann, 2006; De Propris et al., 2008; Hervàs- Oliver and Albors-Garrigòs, 2008; Bellandi, 2009). The literature on global value chains (Gereffi, 1994; Sturgeon, 2008) or global production networks (Dickens, 2001; Coe et al., 2004) highlights the growing geographic fragmentation of production processes in all industrial sectors. Many studies have analysed the effects of productive internationalisation on regional clusters (Christorpherson and Clark, 2007; Phelps, 2008). Some clusters concentrate on more intangible capital intensive phases, namely
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the upstream (R&D, design) and downstream (commercialisation, marketing) phases relative to assembly, and delocalise the other phases. The suppliers realising simple tasks are thus directly affected by the competition from lower cost countries and tend to exit the cluster and the industry. This leads to a reduction in the number of smallest firms in clusters and a rising average dimension of cluster firms.
4 Within clusters, these evolutions are often guided by small and medium firms that become leaders and provide impulse to strategic changes. In other cases the clusters evolve by creating relations with external leaders that induce changes but also often provide access to world markets thanks to specific world-wide commercialisation networks.
5 When clusters become part of global production networks dominated and managed by external leaders they risk becoming excessively dependent on these external leaders and loose own capabilities in the phases intensive in intangible assets, namely collection and creation of knowledge and its application to new products and processes (Christorpherson and Clark, 2007; Phelps, 2008).
6 Although the literature has identified global trends in clusters’ structural transformations, less is known about the conditions and determinants for specific trends to prevail, in particular regarding internationalisation strategies. We choose two successful cases of each of the trends outlined in the literature to derive insights on these conditions. We focus on two clusters that have used inward and outward foreign direct investments (FDI) to develop in a peculiar way.
7 The two cases examined in this paper regard one mature sector, ceramic tile production, and one high tech sector, biomedical. These two sectors are extremely different and cannot be directly compared, but our aim is in each case to derive insights on the conditions for each of the internationalisation strategy to be successful, as an exploratory study that will be more systematically checked in subsequent research. The examined clusters are both located in the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy, which has been praised for its capacity to upgrade and develop, largely thanks to industrial policy (Bianchi and Labory, 2011).
8 One cluster is characterised by internationalisation through own capacity, the district leaders investing abroad. This is the case of the ceramic tiles district of Sassuolo. The other cluster, the Mirandola cluster, is characterised by internationalisation via alliances with external leaders, hence access to world market via the distribution channels of these leaders. The relationship between Mirandola SMEs and multinationals is a long-lasting one, since multinationals came to the district soon after its inception, in the 1970s.
9 The two cases examined in this paper regard autonomously developed clusters, in the sense that they were created by local entrepreneurs and not by deliberate policy. Both clusters are usually defined as districts. This term is not perfectly appropriate for both realities because the Sassuolo ceramics cluster is today characterized by firms that cannot be classified as medium or small, and Mirandola one, is characterised by the presence of large multinationals that develop relationships with local suppliers.
10 This paper is structured as follows. The general trends in clusters’ structural transformations are analysed in section 2, while sections 3 and 4 respectively confront these general trends with the experiences of Sassuolo and Mirandola: Section 5 concludes.
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2. General trends in clusters’ structural transformations
11 An industrial cluster is a group of firms and other organisations for which cluster membership is a determinant of individual competitiveness. The other organisations can be industrial associations, technical institutes, universities, local authorities, and so on. The links within the cluster can be determined by supplying relationships, common technologies or distribution channels, or common labour markets (Enright, 1996).
12 The concept of clusters is wider than the concept of industrial district and puts together a variety of groups of firms, with different characteristics regarding the product, the organisation of production within and between firms, the types of relationships between firms, the extent of social capital and the nature of knowledge flows, and so on.
13 The literature outlines two types of structural transformations. In the first type, clusters develop autonomous capacity to react in that one or more firm(s) of the cluster adopt or create new technology and new products that allow the upgrading of the cluster. These cluster’s leaders are not necessarily larger firms but they are more dynamic than the other cluster firms. When more leaders exist they generally act in teams or in groups (Cainelli and Iacobucci, 2005).
14 In the second type, cluster firms ally with an external leader in order to create new products or processes, and/or access to world commercialisation channels; this is the case for instance of high quality fashion clusters in Tuscany (Labory and Zanni, 2004).
15 In the first case, cluster firms remain independent and manage world production networks. One problem in this case arises when the leader(s) of the cluster decides to change headquarters’ location and go outside the cluster. This happened in the ceramics cluster of North Staffordshire in the UK (Sacchetti and Tomlinson, 2009; Day et al., 2000), where leaders have delocalised their headquarters to London, with the result of progressively loosing roots in the cluster, delocalising phases of the cluster’s production abroad and questioning the very existence of the cluster. In the second case, the relationship with an external leader creates dependency and sometimes vulnerability, since the cluster depends on the strategic decisions of the leader. In this case it is important for the cluster to keep hold on the strategic phases of production, by maintaining and developing capabilities to innovate and adapt.
16 The effects of the relationship between the cluster and external leaders are determined by not only the cluster’s characteristics, but also the degree of embeddedness of the external leaders in the local community: whether the external leader creates a local subsidiary or not; the type of activity created locally (production, R&D, marketing or all of them) and the objectives of the leaders in the creation of relationships with the local firms (acquire products or acquire competencies); the characteristics of the external leader (proprietary assets, organization, production system, and so on); the characteristics of the local cluster (capabilities, local factors that create external economies); the characteristics of transactions (frequency, trust and assets specificity). All these factors combine in different ways and imply different possible effects of the relationship of the cluster with an external leader (Labory, 2002).
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17 These factors are important because they determine the control of the strategic phases of the production process. The strategic phases are often those more intensive in knowledge and intangible assets, and generating more value added. When the relationship between the cluster and the external leader is vertical, in the sense that the cluster is a supplier for the external leader, the latter is likely to control strategic phases of the production process, such as design and product development, as well as marketing and commercialisation. The supplier can become involved in the design of the parts or components which he is in charge of but, unless the component or part is a strategic one, he is unlikely to substantially contribute to value creation. In the case of horizontal types of relationship the cluster can have more negotiation power if it is able to significantly contribute to the product range of the external leader.
18 This analysis can be compared with the literature on global value chains (Gereffi, 1994; Sturgeon, 2008). Alliance with a leader is in fact insertion into a global value chain led by an external leader, while internationalisation via FDI is a case where the cluster sets up a global value chain. Agostino et al. (2013) in this issue review the different cases of insertion of suppliers into global value chains, and show that suppliers inserted into relational GVCs, where they are directly involved in the strategic phases of production, are much better-off than suppliers inserted into captive GVCs. As we will show below the firms in the Mirandola cluster have managed to be inserted into relational GVCs thanks to their capacity to innovate.
19 Industrial districts experience the same competitive challenges as clusters in general, but there are some peculiarities. The literature agrees that Italian industrial districts are experiencing deep structural changes, following the same evolutionary tendencies as clusters (Becattini et al., 2009). These tendencies are twofold. First, the whole district system evolves in a coherent and systemic way. Knowledge and competencies necessary for upgrading are found within the district, building on the knowledge base accumulated through time (for instance, the Santa Croce district in Tuscany or the Monte Belluna district in Veneto, or the ceramic tiles district of Sassuolo in Emilia- Romagna). In some cases this evolution is realised through the guidance of a leader firm belonging to the district, which can be single firms or groups of firms (Cainelli and Iacobucci, 2005; Bellandi, 2009). These firms guide the transformation of the district by taking the initiative in the search for new technologies, new products and new design (Corò and Grandinetti, 1999), and allow the realisation of economies of scale and risk sharing.
20 Second, district firms start a relationship with external leaders in order to access to new markets, to new technologies or new ideas and design. For instance, the leather good district of Scandicci in Tuscany initiated relationship with the fashion leader Gucci that lead to the use of new production technologies such as laser-cutting of leather.
21 Chiarvesio et al. (2007), empirically examine the role of leaders in Italian industrial districts and show that the dominant strategy appears to be that of insertion in global value chains. They also show that leader firms of the district play a primary role both in bridging the district with the global economy and in the transformation of districts in nodes of global production networks. These authors identify a successful model, that of the “open networks” where the district, guided by the leader, becomes an active node in a global production network, hence being able to turn the GVC into a relational GVC.
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22 These new strategies implemented to respond to a changing competitive context imply important changes in the organisation of the districts: the leaders grow in size, while the number of district firms reduces, with a significant reduction in the number of small suppliers that executed very simple tasks in the past.
23 This evolutionary process requires both a continuous improvement in the capabilities of teams of firms within the district and a systematic exploration and exploitation process, discovery and application of the new ideas. This structural change also implies a change in the local labour market, moving to higher skills, and implying a transformation of the social structure of the district. The entrepreneur trained on-the- job with low education level is no longer successful, rather entrepreneurs with high education levels and experiences abroad are required in order to have both capacities of new knowledge absorption and creation of relationships outside the district.
24 In addition industrial districts’ structural changes require an appropriate regional “milieu”, consisting in dynamic cities and districts and the coherent and sustainable development of the collaboration between firms’ networks, research centres, services related to knowledge, infrastructure dedicated to international trade and pro-active regional policy-makers (Bellandi, 2009).
25 Locally-rooted competencies, capacities and knowledge allow structural changes to take place, implying a deep renewal and transformation in local knowledge, capacities and competencies, largely thanks to absorption of external knowledge.
26 In fact, Chiarvesio et al. (2007) conclude that district firms with highest performance are not those which invest abroad, but those which invest in tangible and intangible capital, namely technology, ICT, design, relationships with research centres and other stakeholders in the territory and abroad.
27 We show in the next sections that investing in tangible and intangible capital is also an essential condition for being able to invest abroad and internationalise.
3. The ceramics tile district of Sassuolo
28 The ceramic tiles cluster developed in the Emilia Romagna province after the second world war. In early 1950s there were only a dozen of producers that became more than one hundred in the sixties. The engine of the growth process was the availability of capital accumulated in the agricultural and trade sector, the presence of local raw materials like red clays, and the proximity to fast growing markets as the North of Italy first, and subsequently Germany and France when the cluster was efficient enough to export. Growth continued in the following decades thanks to the interaction with the producers of ceramics tile production lines based in the same area that developed new technologies together with tile producers. The ceramic tile district reached the highest production in early 2000 with more than 600 million square meters. In 2011 this cluster produced 80% of Italian production, even 90% if firms located outside but near (less than 50 kilometers) the district are included.
29 Ceramics tile is a mature industry. New products are launched almost each year but differences are limited. The two main technology evolutions happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the introduction of single fire production2 and in the 1990s with the introduction of grès tile.
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30 Technologies are usually developed within the district with a cooperation between tile producers and production line developers. However technologies are relatively quickly available to all the players within and outside the district.
31 Ceramic tile is a heavy good compared to its value. Transportation costs are very high and this makes competition on foreign markets very difficult. Extra continental exports are less than 10% of total exports and exports are 20% of total production3.
32 However Italy exports more than 70% of total production. Spanish producers also export more than half of their production because of the collapse in domestic demand induced by the explosion of the domestic real estate bubble, while before the percentage was less than 50% (Assopiastrelle). Italy is the first exporter in Europe with 168 sqm followed by Spain with 87 sqm.4
33 Sassuolo had to face globalisation probably before the word globalisation was invented both as far as new competitors and new markets are concerned. Since the late seventies Sassuolo had to face competition from several countries. The first competitor of Sassuolo has been Castellon de la Plana in Spain from the 1980s. The second big challenge that started in the late 2000 is China that is eroding Italian market shares in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the US. Chinese products are also imported in European markets5. In 2010, China exported 60 million square meters in the EU, representing 13% of total EU imports. The third challenge is not from a single country but from a mix of countries including Turkey, the EUA, Poland and Russia, which compete with Italian producers both in their home markets and in export markets.
34 All these countries exploit cost advantages compared to Italy6: labour, energy, and sometimes raw materials. Being close to final markets give an extra advantage. Economies of scale are not very important in this industry. Production costs are minimized with a relatively small investment that includes two to four production lines. Economies of agglomeration are exploited by producing within the district but transportation costs easily offset them. Hence production lines are often set up outside the district.
35 Demand for ceramic tiles grew constantly in the last 20 years from 3.300 million sqm of the mid-nineties to 7.000 million sqm in 2005 and almost 10.000 in 2012. However, the largest part of this growth happened in distant markets, primarily Asia but also the Middle East and Latin America.
36 Italy has therefore lost its supremacy in terms of production and exports. The country has been able to catch only a minor slice of the new bigger cake of the world ceramics tile market that grew by 200% in the last 30 years. Italy is today the fourth world producer and second world exporter (in volumes). Italy is third in terms of revenues and still first in terms of export values. Italy’s world export market share is 16,3% in volume and 32% in value. The most important export markets are Germany, France and the US7.
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Figure 1. Production, exports and domestic demand, 1990 to 2011
Source: Confindustria Ceramica database.
37 Sassuolo implemented a multi-dimensional strategy in order to remain competitive, despite the lack of raw materials8, the higher energy cost compared to many countries and the higher labour costs. This strategy involves products, production, distribution, and FDI.
Table 1. Country production of ceramics tile
2011 2005 2000 1995 1990
1 China 4730 2870[1] 1918,2 990,1 309,4
2 Brazil 844 568,1 452,7 295 190
3 India 500 245,2 126,8 47,1 13,1
4 Italy 399 570 631,8 562,2 446,7
5 Spain 392 651 621 400 219
6 Indonesia 287 225 142,1 131,1 53,3
7 Turkey 260 250 175 107 35
8 Iran 244 125,1 65 40 20
9 Messico 219 195 134 70 35
10 Egipt 147 85,2 54,4 29,4 5,4
11 Russia 129 92,2 30 20 42
12 Tayland 128 129 63,3 85,2 34,1
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13 Poland 121 94,5 34 19,7 12,6
14 EUA 85 60 36,5 19,9 13,8
15 Malaysia 83 74,3 55 41 10
Source: Confindustria Ceramica database.
Table 2. Export countries
2011 2005 2000 1995 1990
1 China 650.0 265 50 31,1 10,4
2 Italy 298.3 390,3 436,3 361,4 216,9
3 Spain 263.3 341,3 311,5 188,1 92,1
4 Turkey 87.4 99 52 26,4 6
5 Messico 63.4 40 29 17 5
6 EUA 60.0 29,5 20 11 6,5
7 Brazil 59.0 113,8 56,7 29,4 16
8 Iran 49.0 9 6,5 3,6 0
9 Poland 36.0 19 2,5 0,9 0,1
10 Portugal 32.3 29,9 19,3 16,8 10,7
Source: Confindustria Ceramica database.
38 The strategy has focused on maintaining the leadership on the high end of the market. More Grès tile, more larger tiles, less defectiveness and innovative design characterise a high end product.
39 Italian producers are able to sell at a higher price compared to competitors thanks to investments in R&D (representing 5,5% of revenues on average in the last 10 years) and in design9. Tacit and explicit knowledge flows are very important in the Sassuolo district. The cooperation between ceramic tile producers and the Italian suppliers of machineries and equipments for Ceramics is crucial. Almost all the major innovations of the industry are developed within the district. However, R&D in products and processes are not enough to maintain leadership. Technological innovations are easily imitated by competitors. The Italian ceramic machinery industry exports 80% of total production.
40 Italian producers are very flexible and can accept small and very differentiated orders. This is possible thanks to both technologies that allow production lines to quickly change products and to large stocks. The ratio between stocks and sales constantly
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increased from 25-30% in the early 1990s to 40-45% in the last years. Efficiency is of course very important and Sassuolo constantly improved productivity thanks to new technologies, larger production plants and larger firms. This characteristic is not shared by other producers like the Spanish and Chinese producers who prefer focusing on larger order and lower stocks (Prodi, 2006). The changing relative importance of the different phases of production is shown by the changing number of employees in the different phases. Employees in marketing and distribution phases have thus grown in importance, while workers directly involved in production activities have reduced. Despite the rise in office automation, white collars and managers represented 26% of total employment in 2000, 32% in 2012.
41 The number of firms and of employees almost constantly decreased in the last 15 to 20 years even when production was still increasing. The importance of business groups also rose: in the mid-eighties the first 5 groups controlled only 16,6% of the market in revenue and the first 10 the 25,1%. In 2005 the first 5 business groups controlled 36% and the first 10, 50%. In 2009, the last year for which we have data, the Top5 controlled 41,6% of revenues and the Top10, 59,3%. Some of those went public on the Milano and NY stock exchange.
42 Business groups have changed the internationalisation strategy of the district from the 1990s onward. They have started to produce abroad through foreign direct investments (FDI), either mergers and acquisitions or greenfield investments. The first FDI was made by the Marazzi Group, one of the largest producers in the world. Most FDI however were made in the 2000s. Business groups invested in EU countries both to exploit growing domestic markets and to lower production costs. Sassuolo firms have productive units in the US, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, France Germany, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal. About 20 firms are controlled by a dozen of business groups, that control 33 production sites with 7494 employees10. Foreign production of Italian enterprises reached 140 million square meters for a turnover of more than 1 billion €11 in the last 15 years. This production compensates 50% of the loss in production in Italy and practically offsets all the loss in exports. More than 90% of foreign production is for the domestic market and less that 10% is exported. The US represent 25% of production (35% in value), all the rest is in Europe.
Table 3. Top 10 groups of Italian producers
Production in Production Revenue Revenue Revenue Factories Italy (mln. abroad (mln. (mln. €) in Italy abroad outside Italy Sqm) Sqm)
Spain, Marazzi 801 227 574 90 France, Russia, US
France, Concorde 544 190,4 353,6 30 8 Russia
Iris - Graniti 385,5 n.a. n.a. 23 6 Germany, US Fiandre
Panaria group 289,9 87,9 202 8,3 6,6 Portugal, US
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Cooperative Ceramica 278,7 82,6 196,1 24 None di Imola
Casalgrande 275 98,5 176,5 23,9 None Padana
FinFloor 259,7 78,8 180,1 11,7 6 US
Finland, Gruppo 195 38 157 8 10 Germany, Ricchetti Portugal
Gruppo 134 44,2 90,3 11,9 San Marino Del Conca
Gruppo 132,6 43,4 89,2 5,1 2,9 Ucraine Emilceramica
Source: CER/confindustria ceramica 2009.
43 Thus the main structural transformation of the Sassuolo district has been a shift from local production to a geographically extended production network, realised by FDI. This structural transformation has allowed the ceramic tiles cluster of Sassuolo to maintain a leadership at least in advanced markets. Production has been delocalised abroad, so that the “core” of the district could be weaker in terms of volumes; however, it is still crucial for several activities like design, innovation, distribution management and product variety.
44 Another change has occurred in the last 12 months, that could represent a new evolutionary trend in the district structure. For the first time two business groups have been acquired by non-Italian investors. The Finquoghi group, a medium-sized group without production sites abroad, due to the difficulties related to the world economic crisis, was in financial distress and has been acquired by a Turkish competitor named Kale. But much more important has been the acquisition of Marazzi, the largest tile producer in the Western world, by Dal-Tile, a US company, after the death of the founder of the company. It is too early to see whether and how this acquisition may change the district and whether it will be followed by more mergers and acquisitions.
45 This case is therefore one of a district able to adapt to changing competitive conditions by structural transformations characterised by an extension of the production network to foreign countries by FDI. Business groups in Sassuolo have therefore started to create own GVCs to extend their production and sales capacity.
46 The second case is different, in that it is based on FDI attraction, hence insertion into global GVCs led by external leaders.
4. The biomedical cluster of Mirandola
47 In contrast to the Sassuolo district, the Mirandola cluster is characterised by upgrading and access to the world market via alliances with large multinationals. We argue below
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that in this case it appears that the ability of district firms to build distinctive capabilities that attract leaders and induce them to set up relational GVCs is key for the long-term competitiveness of the cluster.
48 The biomedical sector is geographically concentrated in the Centre and North of Italy and in two regions in particular which together account for about 60% of the total employment. The most important region is Emilia-Romagna, which accounts for 32% of employment in the sector, followed by Lombardia (27%). The other regions are Tuscany, Veneto, Piemonte and Lazio. In Emilia-Romagna, the Modena province, where Mirandola is located, accounts for about 63% of the employees in the biomedical sector in the region.
49 The biomedical cluster of Mirandola in the Emilia-Romagna region is particular in that it is relatively recent, created in 1963, and in that it is specialized in a high-tech sector, contrary to most Italian industrial districts.
50 According to the consortium of firms of the cluster, the cluster comprises about 70 firms and 3000 employees in the core businesses of the area, namely the production of disposable products to be used in surgery, and the production of electro-medical equipment for diagnosis. The first product type accounts for about 84% of the district production and the second, about 16%; however, the share of electro-medical equipment has been growing over time.
51 The district is dynamic and growing, despite the financial crisis: the number of firms in the district increased by 15% over the period 2007-2009 and export grew by 1.2% between 2008 and 2009.
Table 4. Firm dimension in the Mirandola cluster, 2009
% of firms
1-9 employees 80.4
10-49 employees 14.3
50-249 employees 4.0
250-499 employees 0,5
500 and more 0,8
Total 100
Source: Consobiomed ASRL and Osservatorio distretti italiani. (http://www.osservatoriodistretti.org/node/274/distretto-biomedicale-di-mirandola)
52 The Mirandola district specialises in three health areas. First, renal healthcare area, which is also the main source of demand for electro-medical equipment produced in the district. Second, cardio-surgery, anesthesia and resuscitation, and third, blood transfusion.
53 The major competitors in the global market are Gambro (Sweden), Fresenius (Germany) and Baxter (USA). Baxter used to produce disposable products in the district but left in
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2004 and shifted activities in Malta, where labour costs for this rather standardised product type are lower. However, Baxter is still present in the cluster since it acquired Gambro in December 2012.
54 Overall, the activity of the district is led by 5 large multinational groups, operating in the three health areas of the district. The five groups are:
55 1. Gambro (Baxter): Swedish firm, leader in renal products and renal healthcare, founded in 1964 and with 7500 employees worldwide, with production centres in 9 countries. It has 350 employees in R&D activities, which is performed in Sweden (Lund), France (Meyzieu), Italy (Medolla) and Germany (Hechingen). The subsidiary in Mirandola is Gambro DascoSpA, which has announced this year a restructuring plan to focus on electro-medical equipment and terminate the production of bloodline disposable products in Medolla.
56 2. B. Braun: German group with more than 40,000 employees over the world. The subsidiary in mirandola is B. Braun Avitum Italy which specialises in extracorporeal treatments.
57 3. Mallinckrodt (now USA): leader in the imaging for diagnosis and pharmaceutical products, in Mirandola the Mallinckrodt Dar has about 331 employees. Mallinckrodt was purchased in 2001 by Tyco Healthcare; in 2007, the healthcare business unit was spun off under the name Covidien.
58 4. Fresenius: global German group with 337,552 employees in 2009 (2010 Annual Report). World leader in dialysis care and dialysis products (70% of total group activity), infusion and transfusion products (Fresenius Kabi) (20%) and Fresenius Proserve (10% of activity) dealing with engineering. The group has been in the biomedical valley since 1993, when it bought Biofil. The Italian company in Mirandola (Fresenius Hemocare Italia) is specialised in the production of filters for blood transfusion.
59 5. Sorin group (previously Sorin Snia but the two groups separated in 2003), world leader in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, manufactures medical technologies for cardiac surgery and for the treatment of cardiac rhythm disorders. It is an Italian company with headquarters located in Milan. The group has about 3600 employees of which 14% are in R&D activities. R&D is performed in different location, including Mirandola specialising in cardiopulmonary diseases. The Mirandola subsidiary (Dideco and Bellco) has more than 400 employees.
60 Structural transformations in this cluster are related to the increasing competition in the production of disposable, implying the emphasis on more personalised disposable products and the move towards more sophisticated products, such as electromedical machines used in diagnosis and treatment. Most firms recently created are in the latter sector, where production is more value-creating and where the region has different innovative capacities that can be used in this production: mechanics, electronics, IT, biochemistry and material sciences.
61 The cluster has developed innovative capacities in the latter area. An analysis of innovative output of Mirandola firms, using both patent and scientific publications data, shows this. The empirical identification of the manufacturing firms belonging to the districts was based on two dimensions: productive specialisation and localisation. Regarding productive specialisation, the district firms produce both disposables and electro-medical equipment. The first type of products belong the 2007 sectoral
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classification of the Italian central statistical office (ATECO) 32.5, while the second type correspond to the 26.6 class, namely manufacturing of instruments for radiation, electro-medical and electro-therapeutic equipment. A sample of 143 firms was thus extracted, all in the Emilia-Romagna region, 34 of which in the Modena province. The size distribution of the firms are presented in the following table, showing that it is in line with the universe.
Table 5. Size distribution of firms in the sample and in the Mirandola district
Sample Modena ER
Small firms 83.9% 83.9% 87.3% (1-49 employees)
Medium firms 12.6% 12.5% 10.9% (50-249 employees)
Large firms 3.5% 3.8% 1.9% (more than 250 emp.)
62 In order to provide evidence of the innovative capacity of Mirandola firms, data on patents were extracted from the EPO database, as well as scientific publications (publication of articles in scientific journals, denoting a research output new to the scientific community) from the ISI Web of Knowledge database. Figure 1 shows the total number of patents and of scientific publications obtained by the Mirandola firm in the years 2000.
Figure 2. Number of patents and scientific publications, 2000 to 2009
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Figure 3. Patents by biomedical firms the ER region, 2000 to 2009
Figure 4. Scientific publications, 2000 to 2009
63 In the electro-medical machinery sector, the Mirandola district produces about half the patents produced in this sector in the ER region. The Mirandola cluster has produced about 70 out of the 663 patents registered by Italian biomedical firms in the last 10 years. The Mirandola cluster however produces almost all scientific publications produced by biomedical firms in the region. All scientific publications arise in the electro-medical machinery sector, not in the disposables. The firms producing scientific publications are the largest firms, namely the multinationals located in the cluster and some of the biggest cluster firms. Their scientific publications are usually the fruit of collaboration with other institutions, such as other firms related to the same group, or universities, research centres and hospitals, located in the region and more frequently in the rest of Italy and especially abroad. The multinationals located in the cluster therefore appears to represent bridges between the smaller cluster firms and institutions located outside the cluster, especially abroad.
64 Within the region, research collaborations as evidenced by co-authorship of scientific articles are mainly realised with institutions located in the same province as the cluster, and less with the rest of the region. The density of relationships appear therefore to primarily exist locally, within the cluster. However, collaborations with
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institutions (firms, universities, research centres or hospitals) outside the cluster’s province but within the ER region are increasing in the last years, to a significant extent, which may be sign of extension of the critical mass of the cluster to the regional rather than provincial dimension.
65 Larger firms are more likely to set up relationships with external research institutions, because such research collaborations require funding, so that public researchers and academics are motivated to collaborate. Larger firms are more likely to have such funding at their disposal. In addition, university – business relationships require time and dedicated person that contact liaison offices and academics, which larger firms are more likely to be able to do.
66 In any case the distinctive feature of firms belonging to the Mirandola district relative to other firms in the same sector but still located in the ER region is that the former seem to be more active in scientific publication, being motivated either by the willingness to get a reputation for scientific quality within the research community, or to establish more relationships with universities and other research organisations.
67 The following table shows the percentage of publications which include a collaboration with a specific type of institution located in the region, in the rest of the country or abroad. The types of institutions considered are universities, public research centres, hospitals or other firms (private research centres were included in the firm category). Notice that very often the collaboration with another firm is in fact a collaboration with another subsidiary of the same group.
Table 6. Collaboration on scientific publications. Percentage of collaborations including the specific institution
Italian extra-regional hospital 36.0
University in the rest of Italy 14.8
Foreign university 9.9
Regional hospital 9.0
Foreign hospital 7.0
Regional university 6.4
Foreign firm 3.8
Foreign research centre 3.5
Italian extra-regional research centre 2.9
Regional firm 2.3
Regional research centre 1.5
Italian extra-regional firm 1.5
% of publications not including collaboration with any institutions 8.6
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68 Most collaborations (52%) include hospitals, especially Italian hospitals located outside the region (36%). Very often a paper include a large number of collaborating hospitals, one or two of which are in the region and other are in other Italian regions. The machines produced in the district are used in dialysis or blood transfusion and are developed directly collaborating with the users. The second most important collaboration is university, since 31% of collaborations concern this type of institutions. University – firm relationships are geographically extended, since the percentage of publications with collaboration including regional universities is 6.4%, a bit less than foreign universities (9.9%) and less than universities located in other Italian regions (14.8%). Collaboration with public research centres and with other firms is less frequent, but still tends to primarily regard extra-regional locations.
69 Multinationals in Mirandola thus insert the local firms in GVCs of a relational type, since they are involved in the research phases of the production process. Multinationals also embed locally in order to develop local research networks.
70 The regional innovation policy has aimed at helping this process, including biomedical into the main specialisations of the regional innovation system to be potentiated. Policies aiming at building and developing this system have been implemented since the 1990s, with for instance a specific programme to help research and technological transfer (PRITT) since 2002, a network for high technology since 2008 (essentially using European structural funds). The mobilisation of the region after the 2012 earthquake which epicentre was in Mirandola is also significant in this respect, with a rapid and important implementation of measures to avoid multinationals go away from the district and helping rapid reconstruction and restart of factories. Most biomedical firms in the district started production again only three months after the earthquake.
71 However this restructuring process, like in all Italian districts, raises difficulties for the smallest firms in the district, especially those producing disposables. A local business association, Consobiomed, has tried to induce them to collaborate in order to pool resources and capabilities.
5. Conclusions (can be improved)
72 This paper has analysed two Italian cases of structural transformations in clusters following the enlargement of the market due to globalisation. The cases are that of the ceramic tile district of Sassuolo and the biomedical cluster of Mirandola, both located in the Emilia-Romagna region. These cases illustrate the two main tendencies in terms of restructuring and internationalisation strategies of clusters, namely creation of own GVC or insertion into GVC led by external leaders, that has been outlined in the literature. They also highlight the conditions for each strategy to be successful.
73 Although this analysis is based on case studies and the results cannot be generalised, they provide a good starting point for further theoretical and more systematic empirical work.
74 These two clusters opted for a strategy that puts together innovation and internationalisation. Innovation strategies are different due to the different levels of maturity and the characteristics of these two clusters, namely a mature sector, that of the ceramic tile production, and a high tech sector, the biomedical one. In addition, internationalisation strategies are different not only within these clusters but also
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compared to other clustersanalysed in the literature. Internationalisation strategies of both clusters are motivated by the search for a new markets and not by the search for lower production costs. The internationalisation strategy of Sassuolo has been to realise foreign direct investments (FDI) in order to reach new markets at lower costs than exporting (the transport of ceramic tiles is costly). These FDI are not lower costs seeking or simply technology seeking; they are mainly market seeking.
75 The Mirandola cluster has internationalised early in its existence, since the 1970s, by alliance of its firms with international leaders, even acquisition since the first Mirandola firm acquired by a multinational was in the 1970s, whereas the cluster was created in the early 1960s. After that first acquisition the Mirandola cluster developed, new firms being created, that either were acquired by multinationals or set up formal relationships with multinationals.
76 Both clusters have strong capabilities in the manufacturing phases of production, but they have developed capabilities in other stages of their filiere. As shown in section 4, the Mirandola district has high innovative capacity.
77 It appears therefore that the successful strategies of districts that build global production networks or insert in global production networks is first and foremost to invest in specific capabilities, knowledge and competencies that provide them with a strategic advantage in the global competition.
78 Internationalisation is not per se a successful strategy, and can take several forms. Every district follow its own path. Upgrading and adapting capabilities should be the priority; then the district can internationalise either by investing on its own or by allying with external leaders.
79 The Sassuolo cluster has three main strengths: first, strategic advantage in production (capacity to innovate production, technology and design), although rapidly imitable; second, flexibility in production and distribution is another important factor of competitive advantages; third, evolution in market structure with the consolidation of market leaders that invest both within and outside the district in order to remain competitive.
80 Regarding the Mirandola cluster, competitive strength is based on innovative capacity, constantly renewed and expanded, leading to the arrival of different multinationals which have stayed in the district despite intense world-wide competition. The cluster appears now to be slowly but constantly moving towards higher value added products, namely electromedical machines and less disposable surgery products. Here the local knowledge and competencies are not easily copied, because it is complex knowledge, innovation is path-dependent (how much you have innovated in the past provides you with knowledge and competencies that give you higher probability of innovating again), and, last but not least, patentable. The cluster has therefore internationalised mainly through the attraction of external leaders, that have invested in the cluster and embedded in it, because they have found an appropriate milieu favouring constant upgrading.
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NOTES
1. This article is the result of a strong collaboration of the authors, yet in the phase of writing Sandrine Labory wrote the introduction, sections 2 and 4, and Giorgio Prodi wrote section 3. The conclusions were written by both authors. 2. Previously tiles were fired a first time in an oven and subsequently colours and pigments were added on the top and tiles went into the oven for a second time. Single fire technology allowed to put pigment on the tile before going into the kiln the first time, thereby saving money and improving quality. 3. Excluding China, which is a peculiar market and could be considered as a continent, the ratio of export to production rises at 30%. 4. 2010. 5. Chinese exports in Europe were growing very fast but were stopped in 2011 due to anti- dumping duties imposed By the EU Commission, that will last for 5 years. 6. For a cost comparison between Italy and China see Prodi (2006). 7. Confindustria Ceramica. 8. The local red clays are not suitable for Grès tiles that require white clays that are imported from abroad or from the Sardinia Region. 9. The technology for grès tile fires tiles at a higher temperature. This improves some tile characteristics like reduction of water absorption and a higher resistance to shocks. 10. Confindustria ceramica 2012. 11. Confindustria ceramica 2011.
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ABSTRACTS
We examine two particular cases that illustrate the tendencies outlined in the literature regarding the structural changes arising in clusters and districts, focusing on innovation and internationalisation. The ceramic tile district of Sassuolo is characterised by internationalisation through own capacity. The biomedical cluster in Mirandola is characterised by internationalisation via alliances with external leaders. Innovation and investment in tangible and intangible assets play a role in both processes: production processes and distribution strategies in Sassuolo, R&D capacity and researchcollaboration with universities and research centres in Mirandola allowed both clusters to integrate world markets. This shows the variety of strategies available to industrial districts and clusters in facing competitive challenges. Structural changes arising in industries are varied and complex, and industrial policy supporting industrial upgrading and development should take it into account.
En mettant l’accent sur les questions d’innovation et d’internationalisation, cet article étudie deux cas particuliers qui illustrent les tendances mises en évidence dans la littérature concernant les changements structurels des clusters et districts. Le district produisant des carrelages en céramique de Sassuolo se caractérise par une internationalisation basée sur des capacités autonomes. Le cluster biomédical de Mirandola se caractérise par une internationalisation basée sur des alliances avec des leaders externes. L’innovation et l’investissement en capital tangible et intangible sont fondamentaux dans les deux cas : les processus de production et les stratégies de distribution dans le cas de Sassuolo, et les capacités d’innovation et de collaboration avec les universités et autres centres de recherche dans le cas de Mirandola, ont permis aux deux clusters d’intégrer les marchés mondiaux. Une variété de stratégies est donc possible pour les districts et clusters afin de répondre aux défis compétitifs actuels. Les changements structurels en cours dans les industries sont complexes et les politiques industrielles qui supportent le renouvellement et le développement industriels doivent en tenir compte.
INDEX
Keywords: Cluster, Internationalization, Innovation, Intangible Assets, Global Value Chains Mots-clés: cluster, internationalisation, innovation, capital intangible, chaînes de valeur mondiales
AUTHORS
SANDRINE LABORY Department of Economics and Management University of Ferrara
GIORGIO PRODI Department of Economics and Management University of Ferrara
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« Ceci tuera cela » ? Dynamique des changements dans l’industrie du livre
Christian Longhi et Sylvie Rochhia
1. Introduction
1 Après des siècles d’apparente immobilité, l’industrie du livre semble entrée dans une période de profondes mutations. Avec des discours récurrents sur la fin prochaine du livre, le paradoxe d’une industrie privée de son produit (Dacos, Mounier, 2010 ; Loebbecke, 2010) ; ces débats font apparaître – particulièrement en France – des oppositions farouches aux changements, tant pour la forme traditionnelle du livre que pour sa commercialisation par les libraires. Ces mutations s’inscrivent dans les réorganisations profondes des marchés et des industries consécutives à l’émergence des technologies de l’information et de la communication, à la généralisation des accès Internet haut débit à quasiment toute la population via les technologies mobiles, comme dans la révolution des usages accompagnée par les consommateurs. Les supports papier ont quasiment disparu dans la photographie. La musique se dématérialise et ne se « consomme » plus comme dans le passé. La presse connaît d’importants bouleversements. Pourtant, au-delà des discours alarmistes, le livre semble résister aux changements. La production annuelle d’ouvrages est en progression constante1, les « rentrées » littéraires s’accompagnent d’un nombre extravagant de nouveautés, dont très peu seront finalement lues2. Ce phénomène d’hyper-offre a changé d’échelle avec l’Internet ; le volume des offres disponibles ne fera que croître, par le haut avec les nouveautés, et par le bas avec la numérisation des ouvrages existants. La dématérialisation entraîne la fin des problèmes de limitation physique dus au stockage, les œuvres sont désormais toujours disponibles. Au regard des statistiques (Lacroix, 2013)3, la crise du livre pourrait apparaître comme un sujet attrayant de polémiques. Ce serait oublier que les encyclopédies, qui sont à la base même de la naissance et du développement de l’industrie, ont quasiment disparu du
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marché de l’édition, et ont depuis 2001 pris la forme de Wikipédia. L’encyclopédie avant la musique, avant la photographie ; elle a inauguré la forme moderne de l’organisation industrielle, ce renversement où ce sont les consommateurs, ici les lecteurs, qui orientent ou participent à la production.
2 Le livre, vecteur de la création intellectuelle, fondement de la civilisation moderne, semble ne pas avoir connu d’innovation fondamentale depuis Gutenberg, jusqu’à l’arrivée du numérique et des mutations qu’il entraîne, tant dans les contenus que dans les contenants. L’industrie du livre qui relève désormais des industries culturelles et créatives se caractérise néanmoins par un renouvellement important et une différenciation de ses outputs. Mais le processus de création porte essentiellement sur le contenu littéraire alors même que la forme du contenant est restée quasiment la même depuis Gutenberg.
3 Au-delà des réorganisations internes à l’industrie et des innovations dans les processus de production, les changements qui font question arrivent avec le développement du livre électronique, ou numérique, ou e-book (Lebert, 2009). Mais qu’appelle-t-on précisément un livre numérique ? Si « un livre est l’instrument de la diffusion d’un discours au public » (Kant, 1785), depuis le codex il est identifié à un contenant associé à un contenu unique4, et l’industrie du livre est en charge de l’ensemble des étapes nécessaires à cette association. Le livre numérique a d’abord été considéré comme un « livre homothétique », la numérisation à l’identique d’un ouvrage existant, mais de fait cette numérisation a rapidement cassé le modèle contenu-contenant.
4 Cette dissociation contenant-contenu est-elle l’innovation radicale à même de bouleverser l’industrie du livre ? Le livre subira-t-il le même sort que Gutenberg a fait connaître aux formes précédentes d’écriture, comme l’a considéré Victor Hugo dans Notre-Dame de Paris. « Depuis l’origine des choses jusqu’au quinzième siècle, l’architecture est le grand livre de l’humanité, l’expression principale de l’homme à ses divers états de développement soit comme force, soit comme intelligence. Ainsi, jusqu’à Gutenberg, l’architecture est l’écriture principale, l’écriture universelle. Ce livre granitique commencé par l’Orient, continué par l’Antiquité grecque et romaine, le Moyen Âge en a écrit la dernière page. Au quinzième siècle tout change. La pensée humaine découvre un moyen de se perpétuer non seulement plus durable et plus résistant que l’architecture, mais encore plus simple et plus facile. Aux lettres de pierre d’Orphée vont succéder les lettres de plomb de Gutenberg. Le livre va tuer l’édifice. L’invention de l’imprimerie est le plus grand événement de l’histoire. C’est la révolution mère. C’est le mode d’expression de l’humanité qui se renouvelle totalement, c’est la pensée humaine qui dépouille une forme et en revêt une autre. » (Victor Hugo, 1831, Livre Cinquième, Chapitre II « Ceci tuera cela », p. 247)
5 Le numérique est-il aussi une « révolution mère », l’aube d’une forme nouvelle de la pensée humaine ? L’article ne prétend pas trancher ce questionnement. Il cherche à comprendre la nature et l’ampleur des mutations qui affectent l’industrie du livre et montre que ce sont les contenus, et non pas seulement les contenants, qui sont au cœur des dynamiques de changements. Ces dernières sont suffisamment importantes pour être d’ores et déjà attestées d’un point de vue comptable dans les nomenclatures d’activités. L’Édition faisait partie de l’Industrie manufacturière dans la NAF 1993, elle relève aujourd’hui de la section J Information et Communication dans la NAF révision 2
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de 2008. Jadis autonome, l’Édition est désormais inscrite dans une section qui intègre les activités TIC et les activités de contenus.
6 La compréhension des évolutions ne peut cependant s’arrêter à la simple étude des produits et aux évolutions comptables. L’Internet n’est pas un média qui vient s’installer à côté des médias existants. Il a la capacité de les absorber et de les transformer en profondeur, tant en termes de produits, d’organisation que de marchés (Missika, 2012). Les différentes étapes de la dématérialisation qui accompagnent ce processus se traduisent par l’entrée de nouveaux acteurs et de nouvelles technologies, l’émergence de nouvelles interactions, la recomposition de l’ensemble des activités. L’intégration des activités liées à la création de produits d’information et culturels et des activités liées à la production des outils de diffusion de ces produits a ainsi donné naissance à un nouveau système productif. Le concept de système, régulièrement mobilisé pour caractériser l’édition (Mollier, 2005) ou l’industrie des contenus (Pratt, 1997, 2004) semble en effet s’imposer pour traiter les nombreuses dimensions qui sous- tendent leurs activités, l’évolution de leurs frontières et leur dynamique organisationnelle. Dans cette perspective, l’article privilégiera le concept de « système sectoriel d’innovation et de production » (SSIP) développé par Malerba (2002, 2006), puis Tether et Metcalfe (2004) dans le domaine des services.
7 Un SSIP est défini par Malerba (2002) comme un ensemble de produits existants ou nouveaux destiné à des usages spécifiques et un ensemble d’agents opérant des interactions de marché et hors marché pour la création, la production et la vente de ces produits. Les agents composant les SSIP sont des individus ou des organisations à différents niveaux d’agrégation, caractérisés par des processus d’apprentissage, des compétences, des structures organisationnelles, des croyances, des objectifs et des comportements spécifiques. Fondamentalement, tout système sectoriel se caractérise par un ensemble d’attributs qui évoluent dans le temps, et spécifient les composants et modes d’interactions du système. Ces attributs sont les bases de connaissances et les technologies, les organisations, les institutions et la demande. C’est au cours de la coévolution de ces attributs que les systèmes sectoriels, leurs frontières et leurs dynamiques d’interactions se transforment. Cette transformation est particulièrement profonde dans l’industrie du livre, ce qui permet d’illustrer des évolutions à l’œuvre dans d’autres industries ou activités. L’article montre ainsi qu’au-delà des enjeux culturels fondamentaux qu’elle sous-tend, l’industrie du livre est représentative des changements consécutifs à la convergence numérique, la disparition de relations verticales ordonnées entre des acteurs bien identifiés, d’attributions stables et prédéfinies, l’entrée de nouveaux acteurs et l’évolution continue de ses frontières. L’article est organisé selon l’analyse des attributs du système sectoriel, qu’il s’agisse des institutions (2), des technologies et bases de connaissances (3) ou des organisations et de la demande (4). La dernière partie (5) conclut.
2. Institutions et recompositions du SSIP
8 Le livre et l’édition connaissent aujourd’hui des bouleversements importants, comme l’ensemble des industries culturelles et créatives (ICC). Le développement et la diffusion des TIC ont des répercussions sur l’ensemble de la chaîne de valeur, de la création à la production, en passant par la distribution et la consommation de biens et de services culturels (Commission européenne,2006, 2010 ; Simon, de Pratto, 2012). De nouvelles
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activités et de nouveaux produits sont apparus, reconnus comme essentiels au développement économique et à la cohésion sociale (Deroin, 2011), et entraînant un besoin de statistiques impossible à satisfaire jusqu’à une date récente (OCDE, 2007).
9 Les nomenclatures économiques mondiales ont en effet été rénovées en 2008, avec la définition d’une nouvelle section « Information et Communication » qui représente de fait la société de l’information. Cette section couvre « la production et la distribution de produits d’information et de produits culturels, la fourniture de moyens de transmettre ou de distribuer ces produits ainsi que des données ou des activités concernant les technologies de l’information et de la communication et le traitement des données et autres activités de services de l’information » (Nations unies, 2009, p. 226). Elle a pour principales activités : (i) l’édition, laquelle comprend également l’édition de logiciels, la production de films cinématographiques et l’enregistrement sonore ; (ii) la programmation et la diffusion, la radiodiffusion et la production de programmes de télévision ; (iii) les télécommunications ; (iv) les technologies de l’information ; (v) les services d’information.
10 Cette révision, opérée aux niveaux français, européen et international, vise à unifier les nomenclatures. Ainsi, la nouvelle NAF 2008 est directement emboîtée sur la nouvelle nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté européenne 2008 (NACE Rév. 2, 2008), qui elle-même s’appuie sur la Classification internationale type par industrie (CITI Rév. 4, 2008) (Deroin, 2011).
11 Mais si l’évolution des nomenclatures entérine les changements importants à l’œuvre dans l’édition, la classant désormais en NAF 5811Z, le commerce de livres se situe en NAF 4761Z, dans une autre section de la NAF. Les résultats comptables sont bien sûr importants pour appréhender l’activité économique, mais ils ne peuvent rendre compte de la dynamique industrielle, de l’évolution des marchés, de l’organisation de l’industrie, des interdépendances ou de l’émergence d’acteurs nouveaux. L’analyse en termes de SSIP proposée dans cet article entend répondre à ces différents questionnements, et identifier les changements majeurs à l’œuvre aujourd’hui dans l’industrie de l’édition. Au-delà des nomenclatures d’activités, l’ensemble des agents parties prenantes de la coordination des activités liées à l’édition, sera considéré dans cette recherche, essentiellement exploratoire.
12 Les institutions sont essentielles pour comprendre la dynamique de tout système sectoriel ; l’évolution des lois, des règlements, des standards, des routines peut être nécessaire à l’émergence des changements dans l’industrie. Elles jouent aussi un rôle au niveau de l’organisation du système, comme l’illustre l’histoire de l’édition en France. Suite au décret du 5 février 1810, l’édition va en effet se détacher de l’imprimerie5 et prendre le pas sur une logique de libraire jusque-là essentiellement guidée par la demande (Mollier, 2005).
13 Les différences entre les évolutions contemporaines de l’industrie du livre aux États- Unis et en France sont aussi significatives de l’importance des arrangements institutionnels. La France est une des économies où la part de marché du livre numérique reste faible (0,6 % en 2012). Aux États-Unis, cette part s’élève à 27 % et continue sa progression (+ 42 % en 2012) après des taux à trois chiffres ces dernières années (AAP, 2012). Au premier trimestre 2012, la vente de livres numériques a dépassé celle de livres papier reliés sur le marché américain. Cette croissance n’a pas empêché les ventes de livres papier d’augmenter (2,7 %), alors que sur le marché français, elles ont baissé de 2,1 %.
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14 Pour expliquer ces différences dans les parts de marché6 nationales du livre numérique, on a pu évoquer en France un attachement particulier au livre papier, voire à son odeur… Les ruptures technologiques récentes rappellent en fait que, loin d’être un acte passif, la consommation ne se réduit pas à une simple adoption. Des phénomènes de coévolution (technologies-marché/utilisateurs-institutions) sont observés, car les usagers doivent intégrer les technologies dans leurs pratiques, ce qui implique apprentissages et ajustements dans leurs comportements. La dynamique des systèmes sectoriels passe ainsi par un processus d’adaptation mutuelle et de feed-back entre technologies, contenus et usages. Et l’intérêt d’une analyse en termes de systèmes consiste précisément à placer la coévolution de la technologie et de la société (Geels, 2004) au centre de toute réflexion sur le changement. D’ailleurs, comme le remarquent Chartron et Moreau (2011), la stratégie des nouveaux acteurs de l’édition, Amazon et surtout Apple, serait de peaufiner design et ergonomie pour établir un rapport particulier avec les consommateurs, un attachement jugé parfois irrationnel.
15 Les explications sont également à rechercher dans les prix et les barrières posées par certains acteurs, les règlements, les épaisseurs des catalogues ouverts, car d’importantes différences entre pays sont observées à ces niveaux.
16 Aux États-Unis, si le prix d’un livre numérique tend se rapprocher de celui de la version papier de base, il reste bien inférieur à celui de la version standard7. Alors qu’en France, les différences de prix entre versions papier et numérique sont plus faibles8. D’après l’institut GfK, le prix psychologique d’une version numérique serait de 7 € (pour une version papier de 18 €), autant dire que les conditions à la croissance du marché ne sont pas encore réalisées, les prix se situant en moyenne au-delà de ce seuil. Sachant que les prix sont fixés par les éditeurs – selon un contrat d’agence – et non par les distributeurs, qu’ils soient traditionnels ou pas, comme les sites web, App Store ou autres plates-formes, ces barrières à l’entrée pourraient perdurer encore quelque temps. Les conditions particulières – prix unique et taux de TVA réduit – dont a bénéficié le livre papier évoluent et vont remettre en question la réglementation du marché de l’édition, qui visait à défendre l’exception culturelle autant que les libraires indépendants face aux grandes surfaces et au commerce électronique. Le taux réduit de TVA (5,5 % depuis janvier 2013) est désormais appliqué aux livres numériques, ce qui devrait être une incitation forte à développer le marché français. Cette décision a d’ailleurs été attaquée par la Commission européenne qui considère que le livre numérique n’est pas un produit mais un service – téléchargement d’un produit numérique – qui, en tant que tel, ne peut bénéficier d’un taux réduit. Assimiler le livre numérique à un service constitue pourtant une aberration : « Faut-il ne rien comprendre à l’évolution des activités industrielles pour considérer que le livre numérique relève d’une activité de service ! Il requiert une chaîne d’activités, création, fabrication, production de métadonnées, stockage, distribution, qui en font pleinement un bien, sa forme ultime fût-elle numérique » (Benhamou, 2012a).
17 Dans sa version numérique, le livre se présente en effet comme un fichier qui, quel que soit son format9, peut prendre la forme d’une disquette, d’un CD-rom, d’une clef usb, ou circuler sur l’Internet, pour être lu grâce à un logiciel sur écran via un ordinateur, un smartphone, ou tout autre appareil dédié. Ce fichier est dénommé livre par référence au livre papier, au « livre imprimé conventionnel » (Vassiliou, Rowley, 2008), ce qui s’avère aujourd’hui assez réducteur. Cette appellation était pourtant justifiée au moment de l’émergence du livre électronique.
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18 Le livre électronique est apparu suite à la volonté des institutions de numériser tous les classiques et les ouvrages libres de droit de la littérature. Le processus démarre sur une grande échelle dès 1971 avec le projet Gutenberg lancé par Michael Hart à l’Université de l’Illinois aux États-Unis. Ce projet, fondé sur l’utilisation de textes en ACSII, format texte universel qui rend les fichiers utilisables sur toutes les machines, garantit un accès à tous. Pour maintenir ce libre accès, les institutions ont su s’adapter aux évolutions de format et à leur diversité. Aujourd’hui, 44 13710 e-books sont ainsi disponibles sur Gutenberg et 100 000 via des plates-formes partenaires. Cette initiative a ensuite été suivie par de nombreuses bibliothèques nationales, mais surtout par Google qui, en 2004, projetait de numériser tous les ouvrages existants pour créer une bibliothèque universelle donnant un libre accès à la connaissance11. Différentes évolutions législatives sont également en cours comme la « loi sur l’exploitation numérique des livres indisponibles du XXe siècle » de 2012, qui vise à offrir une version numérique à partir des collections du dépôt légal conservées à la Bibliothèque nationale de France. Dans le même esprit, des accords existent entre, par exemple, Hachette et Google pour la numérisation des œuvres indisponibles, pour assurer de nouveaux revenus à l’éditeur comme aux auteurs.
19 Aussi importantes soient-elles, ces initiatives ne se sont pas traduites par des bouleversements industriels importants pour l’édition. Les premières réorganisations commencent avec l’apparition des librairies en ligne, qui concurrencent les librairies « traditionnelles », et les e-books, qui concurrencent les p-books12 sur les marchés. La distribution a en effet connu des évolutions importantes dans tous les pays et le livre ne fait pas exception à l’évolution du commerce, avec l’émergence de grandes surfaces, spécialisées ou non, puis de la distribution en ligne. Le tableau 1 synthétise les résultats.
Tableau 1. Les lieux d’achat du livre en 2012
20 Répartition des achats de livres neufs en valeur (livres imprimés neufs, hors livres scolaires, encyclopédies et fascicules)
23 % Librairies (tous réseaux confondus) – librairies (grandes librairies et librairies spécialisées) et librairies de grands magasins 19 % – maisons de presse, librairies-papeteries, kiosques de gares, aéroports 4 %
Grandes surfaces culturelles spécialisées 23 %
Grandes surfaces culturelles non spécialisées (espaces culturels) 19 %
Ventes par internet (tous réseaux confondus) 17 %
VPC, courtage et clubs (hors internet) 14 %
Autres (soldeurs, écoles, marchés…) 4 %
Source : Baromètre multi-clients. Achats de livres. INS-Sofres pour MCC-SLL/OEL. Panel de 3 000 personnes de 15 ans et plus. Résultats 2012 provisoires.
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21 La part des libraires recule régulièrement ; elle était de 33 % en 1994 et ne représente plus que 23 % du marché en 2012. La FNAC et Direct Group, mais aussi Leclerc (Espaces culturels), Carrefour, Auchan, les grandes surfaces non spécialisées, comptent parmi les leaders du marché. Après cette première vague de concurrents, qui proposaient essentiellement les best-sellers, les librairies affrontent aujourd’hui les librairies en ligne, et les catalogues quasi exhaustifs des ouvrages qu’elles mettent à disposition, avec un confort d’achat important (LeMotif, 2012). Si les libraires, et notamment les libraires indépendants, connaissent des difficultés importantes, l’industrie a globalement des résultats satisfaisants (tableau 2).
Tableau 2. Principaux indicateurs de l’édition
2011 2012 Var. %
Chiffre d’affaires (en millions d’euros) 2 804 2 771 -1.2%
dont ventes de livres 2 669 2 339 -1.1%
dont cessions de droits 135 133 -1.6%
Ventes d’exemplaires (milliers) 450 579 440 901 -2.1%
Production en titres (unités) 81 268 86 395 6.2%
dont nouveautés 41 902 44 678 6.6%
dont réimpressions 39 366 41 616 5.7%
Production en exemplaires (milliers) 620 062 630 913 1.7%
dont nouveautés 379 483 387 389 2.1%
dont réimpressions 240 579 243 524 1.2%
Tirage moyen nouveautés 9 056 8 671 -4.3%
Tirage moyen réimpressions 6 111 5 852 -4.2%
Tirage moyen global 7 630 7 311 -4.2%
Source : Repères statistiques France 2013 données 2012
22 Les évolutions majeures relatives aux e-books dans l’édition ont commencé avec la création de marchés et de produits spécifiques, sans commune mesure avec la numérisation des bibliothèques des premières initiatives. Le livre numérique est aussi un objet industriel dédié à la lecture et ne renvoie plus seulement à la lecture sur un écran quelconque. Cette évolution a été entérinée par les institutions françaises13. Comme dans sa version classique, le livre numérique reste portable, mais le sens de ce terme s’est élargi avec le développement des technologies mobiles. Les institutions sont également présentes dans l’émergence d’une organisation industrielle nouvelle. L’adoption de standards ou de normes éditoriales peut en effet s’avérer être un frein
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important à l’une des caractéristiques du livre numérique, celle qui permet sa portabilité vers d’autres applications14. Des formats compatibles existent, le Pdf bien sûr, et le format ePub15, qui est le format international spécifique au livre numérique (Loebbecke, 2010), sur lequel tous les acteurs auraient pu se rejoindre, mais qui n’a pas été facilement adopté. De nombreuses initiatives et projets visant à modifier les règles sont en cours. Par exemple, MO3T (Modèle Ouvert 3 Tiers) propose de passer d’une logique de vente de contenus à une logique de vente de droits, le droit d’accéder à n’importe quel moment et depuis n’importe quel terminal à un livre dont on détiendrait le droit numérique, ce qui sous-entend bien sûr que les standards sont devenus publics, ce qui est loin d’être acquis.
23 L’industrie du livre avec une multitude d’autres entrent donc dans une phase de recomposition importante dont on ne connaît pas encore l’issue. Le e-book associe, mais aussi et surtout, paradoxalement dissocie contenant et contenu, et devient un substitut du papier. Alors que le livre papier est un contenant dont le contenu est définitivement figé, la liseuse est le contenant de milliers de contenus possibles, et un contenu particulier peut être associé à plusieurs contenants ; on peut commencer à lire un livre numérique acheté dans un format particulier sur une liseuse, le continuer plus tard sur un smartphone, sans perdre la page où l’on s’est arrêté, et le finir sur une tablette. Cette dissociation contenant-contenu est l’innovation radicale à même de bouleverser l’industrie, fondement d’une redéfinition possible du livre.
3. Technologies et évolution des frontières de l’industrie
24 L’édition, l’une des plus « vieilles » industries connues, s’est caractérisée par une apparente immobilité, longtemps autonome par rapport aux autres activités, et apparemment étanche aux changements. De fait, elle est le résultat de deux innovations radicales qui ont scellé sa forme et son organisation industrielle jusqu’à très récemment. La première date du Ier siècle, avec l’apparition du codex, qui a remplacé le volumen, rouleau exigeant une lecture continue. Le codex, formé de pages reliées entre elles et organisé en chapitres ou parties, a imposé la forme du livre manuscrit toujours utilisé aujourd’hui. La seconde innovation radicale, l’imprimerie, date du XVe siècle et est due à Gutenberg. C’est, comme le soulignait Victor Hugo dans Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), la « révolution mère », qui va bouleverser la civilisation, et faire du livre le vecteur de la culture et de la connaissance, de tous les changements et des autres révolutions. Une troisième innovation radicale est peut-être en cours ; elle renvoie au numérique et à la dématérialisation.
25 L’apparition de nouveaux supports et usages dans l’édition est consécutive à l’entrée d’acteurs issus d’autres activités, les TIC ou le e-commerce. De nouvelles compétences sont ainsi intégrées dans une industrie qui, bien qu’orientée vers la création, n’avait ni la capacité ni les ressources pour organiser et maintenir une activité d’innovation industrielle radicale. Dans sa taxonomie des modèles sectoriels d’innovation, Castellacci (2008) considère en effet que les activités d’édition et d’imprimerie se caractérisent par un contenu technologique plus faible et par une aptitude limitée à développer en interne de nouveaux produits ou processus. La stratégie dominante repose donc sur l’achat de machines, d’équipements et autres connaissances externes produites par les fournisseurs. Ainsi, les changements introduits dans l’industrie se sont d’abord
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focalisés sur l’offre sans vraiment modifier l’organisation de ses compétences. Mais depuis une dizaine d’années, de nouveaux changements ou sauts technologiques sont au centre de l’évolution des compétences fondamentales de cette industrie.
26 Les technologies et bases de connaissances de ce qui est aujourd’hui l’industrie de l’édition au sens de SSIP, ont considérablement évolué, la dynamique étant essentiellement le fait de nouveaux entrants qui ont recomposé l’organisation de l’industrie et des marchés, transférant progressivement vers l’aval – la distribution – le pouvoir au détriment des éditeurs. Ce paragraphe présente les différentes étapes, les « sauts » technologiques, en préalable à l’analyse de l’organisation de l’industrie, c’est- à-dire les évolutions en chacun des maillons de la chaîne éditoriale avant de considérer les interactions entre ces différents maillons.
27 Les TIC et l’Internet sont au cœur de ces évolutions, de l’amélioration du processus de production existant jusqu’à la dématérialisation de l’ensemble des produits et processus et la recomposition de l’ensemble du système.
28 Les premières évolutions portent essentiellement sur les technologies de production. On passe ainsi de la composition à la photocomposition – informatisation des processus, des rotatives aux expéditions pilotées par ordinateur, selon une logique « supplier-dominated » (Castellacci, 2008). L’édition ne fait pas exception au processus général de recherche de baisse des coûts et d’efficacité dans la production à l’œuvre dans tous les secteurs de l’économie. L’accroissement des volumes, évoqué précédemment, témoigne d’un abaissement du seuil de rentabilité autorisé par l’introduction du numérique dans la production, ce qui encourage les éditeurs à multiplier les lancements pour espérer un best-seller (Moati, 2011). L’offre sélective laisse la place à une offre de masse, ou hyper-offre (Benghozi, 2010, 2011). Ce dynamisme éditorial stimule la demande sans pour autant modifier les rapports entre acteurs ni même leurs compétences fondamentales. Guidés par la diminution des coûts de production, les TIC vont également faciliter la délocalisation de la production. Selon Benhamou et al. (2008), 60 % de la production commercialisée en France serait imprimée à l’étranger. L’exception culturelle vaut pour les contenus, mais les contenants ne font eux pas exception aux processus de globalisation à l’œuvre dans toutes les industries aujourd’hui.
29 Les secondes évolutions concernent les technologies de distribution, et notamment la vente en ligne qui a directement impacté les librairies, et principalement les libraires indépendants. Le livre n’a pas échappé au développement du e-commerce, bien au contraire. Avec le tourisme, les produits culturels sont sans doute ceux qui ont le plus contribué au développement des ventes en ligne et transformé les usages. L’industrie a dû s’adapter à l’arrivée de nouveaux entrants qui ont bouleversé les schémas de distribution existants et les politiques de prix. Loin de se cantonner à la traditionnelle offre éditoriale, ces nouveaux acteurs proposent de nouveaux services d’intermédiation et de valorisation des interactions sociales. Amazon, fondé en 1994, va ainsi donner la possibilité aux usagers de comparer les produits, d’échanger des évaluations, des suggestions, un ensemble de services qui ont structuré le commerce en ligne et ont été adoptés par l’ensemble de ses acteurs (Griffin et al., 2013). Ce sont les libraires indépendants qui ont finalement le plus souffert de cette évolution des technologies de distribution. N’ayant pas les mêmes facilités de stockage que les sites en ligne, ils ne peuvent satisfaire immédiatement toutes les demandes16. Soutenus par les institutions, les libraires ont tenté de réagir en essayant de combiner les avantages de la commande
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en ligne et du contact17. Toutefois, la taille et la qualité de service d’Amazon18, ou encore la notoriété de la FNAC, ne facilitent pas la croissance de ces initiatives, souvent locales19. Au-delà du problème de visibilité s’ajoute également un manque de compétences dans le e-commerce. Mais aujourd’hui, les libraires ne sont plus les seuls acteurs à être confrontés à un problème de compétences. À la distribution en ligne, s’ajoutent le développement de l’e-book et le téléchargement de fichiers numériques, impliquant pour les éditeurs l’acquisition de nouvelles connaissances et la mise en place de nouvelles stratégies suite au dédoublement des catalogues (catalogue papier et catalogue en ligne).
30 Les dernières évolutions portent ainsi sur le couple contenu-contenant, le livre numérique au sens où nous l’avons défini précédemment. Si la numérisation des contenus commence dès 1971 avec le projet Gutenberg, l’évolution des usages a longtemps été freinée par la contrainte du micro-ordinateur et le format texte des contenus, peu compatibles avec le plaisir de la lecture. C’est avec le développement des technologies mobiles et l’autorisation d’usages compatibles avec des pratiques ancrées dans la société, c’est-à-dire un livre contenant-contenu20, que le livre numérique en tant que produit va peu à peu s’imposer sur le marché. Si la technologie de l’encre électronique s’avère essentielle dans cette transition, les compétences managériales se sont également révélées décisives.
31 Ainsi, Amazon a su créer un marché grâce à une stratégie offensive et des innovations importantes tant sur les contenus (catalogues importants, prises de notes…) que sur les contenants (encre électronique, haute résolution, liseuse Kindle…). En choisissant de fournir ses livres électroniques sur une liseuse, Kindle, vendue sur son site, l’entreprise est rapidement devenue le leader mondial et son impact sur le marché américain a été colossal. Pour autant, le Kindle n’est pas un appareil électronique comme un autre : (i) il a été créé et fabriqué en 2007 par Amazon pour asseoir sa stratégie de conquête de l’industrie du livre ; (ii) les e-books vendus par Amazon sont au format Kindle et ne pouvaient à l’origine être lus qu’à travers ce contenant (Griffin et al., 2013 ; Rao, 2011). Si de nouvelles liseuses21 sont venues concurrencer le Kindle, tant pour les contenants que pour les contenus, en 2012, Amazon détenait toujours 62 % du marché des liseuses aux États-Unis22.
32 Le dernier développement relatif aux contenants concerne les tablettes qui, deux ans seulement après leur lancement, ont déjà pris le pas sur les liseuses, bouleversant considérablement les usages de l’Internet et de nombreuses activités médias. En 2011, Apple a lancé l’iPad, qui a été à l’Internet ce que l’iPod avait été à la musique23. Comme le montre la figure 1, les tablettes ont pris le pas sur les liseuses ; leur marché a connu une croissance exponentielle, nourrie par l’entrée de tous les leaders du marché, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft, Google, mais aussi Amazon. L’avenir du livre numérique est au cœur de la concurrence que se livrent ces groupes.
33 Les liseuses et les tablettes ont des usages différents. La liseuse est dédiée à la lecture, elle offre un confort important et incarne de ce point de vue ce qu’on a appelé le livre homothétique. Les tablettes sont multi-usages, leur écran couleur n’offre pas le même confort de lecture, mais au-delà du livre, elles offrent un accès à la presse, aux jeux, à la musique, aux vidéos, aux photos… et à toutes les applications développées pour les smartphones, et à l’Internet en mobilité. Les liseuses ont des prix très inférieurs et des autonomies très importantes, mais le monotâche peut difficilement concurrencer le multitâche, et globalement leur marché aurait tendance à s’effondrer (figure 1)24.
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Figure 1. Ventes mondiales de tablettes et de liseuses.
34 Quelque 140 millions de tablettes ont été vendues dans le monde et selon l’institut GfK, seulement 10 % du temps d’utilisation serait consacré à la lecture. Au-delà de la fiabilité des estimations des usages, la taille de ce marché représente un immense débouché pour les contenus numériques.
35 Mais les tablettes sont aussi le nœud d’une nouvelle concurrence, celle que se livrent Amazon, Apple et Google (les AAG), auxquels il va falloir ajouter Microsoft, et qui s’articule sur le nuage. Les contenus sont des éléments importants de cette concurrence, les e-books sont stockés dans le nuage, et sont utilisables sur plusieurs appareils, on peut arrêter la lecture sur une tablette et la continuer ailleurs. La taille de l’offre potentielle d’applications et de contenus est une clef de la concurrence que se livrent les acteurs, comme établi depuis de nombreuses années avec les standards.
36 Avec le développement de systèmes interconnectés par les TIC, la conception de produits et services liés aux contenus s’avère ainsi plus complexe. Suite aux contraintes d’interopérabilité et aux exigences des institutions, les interdépendances entre systèmes tendent à s’accroître. Cela signifie que les caractéristiques opérationnelles des plates-formes doivent de plus en plus se définir les unes par rapport aux autres, et que les connaissances en systèmes d’information et en TIC sont devenues cruciales pour le management de toutes les activités de contenus. En permettant aux contenus de s’affranchir des contenants, la numérisation a encore accéléré l’entrée de l’industrie dans une économie de l’abondance. La numérisation a en effet démultiplié les possibilités d’offres et de diffusion des contenus. Les plates-formes d’agrégation de contenus revêtent aujourd’hui une importance considérable, tout comme les outils de référencement permettant aux usagers de focaliser leur attention dans la masse des contenus disponibles (Benghozi, 2010, 2011).
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37 Face à l’apparition des bouquets numériques et au développement du nuage, l’éditeur doit acquérir de nouvelles connaissances pour tenter de conserver une certaine maîtrise dans la coordination du processus éditorial. L’éditeur se voit ainsi contraint d’axer ses compétences non plus sur la maîtrise en profondeur des connaissances nécessaires au processus éditorial, mais sur la maîtrise de leur étendue25 (Wang, von Tunzelmann, 2000). L’étendue des connaissances constitue donc un nouvel enjeu pour les acteurs de cette industrie. Il semble que les compétences technologiques et organisationnelles nécessaires pour contrôler et intégrer le travail d’édition numérique se soient rapidement développées au sein des grands groupes. Le dernier paragraphe montre qu’elles sont aussi à l’origine d’une redéfinition des rôles des acteurs, que ce soit au niveau de la diffusion/distribution26 ou de l’édition.
4. Vers une transformation des formes d’interactions
38 Les technologies, bases de connaissances, mais aussi l’organisation de l’industrie de l’édition ont connu une stabilité qui a traversé des siècles, avant d’être entraînées dans une dynamique de changements profonds qui est allée en s’accélérant. Les deux années qui viennent de suivre la naissance de l’iPad en 2011 comptent sans doute plus que des dizaines d’autres.
39 Historiquement, pour Mollier (2005) sur lequel nous nous appuyons dans ce rappel, l’édition apparaît à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et au début du XIXe siècle. Jusqu’en 1775, il est préférable de parler de libraire, métier qui obéit essentiellement à une logique de demande. À cette époque, Charles Joseph Panckoucke obtient le droit de commercialiser l’Encyclopédie et introduit deux changements majeurs, ce qui va transformer le métier en un métier d’éditeur.
40 Le premier changement consiste à intégrer dans le métier une logique d’offre. « Panckoucke réfléchit donc au moyen d’inventer de nouveaux lecteurs pour l’ Encyclopédie. Il joue d’abord sur le format du livre : en essayant de réduire les formats pour abaisser les coûts de fabrication. Il joue également sur l’impression des volumes en les faisant imprimer à l’étranger, à des tarifs très inférieurs aux coûts de fabrication en France. Enfin, il joue sur la qualité du papier » (Mollier, 2005), c’est-à-dire sur tous les postes des coûts de fabrication, et divise par quatre le prix de l’Encyclopédie.
41 Le second changement consiste à élargir le champ des compétences du libraire de sorte qu’il puisse intervenir dans le processus de production du manuscrit. L’éditeur n’est plus simplement un intermédiaire qui transmet un manuscrit d’auteur à l’imprimeur, il s’implique dans le processus et participe à la création éditoriale27. La sélection de manuscrits et l’élaboration de contenus deviennent les compétences centrales du métier d’éditeur. L’auteur n’est plus simplement un offreur de contenus, il travaille désormais avec l’éditeur pour la fourniture du contenu. Cette collaboration étroite qui se noue entre auteur et éditeur est un des éléments fondamentaux de la valeur d’une maison d’édition28.
42 Pourtant, avec l’édition numérique, le rôle de l’éditeur est en train d’évoluer, voire même de perdre de son importance (Carreiro, 2010 ; Godine,2011). Comme on l’a vu, c’est avec l’introduction des TIC que l’édition connaît des ruptures importantes29, que ce soit au niveau de la distribution des contenus (i), de l’offre des contenus (ii) et
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récemment du contenu en lui-même (iii). Les TIC et l’Internet ont contribué à déstructurer la chaîne verticale des relations qui organisaient l’industrie du livre.
43 La chaîne traditionnelle associait auteur, éditeur, distributeur, diffuseur et libraire, dans une organisation où la coordination des activités était fortement sous le contrôle des éditeurs, particulièrement en France où le degré d’intégration est particulièrement élevé (Loncle et al., 2012 ; Benhamou, Guillon, 2010). « Je méditerai, tu m’éditeras », la célèbre dédicace de Louise de Vilmorin à son éditeur Gallimard traduit la relation particulière qui associait l’auteur à son éditeur depuis la naissance de l’industrie évoquée précédemment. « Je m’éditerai, tu méditeras » pourrait être la dédicace caractéristique de l’économie future de l’Internet, celle d’une relation directe de l’auteur au lecteur qui court-circuite l’ensemble de la chaîne, et ne se préoccupe plus des éditeurs.
44 De nombreux sites dédiés à l’auto-édition offrent désormais une grande panoplie de services selon un modèle Freemium, mais les prestations offertes sont essentiellement techniques. L’émergence de ces nouvelles opportunités d’édition pour les auteurs laisse donc en suspens la question de la fourniture du service éditorial30 (Bounie et al., 2012). Ces sites sont le plus souvent le fait de nouveaux entrants, qui sont immédiatement des entreprises globales, et bien évidemment multilingues, des pure-players venus bouleverser les arrangements existants. Il en est ainsi de Lulu, un des leaders de ce marché, ou Smashword, YouScribe, JePublie, pubet.com, Book on Demand (Benhamou, 2012b), mais surtout aussi Amazon. Le centre de gravité du système, quelle que soit la fonction analysée, est tiré vers l’aval de la chaîne.
45 Indépendamment de ce lien direct auteur-lecteur, quasiment tous les autres réarrangements sont a priori possibles et coexistent aujourd’hui, donnant naissance à différentes formes de coordination industrielle. Le volet complètement dématérialisé ne représente en 2012 que 0,6 % du marché en France, mais c’est bien cette part qui guide les stratégies de réorganisation.
46 La numérisation a également poussé les firmes installées à explorer de nouvelles chaînes de distribution et de nouveaux modèles d’affaire. La production de masse basée sur une seule chaîne de distribution a ainsi évolué pour s’appuyer sur divers canaux de distribution (Gordon et al., 2008). En créant de nouveaux supports de lecture, les innovations technologiques ont donc modifié les processus de production et de diffusion des contenus. Les supports électroniques permettent de s’affranchir du papier et, ce faisant, simplifient les étapes de diffusion. La chaîne éditoriale traditionnelle est plus courte, plus rapide, ce qui se traduit par une baisse des coûts. Tout comme les éditeurs, les auteurs peuvent court-circuiter certains maillons de la chaîne et atteindre le lecteur en évitant des intermédiaires. La figure 2 illustre la nature des changements dans les relations avec le développement du numérique et la remise en cause des positions installées dans l’industrie.
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Figure 2. Les chaînes du livre papier et numérique
Source : DEPS, ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 2010
47 Mais ces changements vont aussi permettre à de nouveaux acteurs, que ce soit du côté de la diffusion ou du côté de la fabrication de nouveaux contenants, d’intégrer le système éditorial. La figure 3, due à Champourlier (2011), illustre quant à elle les nouvelles formes d’intermédiation comme les possibilités de désintermédiation qui coïncident avec le numérique.
Figure 3. La chaîne de valeur du livre numérique
Source : Champourlier, 2011, d’après Idate, 2010.
48 Comme le montre le développement du livre numérique, la plupart des nouveaux acteurs viennent de l’industrie des TIC et n’ont que peu de liens avec le monde de
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l’édition. Car ce qui est nouveau dans le e-book, c’est qu’il offre un « produit exploitable par une machine » et non plus seulement un « produit lisible par l’homme » (Coyle, 2001). Cette nouvelle approche de l’offre éditoriale élargit considérablement la possibilité de découvrir le contenu (O’Leary, 2011). Il y a donc remise en cause de la vision selon laquelle les formats numériques ne seraient que secondaires ou dérivés. La notion de production, qui traditionnellement était centrée autour de l’imprimerie, s’élargit pour inclure la production de services, de software et d’activités basées sur le web. S’il est toujours possible de parler d’édition/impression de biens (livres, revues), il est désormais impossible d’ignorer l’offre de services basés sur les TIC.
49 La concentration semble être le mot clef pour caractériser l’édition et les dynamiques contemporaines sont de nature à accélérer le processus. Cela est vrai à tous les niveaux de l’activité, des auteurs aux lecteurs. Le livre reste une économie de superstars, avec quelques auteurs qui représentent une part très importante des ventes (Benghozi, 2008 ; Benghozi, Benhamou, 2008). Mais cela est aussi vrai des lecteurs ; ainsi, près de 50 % des achats de livres sont le fait de 15 % des lecteurs ; ces lecteurs sont évidemment stratégiques pour l’industrie : qu’ils adoptent le livre numérique et la moitié de l’industrie traditionnelle s’effondre31 (Gaillard, 2010).
50 Entre ces deux extrêmes de la chaîne, la situation est comparable. On l’a vu pour la distribution, avec une part importante pour quelques grandes surfaces, spécialisées ou non (LeMotif, 2012). Quant aux éditeurs, ils constituent un oligopole à frange concurrentielle : 5 % représentent quasiment 60 % du chiffre d’affaires total, 42,6 % ne représentent que 1,3 % du chiffre d’affaires (Benhamou et al., 2008 ; Benhamou, Guillon, 2010). Ou encore, les premiers éditeurs représentent la moitié des ventes, le dixième n’en représente déjà plus que moins de 1 % (Moreau, Peltier, 2011).
51 En France, le degré d’intégration du livre papier était très élevé, et les éditeurs ont développé leurs propres circuits de distribution, alors que ces fonctions sont généralement indépendantes dans les autres pays (Loncle et al., 2012). C’est sur cette fonction que les changements ont été les plus rapides, et les éditeurs français ont développé seuls ou en association leurs plates-formes numériques pour préserver cette source de revenus (Loncle et al., 2012). Ainsi, Hachette a racheté Numilog, L’Harmattan a développé l’Harmathèque, Eden distribue La Martinière, Le Seuil, Flammarion, Gallimard, Decitre a lancé en 2012 le projet d’une plate-forme open source, The Ebook Alternative (Loncle et al., 2012). Comme le remarque Benhamou (2012b), cette structure fragmentée est viable, mais multiplie les coûts de transaction et affaiblit une offre déjà limitée par les réticences des éditeurs vis-à-vis du numérique. Une évolution importante a eu lieu fin 2013, Hachette a cédé Numilog à son créateur, Denis Zwirn, pour lui permettre de se développer au-delà de son catalogue et d’adopter des stratégies de croissance autonomes et propres à cette activité nouvelle. Cela marque peut-être une nouvelle étape dans le développement du numérique en France. Il est vrai que son marché peut difficilement échapper au processus de globalisation et aux modèles qui se mettent en place partout.
52 Les États-Unis constituent le terrain où ces modèles ont émergé, et où les changements ont été les plus drastiques. Amazon a rapidement acquis une position de leader sur le marché du livre, à travers le e-commerce, puis surtout le livre numérique, où, comme on l’a vu, les processus d’innovation mis en place ont créé un nouveau marché dans tous les sens du terme, nouveaux produits, nouvelles interactions entre les acteurs, nouveaux modes de fixation des prix. L’entreprise a eu une politique agressive,
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privilégiant le niveau d’activité au profit ; elle a vendu délibérément à perte dans le e- commerce, imposé le prix de 9.99 $ comme référence pour les nouveautés, et forcé les éditeurs à suivre. Amazon leur rétrocède 70 % si le prix des ouvrages se situe entre 2.99 et 9.99, mais 35 % si le prix est supérieur à 9.99 $ (Rao, 2011).
53 Amazon a d’abord forcé la recomposition de la distribution, très concentrée dans les grandes surfaces non spécialisées (Target, Wal-Mart) et spécialisées. Les librairies sont des groupes importants aux États-Unis ; Borders par exemple, un des groupes leaders avec plus de 500 librairies et 20 000 employés, n’a pas su gérer le passage un numérique, et a été liquidé en 2011. Un de ses concurrents directs, Barnes & Noble, s’est aligné sur la stratégie d’Amazon dans la vente en ligne, en complément de ses librairies32, et a développé sa propre liseuse, Nook, laquelle a pris une part importante du marché ; l’entreprise a ainsi précédé la stratégie de la FNAC en France, qui a adopté la liseuse Kobo (du groupe japonais Rakuten) pour tenter de préserver ses parts de marché. En développant ses propres tablettes, Barnes & Noble a suivi la stratégie d’Amazon face à Apple, mais n’a pas réussi à faire face33 à la concurrence sévère imposée par ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler aujourd’hui les AAG (Apple, Amazon, Google). Cela a aussi correspondu à l’entrée progressive de Microsoft sur ce marché. En avril 2012, Microsoft est en effet entré à hauteur de 17 % environ dans le capital de Nook Media34. La stratégie de Microsoft est claire : protéger une proie de ses concurrents potentiels, les AAG, comme elle l’avait fait il y a quelques années pour protéger Facebook. Pour autant, les tablettes Nook, bien construites et abordables, n’ont pu résister à la concurrence, l’écueil ne se situant pas dans le matériel, mais dans la diversité des applications associées. C’est le symétrique du problème auquel se heurte Microsoft avec sa propre tablette Surface. Il a ainsi été question pour Microsoft de finalement acquérir complètement Nook Media pour 1 milliard de dollars (Osborn, 2013), ce qui lui permettrait de rendre disponible le catalogue de Barnes & Noble sous Windows 8, et de concurrencer les AAG. Son acquisition récente de Nokia est de ce point de vue complémentaire35.
54 Les éditeurs ont aussi dû faire face à l’hégémonie grandissante d’Amazon, qui leur a confisqué la capacité de fixer les prix. Amazon, qui a rapidement eu une position de leader sur l’aval, a été tenté de prendre des positions sur l’amont, en essayant d’attirer les auteurs et d’entrer sur le segment de l’édition. Bien que ne maîtrisant pas les compétences clefs de la production éditoriale, l’entreprise pourrait, par le biais d’une intégration verticale, réussir à capter une plus grande part de la valeur ajoutée (Bounie et al., 2012). Cette marche pendant un temps sans obstacle vers le contrôle de l’ensemble de la chaîne a néanmoins connu quelques revers. Les éditeurs d’abord, Macmillan en particulier qui menaçait de retirer tout son catalogue du site d’Amazon si ce dernier n’adoptait pas un système d’agence pour la fixation des prix, laissant à l’éditeur le soin de fixer le niveau ; Amazon a d’abord réagi en retirant tout Macmillan de son catalogue, puis est revenu sur sa décision (Rao, 2011). Mais le revers le plus important est indirect, et correspond au lancement par Apple de l’iPad, qualifié de « Jesustablet » par certains éditeurs36. Puis, par l’entrée de Google sur le marché du livre numérique. En ce qui concerne le livre, Apple et Google ont des stratégies qui diffèrent de celle d’Amazon ; une application vient enrichir l’AppStore pour Apple, ce qui contribue à enrichir les flux pour Google. Le modèle d’agence privilégié par ces deux entreprises s’est imposé sur le marché, et si le livre n’est pas au cœur de leur métier, le nombre de tablettes vendues et le poids du moteur de recherche font que leur impact sur l’industrie du livre a été considérable. Cependant, suite à une enquête
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menée dans le cadre de la loi antitrust, et au procès United States vs. Apple Inc. qui a suivi, Apple et les éditeurs Hachette, Harper Collins, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster et Macmillan, ont été condamnés mi-2013 pour entente illicite. L’accord entre Apple et ces éditeurs – un modèle d’agence selon lequel les éditeurs fixent le prix et Apple reçoit 30 % de commissions –, assorti d’une clause préférentielle, a été jugé illégal, constituant une entrave à la libre concurrence. Le prix de livres, qui était passé de 9.99 $ à 12.99 ou 14.99 redevient libre, et Amazon reprend sa domination sur le marché. Apple n’a pas reconnu la décision et tente désormais de mettre la position d’Amazon en cause. L’organisation du marché des e-books est loin d’être stabilisée, la concurrence que se livrent les entreprises via leurs liseuses et tablettes étant déterminante.
55 La multiplicité de l’offre concurrentielle de contenants pose bien évidemment des problèmes d’interopérabilité pour les contenus et la « guerre des standards » (Katz, Shapiro, 1986) est un élément important du processus concurrentiel à l’œuvre. La concurrence s’effectue désormais sur le nuage, via l’écosystème (Gabszewicz, Sonnac 2010) qui l’accompagne : applications multiples, contenus riches, accessibles partout et sans ruptures grâce aux tablettes, liseuses, smartphones, micro-ordinateurs. L’enjeu pour les entreprises est de garder les consommateurs, à travers une offre de contenants homogène, et des formats propriétaires pour les contenus. Le livre numérique est un élément important dans ce processus concurrentiel articulé par les leaders mondiaux de l’économie de l’Internet, qui le dépasse largement, mais dont son futur dépend finalement. La dynamique résulte désormais de la combinaison des TIC et des ICC dans un système sectoriel qui rassemble des éléments interdépendants, et dont les AAG et Microsoft dessinent les contours et les enjeux fondamentaux.
56 La demande est enfin un attribut fondamental qui sous-tend la dynamique industrielle et l’évolution du système sectoriel, d’autant qu’avec le numérique les usages sont à l’origine de nombreuses innovations ou changements. Comme l’a montré la figure 2, ce rôle n’est pas souvent pris en compte ; la chaîne du livre traditionnel et celle du livre numérique semblent déboucher sur le même consommateur. En fait, avec le passage d’une chaîne à l’autre, il ne s’agit plus forcément du même consommateur ni de la même demande, le lecteur-consommateur est devenu un acteur actif de l’industrie, un « consom’acteur »37, directement impliqué bien au-delà de ses simples choix, bien sûr importants pour la dynamique de l’industrie. Ces choix ne se limitent plus au livre, aux achats au sens des succès de librairies (contenus), ils renvoient aussi aux contenants et aux modes de lecture. Le « livre » est fondamentalement aussi un bien d’expérience, les critiques détenaient jadis un quasi-monopole sur les avis, les conseils, relayés par les libraires et la présentation de l’offre, en particulier pour les nouveautés. Les avis et conseils sont désormais aussi le fait des lecteurs eux-mêmes ; le développement des réseaux sociaux a surdimensionné les processus de « contagion » possibles. Mais au- delà des « amis » et autres « suiveurs », ou des conseils habituels postés sur les sites commerciaux, Amazon et autres, des sites dédiés au conseil ont été développés, Babelio, Library Thing, Goodreads, Anobii, RedLemonade (Benhamou, 2012b), et les lecteurs ont pris le pas sur la critique.
57 Les modes de recherche des ouvrages ont aussi beaucoup évolué, avec l’usage de mots clefs, la possibilité d’effectuer des recherches en plein texte, le « Look inside » d’Amazon ou de Google Booksearch. Ces modes de recherche autorisent la découverte d’ouvrages « introuvables » dans les circuits traditionnels de la distribution, et changent les modes de consommation. Une conséquence bien connue de l’Internet est
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ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler la « longue traîne » (Anderson, 2006), une concentration et un renforcement du poids des best-sellers en parallèle avec le développement d’une queue de distribution très importante. Le poids des super-best-sellers et des superstars tend à se renforcer sur l’Internet par rapport aux autres circuits (Moreau, Peltier, 2011), mais l’agrégation short-sellers entraîne des niveaux de recettes équivalents aux best-sellers. Dans l’industrie du livre, Brynjolfsson et al. (2003) ont établi que les revenus des livres rares contenus dans la longue traîne comptaient pour 40 % des revenus d’Amazon, ce que seul le catalogue offert par le site permet d’envisager (Benhamou et al., 2013). Les e-commerce, et plus encore les e-books, réduisent les coûts de recherche et les coûts de transactions, autorisent un rôle accru pour les petits éditeurs, mais l’organisation industrielle et la capacité de gérer des catalogues « quasi exhaustifs » de la création littéraire présente et passée sont des clefs de la concurrence. En France par exemple, le choix Amazon vs Alapage du début du e-commerce ne s’est pas effectué par les best-sellers mais bien via la longue traîne, la capacité relative des acteurs à gérer cette hyper-offre potentielle.
58 Ainsi, la dynamique économique et innovatrice semble de plus en plus dépendante de l’aval et de la distribution des contenus. Le livre papier, un contenu strictement associé à un contenant, a fait place avec le livre numérique à une multiplicité de contenus associés de façon dynamique à une multiplicité de contenants, très loin du livre homothétique qui est pourtant encore la forme essentielle du marché. La révolution intellectuelle qui va avec cette révolution technologique est sans doute encore à venir.
5. Conclusions
59 L’industrie de l’édition est entrée dans une phase de profonde réorganisation, sous- tendue par l’émergence de nouveaux marchés, de nouveaux acteurs, porteurs de bases de connaissance et de technologies nouvelles, qui ont considérablement modifié ses frontières.
60 La maîtrise du processus de coordination des activités se déplaçant vers l’aval du système, le rôle des éditeurs, de la création, qui structurait la filière papier, est remis en cause et doit se réinventer. L’industrie est aussi impliquée dans un processus d’intégration mondiale dont les enjeux la dépassent, processus dominé par les AAG et Microsoft, les leaders mondiaux de l’économie de l’Internet. Le « cloud computing » devient le nœud du processus concurrentiel, et passe par la constitution d’écosystèmes associant appareils, applications et contenus.
61 L’ensemble des éléments du système sectoriel qui organisait la production des livres papier existe toujours, mais leur rôle a changé avec l’arrivée de nouveaux acteurs et avec la recomposition des interactions à l’intérieur du système. Ces interactions, qui étaient figées verticalement depuis des siècles, ont pris une multiplicité de formes concurrentes, avec souvent des « pure players » du net. Même si en France le livre numérique représente moins de 1 % de l’activité, il dicte la réorganisation de l’ensemble du système sectoriel d’innovation et de production. L’industrie a évolué de façon très rapide avec en 2007 l’apparition des liseuses, en 2011 celle des tablettes, et en 2013 celle du « cloud computing ». Des sites donnant un accès illimité aux livres se développent selon le même modèle d’affaire que celui de Deezer or Spotify. Ainsi YouBoox propose d’accéder à un catalogue d’ouvrages de 6 000 titres et Yoster vient d’être lancé aux États-Unis en annonçant un accord avec soixante éditeurs et un
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catalogue de 100 000 livres. L’analyse des « tendances lourdes et des tensions dans le domaine de la culture et des médias » (Chartron, Moreau, 2011) reflète un glissement de la valeur économique des objets culturels vers l’accès au contenu culturel et vers les appareils permettant la lecture de ces contenus (liseuses, tablettes ou smartphones).
62 Au total, cet article montre que les menaces sur le livre papier méritent d’être reconsidérées. En effet, il n’est pas certain que le livre numérique, largement encore aujourd’hui livre homothétique, soit le véritable concurrent du papier, car il renvoie à des capacités de création littéraire similaires. Les enjeux concurrentiels ne sont peut- être plus entre papier et numérique, mais entre les contenus – quelle que soit leur forme – et les autres applications présentes sur les tablettes ou dans le nuage. Le livre est de fait entré dans l’industrie des contenus, dans tous les sens du terme, il n’est plus extérieur ou indépendant des autres médias, mais concurrent direct, et engagé dans des processus concurrentiels globaux se situant au niveau des ICC, et impliquant les leaders de l’industrie numérique.
63 L’essentiel des changements porte aujourd’hui sur les contenants. Des nouveautés intégrant texte, musique, vidéos commentées, apparaissent, pour des livres d’histoires, des ouvrages sur l’art. Mais les innovations ont surtout transféré le nœud de la coordination des activités et des enjeux concurrentiels vers l’aval, la distribution, les liseuses, les tablettes et les applications résidentes du nuage… Malgré les controverses sur la disparition du papier, le livre numérique est encore dans une phase d’émergence et les nouvelles façons d’écrire restent à inventer.
64 Cet article consacré à l’édition a mis en évidence que les enjeux fondamentaux se situent au niveau de la concurrence entre les multinationales qui régissent les usages de l’Internet, et les évolutions des comportements beaucoup plus qu’au niveau des acteurs traditionnels eux-mêmes. La naissance et la crise de l’industrie de l’édition coïncident avec la rencontre d’innovations technologiques et de marchés (de Gutenberg à Panckoucke, puis de l’Internet à Wikipédia), sa re-naissance coïncidera avec le livre numérique à venir.
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NOTES
1. En 2012, la production en titres et la production en exemplaires ont augmenté de 6,2 et 1,7 % respectivement (SNE, 2013). 2. L’industrie fonctionne selon un principe de best-sellers, une loi des 80/20, on dit même parfois 95/5, qui concentre les ventes sur quelques ouvrages. 3. Les statistiques du SNE (2013) ou de l’Observatoire de l’Économie du livre (2013) vont dans le même sens : la production de titres a augmenté en 2012 et les ventes et le chiffre d’affaires, en baisse, ont bien résisté dans un contexte de crise économique. 4. « Un livre est l’instrument de la diffusion d’un discours au public, non pas simplement des pensées […]. L’auteur et le propriétaire de l’exemplaire peuvent dire chacun avec le même droit du même livre : c’est mon livre !, mais en deux sens différents. Le premier prend le livre en tant qu’écrit ou discours, le second simplement en tant que l’instrument muet de la diffusion du discours jusqu’à lui ou jusqu’au public, c’est-à-dire en tant qu’exemplaire » (Kant, 1785, cité par Jamain, 2013). 5. Le décret impose un brevet spécifique pour exercer les métiers de libraire imprimeur et de libraire éditeur. 6. Les États-Unis mais aussi le Japon, la Corée, le Royaume-Uni font figure de leaders au niveau du livre numérique. 7. Amazon propose par exemple le roman Angels and Demons à 18.72 $ en version reliée, à 11.40 $ en version Kindle, et à 10.88 $ en poche. Consulté en novembre 2013. 8. Parmi les meilleures ventes à la FNAC, La Forêt des Mânes est à 21.76 € en version papier et 20.50 € en numérique. Consulté en novembre 2013. 9. txt, html, pdf, ePub, AZW (format du Kindle, la liseuse Amazon). 10. Consulté le 21 novembre 2013. 11. Google a été contraint d’abandonner ce projet de libre accès (Benhamou, 2011). 12. p-book : physical book. 13. Cf. (i) la note « Avis et Communications »publiée le 4 avril 2012 dans le Journal officiel de la République Française ; (ii) les travaux de la Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologie qui retient désormais les termes de liseuse et de livre numérique : la liseuse (e-book) est un « appareil portable doté d’un écran et destiné au stockage et à la lecture des livres numériques ou des périodiques. On trouve aussi le terme « livre électronique » ; le livre numérique (e-book) est un « ouvrage édité et diffusé sous forme numérique, destiné à être lu sur un écran ». 14. Amazon a lancé un brevet autorisant le développement d’un marché d’occasion, permettant aux consommateurs d’échanger des e-books via Kindle ou apps Kindle vers IOS ou Android. Ce marché d’occasion devrait être source de revenus importants. 15. International Digital Publishing Forum, http://idpf.org/ 16. Amazon offre le plus important catalogue du marché ; avec 800 000 références en langue anglaise, et 400 000 en langue française, c’est un des premiers libraires de France. Amazon est par exemple le premier vendeur des livres de la collection « La Pléiade » de Gallimard, qu’une librairie ne peut contenir en stock (Hurard, Meyer-Lereculeur, 2012). 17. Par exemple l’expérience 1001.libraires.fr, aujourd’hui avortée, était un site créé par la profession des libraires et soutenu par des fonds publics (Hurard, Meyer-Lereculeur, 2012), où les
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commandes pouvaient être faites en ligne et où, via géolocalisation, le système donnait l’adresse du libraire où aller retirer sa commande. Ou Lalibrairie.com, qui permet de réserver des livres dans un réseau de libraires sur tout le territoire, qui est peu visible. Ou Chapitre.com, propriété de Actissia, deuxième distributeur en France, qui associait un site Internet et un réseau de libraires et qui était né sur le Minitel, qui connaît de graves problèmes. Si le réseau de librairies Chapitre est mis à la vente, le site Internet n’est pas concerné par la cessation d’activité. Ces échecs montrent la difficulté des modèles tentant d’associer librairies et l’Internet. 18. Désigné pour la seconde année consécutive en 2013 site préféré des Français dans le classement d’OC&C Strategy Consultants. 19. Des réseaux se développent dans de nombreuses villes : Librest (Est de Paris), www.librairesanice.fr… 20. Il faut rappeler que la recherche de nouveaux contenants n’est pas nouvelle et qu’elle a été marquée par de nombreux essais infructueux en termes d’usage et de confort de lecture (voir le projet Cybook lancé en 1998 en France). 21. Sony, Kobo, Nook (de Barnes & Nobles), Bookein (issue du précurseur Cybook). 22. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Tracking Survey, réalisée du 20 janvier au 19 février 2012. Nook détenait 22 %. 23. L’iPad représente 61 % du marché américain des tablettes selon la même enquête The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Tracking Survey. 24. Cependant, cette tendance à la baisse est due au poids des États-Unis ; en France, 300 000 liseuses se sont vendues en 2012, 500 000 se vendront en 2013, pour 3,6 millions de tablettes en 2012, et 5 millions en 2013 (Institut GfK). 25. L’« étendue » des connaissances fait référence au nombre de champs technologiques dans lesquels l’éditeur est actif. La « profondeur » renvoie à la maîtrise de deux dimensions majeures : – les différentes étapes impliquées dans le processus de développement d’un processus éditorial ; – la connaissance liée à la combinaison des étapes du processus et la connaissance concernant chaque étape de ce processus. 26. La diffusion renvoie à la commercialisation du produit éditorial (livre, revue…) auprès des abonnés, libraires et autres. La distribution a trait au traitement physique et administratif des commandes. 27. Mollier (2005) rappelle ainsi qu’après avoir commercialisé l’ Encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert, Panckoucke va concevoir une autre Encyclopédie : l’Encyclopédie méthodique. 28. Comme le rappelle Benhamou, l’autre élément fondamental de la valeur d’une maison d’édition est le portefeuille de droits qu’elle détient et valorise. 29. Dans les années 1980, l’édition connaît également une transformation de ses structures industrielles avec le développement des entreprises d’édition et l’accélération du processus de concentration. En France, par exemple, de nouvelles entreprises jusqu’alors plutôt spécialisées dans d’autres domaines comme la défense (Matra), les médias (Havas), les réseaux de distribution (Compagnie générale des eaux) entrent dans le secteur. Ces changements d’organisation industrielle auxquels vont s’ajouter les TIC ne vont pas entraîner de refonte du système de production et de diffusion jusqu’à la fin des années 1990 (Bouquillion, 2005). 30. Selon la Federation of European Publishers (FEP, 2006), les compétences critiques des éditeurs englobent l’édition, la production, les ventes et le marketing, la réalisation et la distribution, le financement. 31. Un sondage récent indique que la vente de livres numériques est aussi très concentrée sur les sites des grands opérateurs d’Internet : 41 % des lecteurs de livres numériques déclarent avoir fait leur achat chez Amazon, Apple ou Google Books, tandis que 28 % achètent leurs livres numériques sur les sites des grandes surfaces (Fnac, Virgin, Cultura) et 18 % seulement sur des sites de libraires (principalement les grandes librairies comme le Furet du Nord, La Procure, Chapitre, Relay, Dialogue), ce dernier pourcentage étant en baisse par rapport à la précédente
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vague de la même enquête réalisée début 2012 (12 Enquête Opinionway : Baromètre SOFIA/SNE/ SGDL sur les usages du livre numérique – 2e vague, septembre 2012). 32. Et leurs 2 000 points de vente. 33. Barnes & Noble a commencé à connaître des pertes et à montrer des signes de faiblesse, malgré ses 7 millions d’utilisateurs. 34. Pearson, le n° 1 mondial de l’édition a aussi investi dans Nook. 35. Google a, quant à lui, acquis Motorola Mobility et ses quelque 17 000 brevets. 36. Kindle n’a pu jouer pour le livre le rôle de l’iPod pour la musique, comme le souhaitait sans doute Amazon. Amazon a bien sûr réagi à l’entrée d’Apple sur son terrain avec sa propre tablette, le Kindle Fire, imposant une guerre des prix à Apple. Amazon est aussi entré dans la musique avec un service, AutoRip, qui offre la version MP3 gratuite pour tous les disques (CD, vinyle) achetés depuis 2000 sur son Cloud Player. La capacité du Cloud Player pour ce service est illimitée et donc gratuite, et offre une qualité proche de celle d’un CD. Amazon développe d’ailleurs désormais aux États-Unis un modèle symétrique pour le livre, Matchbox, selon lequel tout acheteur d’un livre papier se verrait offrir une version numérique, au format Kindle bien sûr. 37. Ce terme est né dans les études sur l’industrie du tourisme, où l’Internet a eu des effets comparables sur le système (cf. Longhi, 2009).
RÉSUMÉS
Après des siècles d’apparente immobilité, l’industrie du livre connaît aujourd’hui de profondes mutations. Avec le développement des TIC, le commerce électronique, puis le livre électronique, elle est entrée dans une phase de réorganisation, sous-tendue par l’émergence de nouveaux marchés, de nouveaux acteurs, porteurs de bases de connaissances et de technologies nouvelles qui ont considérablement modifié ses frontières. Les liseuses, généralisées en 2009 par Amazon, puis les tablettes, apparues en 2011 avec l’iPad, ont créé plus de bouleversements que des siècles de production. Le livre numérique a d’abord été considéré comme un « livre homothétique », la numérisation à l’identique d’un ouvrage existant, mais de fait cette numérisation a rapidement cassé le modèle contenu-contenant. Cette dissociation pourrait bien être l’innovation à même de bouleverser l’industrie du livre, appréhendée comme un système sectoriel d’innovation et de production. L’article montre ainsi que ce sont les contenus, et non pas seulement les contenants, qui sont au cœur des dynamiques actuelles de changement.
After centuries of apparent immobility, the book industry is experiencing profound changes. With the development of ICT, e-commerce and e-book, it entered a phase of reorganization, underpinned by the emergence of new markets, new actors, new knowledge bases and technologies that have significantly changed its boundaries. The e-Readers, generalized in 2009 by Amazon and the tablets, appeared in 2011 with the iPad, have created more upheavals than centuries of production. The e-book was initially considered as a “homothetic book”, but in fact this digitization quickly broke the model content-container. This dissociation might be the innovation able to change the book industry, seen as a sectoral system of innovation and production. The article shows the contents, and not just containers, are at the heart of current dynamics of change.
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INDEX
Keywords : Book Industry, Sectoral System of Innovation and Production, e-books, Information and Communication Technologies, Internet Mots-clés : industrie du livre, système sectoriel d’innovation et de production, e-books, Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication, Internet
AUTEURS
CHRISTIAN LONGHI Université Nice Sophia Antipolis GREDEG CNRS
SYLVIE ROCHHIA Université Nice Sophia Antipolis GREDEG CNRS
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A New Industrial Policy for Europe: Reinforcing Europe’s Industrial Base to Create Employment and Growth
Daniel Calleja and Francisco Caballero
(Seneca)
1. Introduction
1 The economic crisis has hit hard developed economies. The protracted recovery has raised social demand for active growth policies in Western economies and for industrial policy in particular. The decline of industry in many of those economies together with the emergence of new global players in China, Far East Asia and South America, where governments have actively supported industrialisation, have raised questions on the policy stance adopted by many developed industrialised economies in the recent past.
2 Until recently, many considered that ‘the best industrial policy was no industrial policy’. This is hard to accept for two reasons. First, public policy interventions in areas such as taxation, environmental protection, trade, competition and other microeconomic policy decisions have a direct impact on industrial activities and on business in general. Without any common orientation on the way in which industry is expected to move, there is de facto an industrial policy by default resulting from the net impact of all those policy decisions. Thus, there is always, in one-way or another, some form of industrial policy in place. Secondly, this kind of industrial policy by default without publicly stated objectives could hardly be the best possible industrial policy. As suggested by the ancient Roman aphorism, if industry does not know where it is heading to, it is unlikely to do well. Without an industrial policy orientation, it would be hard to preserve consistency in the direction and effects on industry of the interventions in different areas of public policy.
3 An increasing number of economists now argue that a passive industrial policy is not the best policy option for growth. Philippe Aghion and others (2011) defend the case for industrial policy as necessary to achieve environmental sustainability. They also argue
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the need for industrial policy in a “second best” world where this policy is actively used by emerging economies. The former chief economist of the World Bank Justin Linand others (2011) take a realistic attitude in favour of active industrial policies in the process of economic development. Dani Rodrik (2008) deserves an especially outstanding position among the pioneer economists who defended these views vis-à-vis what used to be a clear majority of economists who rejected any form of industrial policy. Some policy propositions have already been suggested. For instance, Aghion et al. (2011) suggest that industrial policy is likely to produce more positive results when applied to competitive sectors.
4 World leaders and businessmen around the world also acknowledge the importance of industrial policy as well as industry as a driver of growth. President Obama stated in his State of the Union speech last 12 February 2013 that “Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing.”1 The new Japanese Government is working on a new “Growth Strategy” that will include a new approach to industrial Policy as part of their three pillar programme for economic recovery. The UK has commissioned an extensive study on the future of manufacturing and is developing a dedicated effort to reinforce the future competitiveness of UK industry. In France, the President asked the former CEO of EADS to draw plans for an industrial policy for competitiveness (Gallois, 2012). China unveiled in 2011 a new industrial programme including the tripling of total expenditure in R&D, that should go from 1.75 to 2.2% of GDP.
5 The new industrial policies implemented by developed economies have little to do with the European industrial policies of the 50s and 60s. It is not a matter of picking up “winners”, i.e. sectors or firms that “deserve” public financial support. The idea of developing powerful State-owned industrial groups such as the disappeared Italian ENI is not an option either.
6 There is no single industrial policy design emerging, even among the recently industrialised countries. There are some but not many points in common among the industrial policies of the emerging economies like China, India or Brazil.
7 Likewise, new forms of industrial policy are being developed in industrialised countries in this post-financial crisis era to respond to the specific needs of these advanced economies. Contrary to the case of new emerging economies, industrialised Western countries cannot rely on low labour costs and the adoption of foreign technologies often imported in embodied capital by foreign investments. Protectionism is also excluded from the toolkit of these countries, as open international markets are very important for their economies.
8 Advanced Western economies are in a process of discovery of their industrial policy models and social choices in these countries are basic parameters in that process. For instance, the high levels of social protection and environmental sustainability are necessary conditions to take into account in the design of the European model of industrial policy.
9 This paper reports on recent steps taken in the making of this new industrial policy in the context of the European Union during the last three years. As in any other process of economic policy making, choices must be made under incomplete and insufficient information within a limited time frame. Here below we discuss some of the data that have been considered in the update of the EU’s industrial policy in October 2012. We present the rationale behind some of the most critical choices made in this process. In
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the next section, we briefly present the precedents of the most recent steps taken in the definition of our industrial policy and the circumstances that led to the update of the “flagship” industrial policy in October 2012. Then we explain the main elements of the diagnostic that led us to formulate the policy proposals presented in our October 2012 Industrial Policy Communication.2 Section four describes the main components of this Commission Communication and the final section before the conclusions explains the steps taken so far for the implementation of our industrial policy.
2. An Integrated industrial policy in the context of the Europe 2020 initiative
10 In 2010, the European Commission launched the Europe 2020 strategy, a growth strategy to transform the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy with high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion. This strategy set out five ambitious objectives – in the areas of employment, innovation, education, social inclusion and climate/energy – to be reached by 2020.
11 Although industrial policy did not clearly feature as a component of this strategy at an early stage, improved competitiveness was considered a necessary condition to achieve growth and employment. The Commission adopted in October 2010 a Communication3 on an integrated industrial policy including over 35 measures that should contribute to foster competitiveness and thereby to creating a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy by 2020. This “flagship” communication presents the following distinctive characteristics. 1. The objectives of the communication, as the rest of the Europe 2020 strategy, have a long- term horizon. The multiple measures included in the Communication were not supposed to deliver observable effects in the short term. As in previous communications, “competitiveness” was an objective remote in the time, not an urgent goal. 2. The Communication included a long list of measures with multiple objectives and did not focus on specific priorities. 3. Finally and most importantly, the notion of an industrial policy “integrating” other microeconomic policies was introduced as a means to enhance the effectiveness of EU interventions.
12 The 2010 Communication was prepared and adopted when the sharp drop in economic activity of 2009 was over and recovery was within sight. These characteristics seemed to fit well with the economic outlook at the time that suggested a slow but upcoming pick up in economic activity. However, this recovery did not materialise and a period of relative economic stagnation set in for the following two years.
13 By the time the industrial policy update was due, the economic situation had considerably deteriorated in several peripheral Member States and the global outlook started turning grim as growth rates of the emerging economies slowed down. In mid 2012, industrial production was still well below its pre-crisis levels and over three million jobs had been lost in manufacturing (i.e. about 10% of total employment in manufacturing). The unemployment rate was approaching 10% for the Union as a whole and global demand growth was expected to slow down.
14 The preparatory work for the new Industrial Policy Communication revealed that the industrial policy update could not be limited to a simple review and tweaking of some
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existing measures. It was necessary to continue further shaping up a new approach to industrial policy to address some of the problems that the EU economy is facing at this stage of the current economic crisis.
Figure 1. EU27 production indices 2000 – 2012 (seasonally adjusted). Index 2005 =100
Source: Eurostat.
15 In particular, it became increasingly urgent to contribute to the economic recovery of the European economy as well as to growth and job creation in the long term. Some of these facts are still present in the first quarter of 2013. It was necessary to react to the worsening of the economic situation with more focus on the short term. In addition, it was necessary to adopt further measures to put the European economy on tracks to get on board of the new “industrial revolution” that is changing the patterns of the geographic distribution of industrial and in general economic activities across the world.
2.1. Economic challenges for the real economy of the EU after the crisis
16 The volatility and uncertainty created by the financial crisis had distracted public attention from the impact of the crisis on the real economy for some time. Such impact started to become increasingly apparent during the second half of 2011 as the expected recovery was further delayed and economic data and forecasts for 2012 turned grimmer. The crisis had hit hard sectors such as real estate and construction where bubbles had developed prior to 2007 in a number of countries. By the end of 2011, the crisis was threatening to destroy considerable portions of the competitive industrial tissue of countries where bank credit had dried out in many countries. The following sections present the main economic facts that were considered as especially relevant for the industrial policy update.
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2.1.1. A weak internal demand with a considerable fall in private investment
17 The financial crisis had a very negative impact on private investment. Gross fixed capital formation plummeted by over 2 percentage points of GDP after the 2009 crash, but most importantly, it did not recover afterwards despite the improvement in business sentiment and orders. This was the equivalent to 350 bn euros not invested since the onset of the crisis in 2007 till the end of 2011 according to McKinsey (2012).
Figure 2.
18 However, private investment seems to be the main component of aggregate demand that could help to economic recovery. The protracted and slow process of deleveraging in the private sector is likely to hold back private consumption for some time. The widespread efforts across the EU to consolidate public sector finances that are needed to appease financial markets and restore financial market stability exclude the possibility of aggregate demand stimuli coming from the public sector. Finally, the worsening outlook for global trade linked to the reduced growth expectations in emerging economies is shedding a shade of doubt on the possible role of external demand as an engine for recovery.
19 Against this background, the improvement of the industrial environment for private investment must to be a priority for two reasons. First, private investment is a key factor for economic recovery in the short and mid-term for the reasons explained above. In addition, there is enough liquidity in the balance sheet of firms to carry out that investment. McKinsey (2012) estimated in over 750 bn euros the excess liquidity available in the balance sheets of the 100 largest European listed companies. Our own estimates based on balance sheet information from the Amadeus database give figures between 580 to 850 bn of excess liquidity available in industrial firms. Nevertheless, it must be said that these money balances are very unevenly distributed across countries and sectors. Secondly, it would be desirable to see investment flowing into innovations. This is necessary to speed up the uptake of new advanced manufacturing technologies by European industry. Failing to do so would have very costly effects for the competitiveness of the European economy in the medium to long term.
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2.1.2. Sluggish recovery of intra EU trade and a worrying outlook for extra-EU trade
20 Intra-EU trade recovered after the 2009 slump albeit at a sluggish rate compared to global demand. An eventual reactivation of intra-EU trade would take time because it would depend of the recovery of income within the EU and forecasts for the coming two years remain pessimistic. Structural reforms in the Internal Market are also possible and needed, but their impact would also take time to become visible.
Figure 3. Intra and extra-EU trade for EU 27 (2000-2012) Index 2005=100
Source: Eurostat.
21 Compared to intra-EU trade, external demand recovered much more vigorously and despite difficulties, it is now well above the pre-crisis levels while intra-EU trade is still below the levels reached in 2006-2008. The impulse of external demand has been very important for the European economy. It has supported the major economies of Europe through the crisis and Germany in particular. European countries outside the EU together with China and far-East Asia, Africa and Brazil have been the most dynamic markets and the EU exported more to those countries between 2008 and 2011 than in the previous four years.
22 However, the outlook for trade looked less positive in the second half of 2012 and the continuity of this external support was uncertain at that time. This was a critical issue since investment in equipment needed the stimulus provided by foreign demand to recover.
2.1.3. Serious difficulties to access bank credit in some countries of the Union, especially for SMEs
23 Access to finance became increasingly difficult to firms as the crisis deepened. Given the high dependency of the EU economy on bank credit, especially for SMEs, access to finance became a critical problem that worsened considerably in 2011. Listed
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investment grade and larger corporations could find alternative funding in the debt markets but SMEs suffered from the drop of loan flows to non-financial corporations as deleverage progressed. Nevertheless, there are considerable differences across countries in the availability of bank credit. SMEs from peripheral countries with support programmes suffered the bank credit cuts more severely than other countries.
Figure 4. Loans to non-financial corporations in the euro area (€ billion, last three months)
Source: ECB.
2.1.4. Mismatches and slow adjustments in the labour market across the EU
Table 1. Change in employers experiencing difficulties in recruitment, 2009-2012
Rank Country Change in percentage points
EU27 1
1 Austria 12
2 France 11
3 Belgium 8
4 Germany 7
5 Sweden 7
6 Norway 3
7 Spain 1
8 UnitedKingdom 0
9 CzechRepublic -3
10 Ireland -3
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11 Poland -11
12 Italy -12
13 Netherlands -12
14 Greece -13
15 Romania -17
Source: EU Skills Panorama.
24 Notes: A positive (negative) sign means an increase (decrease) in the number of employers experiencing difficulties in recruitment during the period 2009-2012.
25 Another striking factor of the European industry in the first quarter of 2012 was the considerable difficulties of the labour markets to adjust. While unemployment was increasing quickly in some Member States and in some labour market segments in other countries, there was a demand of highly qualified workers (engineers in particular) in Germany that could not be met quickly enough. Structural deficiencies in the vocational education system in several Member States have been blamed for the considerable shortages in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) qualifications in labour markets. This shortage was also pointed out to the Commission by industry and other stakeholders in the extensive public consultation that took place between May and August 2012.4
2.1.5. Differences across countries and markets
26 As indicated above, problems were quite different across countries and sectors. As shown in Figure 1, the production of high-tech products was much more resilient to the impact of the crisis than other industrial sectors. In general, countries with a strong industrial base have better endured the impact of the crisis. In a recent paper, Aiginger (2011) claims that “… empirical data show that countries were more hit by the crisis the lower the manufacturing base had been, the more this sector had eroded over the past years and the larger the current account deficit had been at the start of the crisis” and that “…countries with a large and stable industrial base and positive current account like Sweden and Austria had less deep declines in GDP”.
27 This situation called for a bottom-up approach in the implementation of industrial policy measures. A “one size fits all” solution would be clearly inappropriate in these circumstances. Choices must be made and implementation would require cooperation at grass-root level, at regional rather than national level.
28 These five factors were part of the diagnosis for the industrial policy proposal included in the 2012 Communication. They were not the only ones. Other factors counted and were taken into account too. The choice for sustainable growth as an overriding component of the Europe 2020 strategy was a very important factor. The consideration of some sectoral specificities in industries such as steel and shipbuilding where excess capacity had become a serious problem as the economy entered into a stagnation period also required attention. The cumulative impact of different legislative measures on the same industrial sector was also considered but there was not enough evidence at the time to take measures on this important issues and studies of the cumulative impact of legislation on individual sectors or “sectoral fitness checks” where
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announced starting with the refining and aluminium sectors. Finally, structural problems such as the high cost of energy in Europe remained a serious threat to the recovery and the long-term objective of re-launching Europe’s seek for improved competitiveness.
2.2. The European industry in the eve of the new industrial age
29 Despite the difficulties and challenges that EU industry is confronted with, it must be said that it still remains highly competitive in a number of sectors. Europe holds very high markets shares in sectors such as aeronautics and pharmaceuticals. Most importantly, the share of EU in the world income calculated thanks to the WOID database remains above the rest of the world regions.
30 However, the situation gives some reasons of concern.
31 First, total factor productivity in the EU, is growing below the USA growth rates and well below the rates exhibited by emerging countries.
Figure 5. Global value chain income (regional shares in world income)
Source: WIOD database.
32 Note: East Asia = Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. BRIIMT = Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey. “Other” = all other countries in the world.
33 The share of high-tech manufactured products in the total of our exports is falling. This is a trend observed for several years now. As a result of this trend, the EU is becoming specialised in mid-high tech products. It is important to note that this happens in the context of an increasing share of high-tech products in our manufacturing output as shown in Figure 1. However, this is not reflected in our trade figures.
34 Although the share in all EU exports (i.e. including services) in world trade has remained constant over time at around 20%, the market share of EU exports of manufactures over the global volume of trade in manufactures has fallen from 19% to 16% according to Eurostatin the last ten years.
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35 This relatively dim outlook for the future of our industry in the mid and long-term comes at a crucial time for the future of industry. There are different views of what the future of industry will look like. Rifkin (2011) considers that the convergence of a new energy paradigm after the decline of the carbon age and the intelligent networking of energy and information systems will allow for a much more decentralised pattern of industrial production. This will require substantial investments in infrastructures, including electricity storage and domestic energy generation equipment. Others like Anderson (2012) focus on the impact of the current information highways that will allow for decentralised design and consumption with higher concentration in production facilities that will be flexible enough to produce short batches of customised goods, putting less emphasis on energy issues.
36 The American Institute for Defence Analysis carried out an in-depth study to identify the main features of these new trends that are transforming manufacturing from traditional labour-intensive processes into advanced-technology-based processes. After reviewing all the evidence available and consulting a long list of experts, they detected and reported a number of converging factors. They are “(1) the ubiquitous role of information technology, (2) the reliance on modelling and simulation in the manufacturing process, (3) the acceleration of innovation in global supply-chain management, (4) the move toward rapid changeability of manufacturing in response to customer needs and external impediments, and (5) the acceptance and support of sustainable manufacturing.”5
37 A number of elements appear in this study as the likely parameters of the possible future scenarios of advanced manufacturing in a 10 year horizon. These include among other:
38 – A progressive reduction in the importance of labour-intensive mechanical processes and therefore, a lower importance of low wages as a key element in the geographic distribution of industrial production activities.
39 – Advanced manufacturing is also likely to become much more globally networked and integrated in automated digital supply.
40 – Energy and resource efficiency will increase considerably with respect to current levels. Energy sources and resources will also be diversified. New design and manufacturing technologies will play a crucial role in this process.
41 Does Europe stand a chance of competing successfully in this future industrial context?
42 There are reasons to believe that Europe stands good chances. First, limitations to a comparative advantage based on low labour cost and the simple imitation of imported technologies have been detected in some emerging economies. The export-led model of emerging economies like China seems to show signs of exhaustion as publicly accepted by Chinese leaders. In the absence of official statistics, independent research suggests that nominal wages grew at rates well above 10% per year in industrialised coastal regions in 2010 and 2011 and between 15 and 20% in the two precedent years. According to Pettis (2012), productivity started growing slower than wages two or three years ago. Estimates suggest that unit labour costs in China may be growing at present over 10% annually. Furthermore, the importance of the cost of labour in the production cost structure has been considerably reduced.
43 Resource constraints are another barrier to industrial specialization based on resource intensive industrialisation. The most important constraints come from the
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environment and the availability of natural resources and raw materials. As pointed out by Stiglitz (2007), the pressure on the environment in the countries of East Asia has been increasing constantly in the last twenty years.
44 In contrast with this resource-intensive approach, Europe chose long ago a strategy of long-term sustainable growth, intensifying R&D efforts on energy and raw materials efficient technologies and products. It is in these areas of industrial activity, that Europe has a strong comparative advantage.
45 Finally, the economic crisis has provided an additional new component to this trend for the change in the determinant factors of global comparative advantage and the international division of labour. As stated in a recent report by Accenture (2011) “Companies are beginning to realize that having offshored much of their manufacturing and supply operations away from their demand locations, they hurt their ability to meet their customers’ expectations across a wide spectrum of areas, such as being able to rapidly meet increasing customer desires for unique products, continuing to maintain rapid delivery/response times, as well as maintaining low inventories and competitive total costs”.6
46 In addition to proximity to final consumers, the cost of financing long and distant segments of the value added chains have become increasingly important. This point has been recently underlined by Kim and Shin (2012). The long-range transport of goods involves prolonged periods of storage throughout the production process with voluminous stocks to be funded at each stage. The increases in the cost of financing the working capital of companies is an incentive to “re-shoring”, an inverse process to the off-shoring process that dominated the last two decades.
47 The relocation of manufacturing production in advanced economies appears to be confirmed by the decisions of a growing number of multinational companies. The Accenture survey mentioned above suggests that a trend to “nearshoring” (i.e. the production of local demand in nearby countries) can be detected in the USA with production moving to Mexico as well as in Western Europe, with production moving to Eastern Europe (Accenture (2011) p. 12). These figures confirm the results of another survey by the Boston Consulting Group (2011) among managers of large American multinational companies, which concluded that more than a third of them were considering to repatriate productive activities to their country of origin. There is increasing evidence supporting this phenomenon. Recently, City Research (2013) reported a number of examples on industrial investments where both, American and European parent companies had decided to invest at “home”. This evidence is largely anecdotal at this stage but a trend seems to be building up.
3. A new industrial policy for Europe
3.1. Measures included in the recent update of the EU industrial policy
48 The October 2012 Commission Communication aims at both short and long-term objectives. The strategy proposes a series of short-term measures to accelerate the economic recovery. Many of them are already in process of implementation at the date
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of publication of this article. Others tend to reinforce existing measures to achieve productivity gains. They are grouped in four pillars.
3.1.1. Accelerate investment in innovation to spur the diffusion of new technologies in six priority action lines
49 Six priority lines of action have been defined in markets and sectors. This is not a “winner picking exercise”. There is no financial implication in the choice of these areas. However, it is thought that public policy intervention by regional, national and European authorities can contribute to spur investment in innovation in these areas. These are areas that have been identified as two-digit growth rate drivers of industry in the coming years. They are: • Markets for advanced industrial technologies with low environmental impact such as 3D printing technologies. The benefits from the diffusion of these technologies will also affect traditional productive sectors (e.g. energy savings in industrial furnaces or boilers and more efficient use of materials). • The market for “key enabling technologies” including nanoelectronics, advanced materials, biotechnology and photonics. • Markets for biological products based on technologies that allow for the replacement of petroleum-based products for the production of plastics and other materials and consume less energy and produce biodegradable waste. • Sustainable construction and raw materials to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and the use of lighter construction materials, durable and reusable. • Vehicles of “clean technologies”, including hybrid technology, electric or biofuel. • Smart grids to integrate renewable technologies in power systems, energy storage and adjust the supply and demand of energy produced in a much more decentralized way than today (e.g. industrial or commercial cogeneration).
50 All these areas were identified as the key industries and markets for the foreseeable future in the responses to our public consultation. In addition, all sectors are contributing to the goals of long-term sustainable growth identified in our 2020 initiative. They are also the sectors considered as pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution. Finally, they can also be found in the strategic choices of our major global competitors like the USA.
51 Contrary to what one might think, this is not a vertical or sectoral policy. It is a basically horizontal innovation policy, as these technologies have applications in many industrial sectors. Many traditional sectors such as construction materials or plastics will benefit from the introduction of innovations in these areas. The adoption of these innovations will benefit suppliers’ sectors but also users’ sectors that will see their productivity and market shares increased.
3.1.2. Improve market prospects of European companies in the market and in global markets
52 Investments will materialize if only if there are good sales prospects. The internal market with over 500 million consumers still has untapped potential. Exploiting that potential requires making the internal market more efficient and dynamic. It has to be more dynamic because the crisis is taking its toll on the attitude of Europeans towards risk. This is reflected in the propensity to undertake entrepreneurial activities. Five
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years ago, 45% of young Europeans preferred to become independent professionals or entrepreneurs rather than becoming employees. This percentage was only 37% in 2012 while it is well above 50% in the USA. In order to make the Internal Market more dynamic and following the 2012 industrial Policy Communication, a plan was launched in January 2013 to promote entrepreneurship including measures ranging from education to the digital sector.
53 To increase the efficiency of the internal market, a thorough reform will simplify legislation that has accumulated over the years to make it more agile and effective. Technology markets (that is, sales of licenses and patents, industrial designs, trademarks, etc.) have become more complex. The strategic use of intellectual property rights in the standardization process can sometimes pose serious problems given the increasing number of elements protected by intellectual property rights, standards and technical standards.
54 Domestic demand in Europe is now relatively less buoyant than in emerging markets. Thus, European companies have much to gain by increasing its international presence. Internationalisation has become a major objective, especially for SMEs. While one out of four SMEs export within the internal market, only one in eight export beyond EU borders.
55 Trading costs area major factor limiting the growth of firms in some countries. According to Rubini et al. (2013) innovation costs are a common factor limiting the growth of SMEs in many countries, but in some countries like Spain, export costs are also a major obstacle to SME growth. Once more, the need to find country-specific solutions appears as a major element for the optimal design of industrial policy.
56 Despite the good export performance of the EU in recent years, there are considerable differences in the evolution of exports to different country destinations of our exports. If we compare the total volume of exports to different destinations in the period 2004-2007 and 2008-2011 we find that some of our traditional markets such as the USA present a net reduction in the volume of exports in recent years. This shows the importance of the upcoming negotiations of a new FTA with the USA.
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Figure 6. Change in the destination of EU exports between 2004-2007 and 2008-2011 (mio €)
Source: Eurostat.
57 An active “industrial” diplomacy has been launched to facilitate the international links of EU firms with key trade partners in emerging countries. These contacts are very useful for opening markets to European companies and to facilitate access to raw materials of high strategic importance in certain sectors. In addition, international activities of European companies can better protect themselves in various fields. The creation of a European investment policy following the new powers contained in the Lisbon Treaty is very important to improve the protection of our investment interests overseas. Finally, support and information services networks are useful for the protection of industrial property rights of SMEs from piracy and the violation of those rights.
Figure 7. Gross Fixed Capital Formation EU 27 (2005=100)
Source : Eurostat.
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58 The importance of success in the internationalisation of EU firms cannot be overestimated. Foreign markets can have a mayor influence on the uptake of new technologies. Exposure to tough international competition is a key incentive for the uptake of new technologies by our firms, and SMEs in particular for two reasons. First, because it makes up for the low demand in the internal market as we saw before. Second and most important, when confronted with tougher competition, European firms have greater incentives to invest in new and more efficient equipment. The Figure shows that in fact, while other components of fixed capital formation fell, investment in equipment increased in 2010 and 2012 although 2012 figures show a drop in this very positive evolution of this key variable. It is not possible to establish a causation link between exports and investment in equipment here but prima facie evidence suggests that export sectors and countries seem to have been those investing more in equipment during these years.
3.1.3. Improving conditions for business finance and SMEs in particular
59 Investment and innovation are not possible without adequate financing conditions. In the current situation, companies and SMEs in particular face serious difficulties in financing their investment projects and routine activities. Once again, the situation in this area varies considerably across EU countries. In countries with major problems in their financial markets, funding sources are limited. Banks’ deleveraging, the restructuring of the banking sector in many countries, the slowdown in venture capital and regulatory reforms of the financial sector threaten the availability of credit to businesses in many countries. The interest rate cut by the ECB in July 2011 revealed failures in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy as in some countries the cost of bank credit downgrade came after the central bank rate.
60 Special efforts are being made to improve the conditions of access to credit for businesses. The new Horizon 2020 and COSME programs will make more funds available for innovation and SMEs respectively. The European Investment Bank will have 10 billion euros of additional capital which will allow to increase its financing capacity over 60 billion.
61 New programs of our cohesion policy for 2014-2020 are based on smart specialization of regions and “clusters” industrial. Specialization lines selected for regional policy largely coincide with priority action lines for industrial policy outlined above.
62 But despite the considerable increase in the availability of public funds, the financing that our industry needs for investment and innovation also requires considerable improvements in capital markets. Restoring bank lending remains a priority, but Europe must also take this opportunity to reduce its traditional dependence on financial intermediation for the financing of industrial activities. Direct access of companies to the capital market is by far less common in Europe than in the U.S. This dependency has helped to increase the virulence of the crisis in Europe. Our industrial strategy is to aim for the diversification of sources of business financing. Different industrial needs require appropriate funding sources and today the options are very limited. A green paper consultation will be launched in Spring 2013 to explore possible solutions to this problem.
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3.1.4. Providing specialized human resources and training adapted to the new employment opportunities that the industry demanded
63 Industry’s success will largely depend on the availability and quality of the human capital needed to meet in technological change that is coming. The lack of suitably qualified staff has become a growing problem as the unemployment rate increases in Europe. Vocational training and the provision of specialized technical and engineering education in new technologies are critical factors for success in the implementation of European industrial policy and this has been reflected in the recommendations of the Council of Ministers to Member States last spring.
64 Europe’s industrial strategy relies on efforts in this area at the Union and Member States’ levels to ensure that mismatches in the supply and demand of skills are minimised. Actions in this area include for example, measures to eliminate barriers to the circulation of skilled labour by providing a common framework of quality and learning practices of young people to encourage companies to offer internships with good working conditions. The development of the EURES system into a fully functional integrated job-search environment also goes in that direction. Other measures are also intended to anticipate industry changes to ensure a smooth transition in the best possible conditions to the new industrial environment.7
3.2. Main Characteristics of Europe’s Industrial Strategy
65 Success in the implementation of industrial policy largely depends on the choice of measures but as Rodrik (2008) has indicated, it also ultimately hinges on the way it is implemented. This industrial policy is largely horizontal and respects competition. It has many points in common with new industrial policies developed in the USA or the UK, but it has a number of very distinctive features that make it different. 1. Partnerships
66 The selection and implementation of measures to foster investment in innovation in the six selected priority action lines will be carried out in the context of partnerships with Member States and industry. Both supplier and user industries will be consulted as well as national and regional authorities were necessary to identify which measures can contribute to the faster uptake of industrial policy measures in areas such as standardisation, internal market legislation or innovation to spur the diffusion of the new technologies. Dedicated task forces will work to that effect and will contribute to the implementation of policy measures. 1. Regional base
67 As previously indicated, measures cannot be of a “one size fits all” kind. Regions and Member States will play a major role in the choice of their industrial specialisations. The design of a new cohesion policy based on “smart specialisation” will play a critical role to that effect. 1. Adaptation to specific circumstances over time
68 A closer monitoring of country developments in the context of the European Semester of policy coordination and new governance measures in the Competitiveness Council will allow for a permanent adaptation of the strategy to the evolution of the economy of the Union and its Member States.
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4. Conclusion
69 Europe needs to strengthen its industrial base. First because it is necessary to reverse the trend of competiveness losses vis-à-vis our major trading partners. Secondly, because we are in the eve of a new industrial era and investments in industry are needed to benefit from the transformations in the production patterns that this new “industrial revolution” will bring about all over the world. Finally, a revitalised industry could make a considerable contribution to the economic recovery from the financial crisis.
70 The EU has joined other industrialised countries in the development of more active growth policies. The search for a new industrial policy will be a “learning-by-doing process”. However, the margin for error will be very narrow for some countries if a protracted economic recovery is to be avoided.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACCENTURE (2011), “Manufacturing’s Secret Shift: Gaining Competitive Advantage by Getting Closer to the Customer”, accessed at http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/ Accenture_Manufacturings_Secret_Shift.pdf
AGHION, P., BOULANGER, J., & COEN E. (2011), Rethinking Industrial Policy, Brueghel, issue 4/2011.
AIGINGER, K. (2011), “Why Growth Performance Differed across Countries in the Recent Crisis: the Impact of Pre-crisis Conditions”, Review of Economics and Finance, No. 4/2011, pp. 35-52.
ANDERSON, C. ( 2012), Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, Crown Business Publishing, New York.
BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP (2011), “Made in America, Again. Why Manufacturing will return to the U.S.”, August 2011, at https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/ manufacturing_supply_chain_management_made_in_america_again/
CITY RESEARCH (2013), “Is There A US Manufacturing Renaissance?” The Weekly Globaliser, 18 January.
GALLOIS, L. (2012), “Pacte pour la compétitivité de l’industrie française”, Paris, novembre.
INSTITUTE FOR DEFENCE ANALYSES (2012), “Emerging Global Trends in Advanced Manufacturing”, Alexandria, VA.
JU, JIANDONG & LIN, JUSTIN YIFU & WANG YONG (2011), “Marshallian externality, industrial upgrading, and industrial policies,” Policy Research Working Paper Series 5796, The World Bank.
KIM, S. J., & SHIN, H. J. (2012), “Working Capital, Inventories and Optimal Offshoring”, Mimeo, Princeton University, June 2.
MCKINSEY GLOBAL INSTITUTE (2012), “Investing in Growth: Europe’s next Challenge”, London, December.
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PETTIS, M. (2012), “Can China Increase its Export Competitiveness?”, China Financial Markets blog September 23, accessed at http://www.mpettis.com/2012/09/23/can-china-increase-export- competitiveness/
RIFKIN, J. (2011), The Third Industrial Revolution: How lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy and the World, Palgrave McMillan, New York.
RODRIK, D. (2008), “Normalising Industrial Policy”, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank On behalf of the Commission on Growth and Development, Washington DC, Working Paper n. 3 at http://dev.wcfia.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/ Rodrick_Normalizing.pdf.
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The World Bank, Washington DC.
STIGLITZ, J. E.(2007), “China’s New Economic Model”, The Project Syndicate, April 11, accessed at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-s-new-economic-model.
TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY BOARD (2012), “A landscape for the future of high value manufacturing in the UK”, February.
THE ECONOMIST (2012), “The end of cheap China. What do soaring Chinese wages mean for global manufacturing?”, March 10, accessed http://www.economist.com/node/21549956.
NOTES
1. 2013 State of the Union Speech accessible at http://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the- union-2013. 2. European Commission, COM (2012) 582 final, “A Stronger European Industry for Growth and Economic Recovery – Industrial Communcation Update”, 10 October 2012. 3. European Commission, COM (2010) 614 final, “An Integrated Industrial Policy for the Globalisation Era”, 28 October 2010. 4. See European Commission (2012) for a summary of the results of this consultation. 5. Institute for Defence Analyses (2012) page iv. 6. Accenture (2011) page 3. 7. The list of measures presented above is not exhaustive. A limited number of specific measures were also included to tackle specific issues. For instance, a High level Round table was announced and created before the end of 2012 for the analysis and recommendation of measures to take in the steel sector. The Leadership programme was also launched for the shipbuilding sector.
ABSTRACTS
The economic crisis has changed the order of priorities of economic policy in developed economies. Growth enhancing polices have become a top priority and industrial policy has taken center stage among them in countries where it was not explicitly considered in the past. Many industrialized countries are now seeking their own new models of industrial policy and the European Union as well. This is a “discovery” process and the recent publication of a Commission Communication on Industrial Policy defines the objectives and instruments currently used by the
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Union to reinforce its industrial base and foster growth and job creation. This paper reports on recent steps taken in the making of this new industrial policy in the context of the European Union during the last three years.
La crise économique a changé l’ordre des priorités de la politique économique dans les économies développées. Les politiques pour la croissance sont devenues une priorité absolue et la politique industrielle est passée à jouer un rôle central dans les pays où elle n’était pas explicitement prise en compte dans le passé. De nombreux pays industrialisés cherchent maintenant leurs propres modèles nouveaux de la politique industrielle et l’Union européenne aussi. Il s’agit d’un processus de « découverte ». La publication récente d’une communication de la Commission sur la politique industrielle définit les objectifs et les instruments choisis par l’Union pour renforcer sa base industrielle et favoriser la croissance et la création d’emplois. Cet article présente les mesures de politique industrielle prises récemment dans le contexte de l’Union européenne au cours des trois dernières années.
INDEX
Keywords: Industrial Policy, European Union, Industry, European Economic Policy, Industrial Change Mots-clés: Politique industrielle, Union européenne, industrie, politique économique européenne, changement industriel
AUTHORS
DANIEL CALLEJA Director General Directorate General Enterprise and Industry European Commission
FRANCISCO CABALLERO Chief Economist – Head of Unit Directorate General Enterprise and Industry European Commission
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Convergence of EU and US Industrial Policy: “The obsession of Competitiveness”
Sarah Guillou
I would particularly like to thank the Center For European Studies at Harvard University for hosting my research scholarship in 2010-2011, as well as all the scholars who participated to the Research Seminars. I would also like to thank Muriel Rouyer and her students from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government for their questions and remarks.Aghion, P., E. Cohen, and D. Hemous (2011). Crise et croissance: une stratgie pour la France. Technical Report 100, Rapport du CAE.
1. Introduction
Two dynamics led to a convergence in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) industrial policy views: institutional EU construction on the one hand, and a common threat from Asia’s economic ascent on the other hand. This convergence is not however a sign that the EU and the US have reached equal economic performances. But the similarities of the way they perceive industrial policy shed light on their shared perception of future economic challenges. The EU members have no common industrial policy similar to their shared trade policy for instance. That said, the EU remains the source, not only of many industrial projects that ultimately build industrial policy, but also of many of the rules that shape individual EU members’ industrial policy. The bulk of rules and communications from EU institutions contribute to a specific view as regards industrial policy. I will discuss this view here, putting aside the respective industrial policies of individual EU members. Though this policy does exist, it is largely restricted to respect of EU competition and rules regarding public funding.1 The EU and the US economies account together for about half the entire world GDP and nearly half of manufacturing production.2 They are also involved in establishing most
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international economic rules as principle members of the foremost International Economic Organizations. Their industrial policies are undoubtedly decisive in relation to what other countries will do whether they decide to do the same or to do the opposite. But before influencing the others, the EU and the US influence each other and their respective industrial policies are a result of this structure of mutual influence. Of course, these influences are far from symetrical and most often US industrial policy is a challenge to EU policy.3 While the EU has long been a follower of the US, and to a certain extent this is still the case, their relationship, today, is either a natural partnership or an acute competition. Their economic proximity makes them very cautious and thoughtful towards what the other is doing, whether to follow it or to counteract it. But the relationship between the EU and the US is evolving, while their economic power is being challenged by emerging economies particularly China. Eyes have shifted towards Asia. EU and US industrial policy is less a response to each other but rather a means for dealing with the main challenges of economic globalization. Both EU and US representatives claim they have no industrial policy, but both are dramatically and increasingly concerned by the state of their industry – leading to numerous policies affecting firms and industries. Broadly speaking, Industrial Policy is the “the set of government actions affecting companies in different productive sectors in a country (including service companies) and, more specifically, affecting their ability to compete both domestically and abroad. This broad interpretation of industrial policy would therefore include microeconomic policies (antitrust, innovation and internationalization), the provision of broad infrastructures (transport, communications, education, science and research) and sector-based aid to companies.” This definition from the European Economic Advisers Group (2008) is often thought to be too broad to allow a clear understanding of what an industrial policy is. Most of the time, industrial policy is an amorphous concept at best. This makes comparisons between countries particularly awkward and implies that views about the nature of industrial policy are potentially different depending on countries. According to a definition given by the US International Trade Commission (USITC), industrial policy involves “coordinated government action aimed at directing production resources to domestic producers in certain industries to help them become more competitive”. However, the Lisbon Agenda of the EU states that “The main role of industrial policy at EU level is to proactively provide the right framework conditions for enterprise development and innovation in order to make the EU an attractive place for industrial investment and job creation.” While the USITC definition gives a clear focus to sector-specific policies; the EU – expressed by the Commission or the European Council – understands the concept as horizontal policies.4 A study of main EU and US reports that underpin the call for an industrial policy shows a convergence of views focused on competitiveness. That is the master word that governs the definition of any industrial policies. This concept is now so common and overused that nobody questions its meaning and its evaluation. The focus on competition between emerging economies as well as on tradable production may hide the true vocation of an industrial policy. Of course the financial and economic crisis experienced by the EU and the US since 2007 has highly undermined their budget ability and has threatened further government interventions in private markets. At the same time it has enhanced the demand for industrial policy from economic players and emphasizes the threat on manufacturing industries. The crisis of 2007 and the
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following years is doomed to feed a specific moment in industrial policy-making. It calls for a debate on the goals of industrial policy. To understand this convergence, the first Section intends to illustrate the background creating common challenges affecting EU and US manufacturing industries. While the second section explains what competitiveness stands for, the last section concludes on how much further thoughts is needed about the true vocation of any industrial politicy in order to mitigate the sole focus on competitiveness.
2. An Industrial policy for a threatened manufacturing industry
2.1. To what degree is the Manufacturing sector in decline?
The European Union and the US are still the main actors in world manufacturing production: the EU-19 achieves 26% and the US 21% of total production (Table 2).5 As regards world exports, the EU is the biggest contributor given its high level of intra- European trade. Its trade with the US is first if the EU is taken as a single area.6 This also makes both the EU and the US the main sources of manufacturing exports. But such a long-lasting supremacy has been relentlessly challenged since the beginning of the 1990s. The main sign of the disappearance of this supremacy is the decline in manufacturing employment.
Tableau 1. Manufacturing Employmenta 1991-2007 (unless noted)
USA EU-15b France Germany
Manufacturing Share 2007 10% 15% 13% 19%
Av. Annual Change -1.8% -2.4% -2.6% -3.3%
All Economy Jobs Change (million) 28 20 2.8 1.1
Manuf. Jobs Change (million) -3.8 -7.5 -1.04 -3.05
Change in terms of 1991 jobs -17% -22% -23% -29%
1.3 Of which:
- Med-high tech. jobs -7.1% -7% -7.8% -13.7%
- Low tech. jobs -8.6% -11.4% -10.1% -9.8%
Source: OECD STAN2009, calculations from the author. a: Manufacturing includes industries defined at ISIC 2-digit 15 to 37. b: EU-15 includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom
All of the old industrialized countries have experienced a loss in manufacturing jobs while total jobs increased during the last 16 years (see Table 1). The US lost nearly 4 million jobs – 17% of manufacturing employment in 1990. The Euro zone lost even
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more than the USA: nearly 6 million of jobs have disappeared – 20% of manufacturing employment in 1991. A look at the figures for France and Germany suggests that the more a country is specialized in manufacturing, the more the rate of job disappearance it had to face. Both the share of manufacturing employment over total employment and the average rate of decline from 1990 to 2007 are lower in the US than in the EU. This could mean that the US is on the way to reaching a plateau not yet reached by EU countries. The rate of decline may slow down until a country’s manufacturing share reaches an incompressible level whether it is close to zero or higher. The jobs lost were mostly located in low-technology industry, except for Germany where medium-high technology jobs loss is a little higher than the loss in low- technology jobs. Outside of the US, jobs loss in high-technology is the lowest compared to other industries. Of course the rate of change depends on the pattern of specialization at the beginning of the period of observation and its past evolution. If a country experienced a high rate of decrease before 1990, its jobs decrease may slow down subsequently. But all in all, the main conclusion from these figures is a compelling decline in manufacturing jobs. At the same time, the manufacturing industry is still the location of the main driving forces for economic growth as shown by Table 2. Around 90% of total exports are from manufacturing industry and most of a country’s R&D is also spent by manufacturing industries – between 70 and 90% depending on the country.
Tableau 2. Manufacturing Industries in World and Total Economy
USA EU-15 FR GER JAP
1999 2007 1999 2007 1999 2007 1999 2007 1999 2007
World Production Share 21.9 21.4 28.4 26.1 4.1 3.4 8.3 6.2 17.4 9.6
World Export Sharea 13.7 9.8 41.5 44.6 5.4 4.8 10.1 11.5 8.8 6.4
Manuf. R&D Shareb 64 70 82 82 86 86 91 90 94 90
Manuf. Export Sharec 91 89 93 91 94 94 95 91 96 94
Source: OECD STAN2009, calculations from the author. a: 2000 and 2007; EU-19 b: on Total R&D in 1999 and 2006; 2002 and 2005 for EU-14 c: on Total country Export
This makes manufacturing industry much more crucial for growth than what revealed its share over the economy’s total value added. This is partly why the ongoing decline in employment and world shares is so worrying.7 The decline in employment is reasonably seen as a natural and logical evolution of old industrialized economies submitted to structural change and a mark of their development. But it is also considered as a threat over these economies’ future ability to grow. The international economic context pushes forward one of the two different perceptions at the forefront of the minds of international leaders. The dominant one influences then the design of industrial policy.
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Today, many leaders and experts are asking for re-industrialization. From journalists8 to experts (Rodrik, 2010; Aghion et al., 2011) and political leaders9, all proclaim their fear of the disappearance of manufacturing production. Three arguments are in favor of this new focus on manufacturing. First, manufacturing industry is one of the main locations where jobs exist. Second, manufacturing exports are one of the keys to escaping the unbalanced external payments burden. The high level of public debt and the difficulties of borrowing on the one hand and the trend towards increasing prices of imported raw materials on the other hand, emphasize the need to export: the old industrialized countries have to boost their exports to be able to pay for their imports without borrowing. While nearly 80% of exports are composed of manufacturing products, the need to support industry seems to many observers to be increasingly inevitable. Third, the fact that most R&D investments stem from manufacturing industries makes the loss of these industries a big concern in terms of technological leadership. This fear is now shared by both the US and by EU members.
2.2. Convergence of views due to parallel concerns
2.2.1. How their views finally match
In the US, the laissez-faire doctrine and the reluctance to allow government to step into private business is prevailing. In the European Community, the common market goal and the need to forbid all rules that could create unfair advantages in favor of a member’s firm to the disadvantage of another member’s firm has become the backbone of European economic policies. The goal of the common market has led to a strict banning of any vertical industrial policy. Because of the need for the creation of uniform conditions of doing business in Europe, the EU commission has focused much more of its energy on supervising any kind of lack of competition than on creating tools for industrial policy-making. As stated by Buch-Hansen and Wigger (2010), during the past fifty years “a neoliberal competition only vision came to dominate, giving rise to a more market-based competition regime,” in which public actors were excluded. “A public – private alliance of transnational actors, consisting of the European Commissions DG Competition and transnational business elite networks, were the driving forces behind the neoliberalisation of competition policy.” The EU and US positions lead to a common consequence: industrial policy must be a policy for exceptional circumstances only. Both the EU and the US are claiming they have no industrial policy. Ketels (2007) reminds us that US officials frequently deny having any industrial policy because of their belief in competition and free markets. Industrial Policy officially exists nowhere. But in reality, measures that are a matter of industrial policy are everywhere. These measures are mainly of a horizontal-type while vertical policies are in principle implemented in exceptional circumstances only. The US and EU positions have converged because each of them has come closer to the position of the other. First, EU views have converged towards US views. This convergence was the result of the European institutional process, which deepened economic integration and put the economic policy of European members under the surveillance of the competition policy regulatory authority. Second and more recently, US consciousness of the need to do something in order to maintain the US international economic rank leads to a more friendly environment regarding industrial policy.10
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But today, the US and the EU face the same threat and the same challenge from the low-wage economies. Even if the extent of the threat is different, both are facing a rather new competition, at least in its intensity that both creates their concerns about technological achievements, and shapes their industrial policy. The share of import coming from China has impressively increased since the end of the 1990s. And this occurred regardless of the type of industries, as shown by Table 3. In the space of 10 years, the share of import of high technology products has been multiplied by 5 for the US and Germany; and by 4 (or nearly 4) for France, Japan and the EU-15.11 Chinese competition is no longer only challenging the low-tech industries. Of course, inside groups of industries ranked by their R&D investment level, firms are largely heterogeneous and deal with foreign and Chinese competition differently. There are losers and winners (see Bernard et al., 2004). But these overall figures show how pervasive the Chinese competition is. At the same time, R&D expenditure has grown impressively in China, at an annual average rate in two-figures for 2000-2007 – from 17% to 22% depending on the statistics’ sources. China has set a target of raising its R&D intensity to 2% by 2010 and to 2.5% or above by 2020.
Tableau 3. Share of Chinese Imports in 2007 and average annual growth rate (AGR) since 1997 in percentage
Industries USA EU-15 FR GER JAP
share AGR share AGR share AGR share AGR share AGR
High-technology 25 17 17 16 10 13 15 15 25 13
Medium-high technology 11 13 10 13 4 15 5 12 28 10
Medium-low technology 12 10 10 10 3 9 5 7 16 7
Low technology 27 7 22 9 11 9 13 9 42 5
Source: BACI, CEPII, calculations from the author.
2.2.2. The fear of losing technological leadership
This evolution stirred the same questions in the EU and US. How maintaining technological level and progress? How facing low-wage economies competition and their technological catching-up? How stopping the decline in manufacturing jobs? These questions have led to many reports intending to give solution to enhance competitiveness and boost innovation. This evolution has stirred the same questions in the EU and the US. How to maintain technological levels and progress? How to face competition from low-wage economies and their increasing ability to close the gap in technological advances? How to stop the decline in manufacturing jobs? These questions have led to many reports intending to offer solutions to enhance competitiveness and boost innovation. A recent evolution towards a decreasing of the taboo regarding industrial policy is noteworthy on both sides of the Atlantic since the middle of the 2000s, at least in the views expressed by
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those in charge of industry. Regarding European communications, the change is striking in terms of words. The title of Communication 474 (European Commission, 2005) –“Implementing the community Lisbon programme: A policy framework to strengthen EU manufacturing towards a more integrated approach for industrial policy”– is in itself a break in tone: an integrated Industrial Policy is not a taboo anymore. It is too early to conclude if it will really change the EU practice. But subsequent communications support the idea of an integrated industrial policy as does Communication 614 (European Commission, 2010) and a more recent one, which associates industrial policy with the reinforcement of competitiveness (European Commission, 2011). Zourek (2007), a former European Commission directorate for Enterprise and Industry, advocates the change towards “a new industrial policy for Europe”. Yet these communications, despite their titles, do not innovate a lot. They still focus on the provision of a global environment that is the best to allow firms to grow. The view doesn’t clearly depart from a general framework giving supremacy to market self- regulation. What is new is nevertheless the conditionality to which the integration process is subjected. All regulations have now to be scrutinized regarding their impact on EU competitiveness. One of the commitments of the Commission is to carry out a complete assessment of the impact on competitiveness of any regulations set up in EU markets. EU integration is, now conditional on competitiveness. That means that some previous regulations were not always in favor of EU competitiveness. The goal of perfect competition is acknowledged not to be always the best way to achieve a higher competitiveness relative to the rest of the world. It also means that some objectives like achieving the Single Market or environmental objectives no longer have priority over competitiveness. This concept of competitiveness is never clearly defined. Signs of this change are also visible in the views expressed in the United States. A few years after the burst of the technology bubble, the Council of Science Academies released a report which made a great stir across a wide public audience from experts to employees12 . This sensational 2005 report was even used in the US President’s 2006 State of the Union address; and it laid the groundwork for President Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI).13 Six years later, the reference to education and R&D investment is still a large part of the State of the Union address as shown by the address given by Obama: “The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation.” Both the EU and the US expressed awareness that policies have to be implemented in order to support innovation and sustain competitiveness. The latter word is the key word underpinning the demand for an industrial policy.
3. Competitiveness: the key word
Even if Krugman asserted clearly (and still repeats) that competitiveness is a misleading concept for a country, the number of reports on both sides of the Atlantic, aiming at enhancing each country’s competitiveness is tremendous.14 During the last 10 years, many reports from the US Congress, the European Commission as well as numerous political declarations of intent, deal with competitiveness and how to achieve or maintain a high level of productivity growth and innovation. In Europe, this
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initially dealt with the question of catching up. But both the EU and the US are concerned with their level of technology and their level of competitiveness.15 Whether in the EU or in the US, a milestone has occurred triggering the return of the “obsession” of competitiveness: in the EU with the launch of the Lisbon Agenda in 2000, in the US with the release of the report from the Council of Science Academies in 2005 known by its abbreviated title: “The gathering storm”. The Lisbon Agenda was launched by the Lisbon European Council in 2000. It consisted of a 10 years set of strategies intended to make Europe, by 2010, the most competitive and “the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by bringing combined public and private investment levels in R&D to 3% of GDP.” The Lisbon Agenda was motivated by the need to catch up with US productivity and performance in innovation. It opened a new era in the way industrial policy is perceived and used in Europe. Though the Lisbon Agenda did not talk about industrial policy, its focus on competitiveness opened the way to the idea that governments could do something to boost competitiveness. The failure of the Lisbon Agenda was quickly assessed by the Kok report (Kok, 2004) in which the lack of political will was identified as the main obstacle. Before the financial crisis occurred, the rate of employment was still at 66% (while the Lisbon objective was 70%); only 1.9% of GDP was being spent on R&D (only Finland and Sweden reached the 3% goal); and the productivity gap between the EU and the US had not decreased.16 Lastly in 2010, the failure of the Agenda was shrouded in the depth of the financial and economic crises. A new ten-years agenda, “2020 Europe strategy”, emerged as the next episode of the relentless pursuit of competitiveness. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the expression of concerns happened later but definitely triggered a new environment in favor of an industrial policy. “The gathering storm” , a 500-pages report, released in October 2005, led to a new mainstream consensus in US innovation policy. A strong debate appeared in 2003 about the question of jobs going overseas, along with increasing concerns among Science academies about the ability of the US to “maintain its leadership in science and engineering to compete successfully, prosper, and be secure in the 21st century”. The National Research Council was then requested to conduct a formal study on the issue, in order to assist in congressional deliberations.17 The two main questions asked were to define the top 10 actions, in order of priority, that “federal policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st century”. The report proposed more federal funding for basic research in the physical sciences, more funding for science and engineering education, and tax credits for corporate research and development. In these reports, competitiveness is taken as a generally recognized concept and as a consensual objective. It is indeed consensually admitted that increasing a country’s competitiveness is good for growth and for jobs. But this is not as straightforward as it may be assumed.
3.1. What is competitiveness?
Competitiveness is a relative concept: it means to be better, i.e. sell more or produce at lower cost, than your rival. If your rival does not do this as well as you, your
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competitiveness increases. If competition between a US firm and a Chinese competitor is affected by political changes in China – such as a popular uprising creating a “Berlin moment” in China – the US firm could see its competitiveness increasing. Closer to now, if Chinese companies had to deal with a rise in inflation relative to inflation elsewhere, their competitiveness would go down. Strictly speaking the competitiveness of an agent relative to another agent corresponds to the ratio of the agent’s unit labor cost (labor cost divided by labor productivity) over other agent’s unit labor cost, expressed in a same currency. This definition works as well for a single agent as for a collective agent like a country or an industry. This indicator is more accurate when the unit labor cost refers to the production of a single homogenous product: it allows the comparison of the labor cost of one unit of this product by one agent – country or firm – to another agent. Both unit labor costs have to be expressed in the same currency, which explains why the level of exchange rate does matter in competitiveness issues. Except by the continuous devaluation of its currency – without increasing inflation – the only way a country can on a long-term basis enhance its competitiveness is to increase its productivity or cut its labor cost. This precise definition of competitiveness allows us to understand that the competitiveness of a company does differ from the competitiveness of a country. The competitiveness of a company is in no way a good or a bad thing for the welfare of a country. It all depends. To understand this, let’s reflect on whether an industrial policy should encourage firms to relocate their unskilled production overseas. Workers and governments are inclined to say no. However, this would definitely enhance the firm’s competitiveness. Is this good or bad for the whole economy? While it is likely to be good for the firm, it is less easy to draw a conclusion regarding the country’s economy in the short term or the longer term. So what represents the competitiveness of a country? Indicators for a country lie parallel to the aggregate of company indicators by using the share of each industry/fi rm and an average unit labor for each industry/firm. Insofar as the country’s specialization pattern – shares of each industry in production – is different, making a comparison between different countries’ aggregate indicators doesn’t make much sense. It might at least allow us to compare unit labor cost among countries with similar patterns of specialization – comparing France and Germany, for example, but not the United States and China. To progress, the concept must be replaced by a different concept: the “non-price competitiveness”. Competition is then not viewed as a battle between firms producing an homogeneous product but between firms satisfying a common consumer need. Regarding differentiated goods, firms compete to satisfy a more or less specific demand from consumers. In a market-economy, the price is always an argument in the function of demand, but it becomes less and less important when differentiation is also an argument. In an industry producing differentiated products (say cars), the competitiveness of this industry depends on its average labor cost and its average labor productivity relative to foreign industry’s same indicators. But what is the accuracy of this indicator of competitiveness? Does it explain directly and entirely the amount of the industry world market shares? The answer is no. An industry world market share will depend on its ability to differentiate its product to fit the consumer need. This is all the more so when the industry is producing differentiated goods in a market with excess capacity. This ability to differentiate and to fit current and future consumer
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need will build international market shares. Then competitiveness – non-price competitiveness – could be grasped by market shares. But this less debatable way of assessing competitiveness gives no clues for policy-making. It doesn’t allow us to understand how to improve a country’s competitiveness because the corresponding determinants are not precisely known. So how can a policy be defined to improve a country’s competitiveness?
3.2. How can competitiveness be improved, if necessary?
As seen before, competitiveness carries several meanings. The answers are different according to whether the definition of the country’s competitiveness lies on (i) price- competitiveness or, (ii) non-price competitiveness. Case (i) is the clearest and the most straightforward. Suppose we define a country’s competitiveness in relation to an industry, toys for instance, how could we increase competitiveness relative to the same industry in China? This goal is nearly unreachable: companies in Western countries will not be capable of manufacturing at less cost than Chinese companies. OECD (2010)’s estimates assess Chinese labor cost to be more than 20 times cheaper than say German labor cost. It does not make much sense to talk about an increase in the competitiveness of a developed country relative to that of low-cost countries unless the setting up of an economic policy intending to decrease the average wage drastically right away is envisioned. Devaluating the currency could be a solution, but the worthwhile amount of devaluation would be bound to increase inflation, cancelling out the intended impact. What about increasing labor productivity? This depends on industry: in most cases there is little room for any rapid increase unless through the simple cutting of labor hours. A great deal of literature exists concerning productivity, its measurement and ways of increasing it about which I will not talk in detail here. Globally, these policies are mainly structural policies. They must entail a change in the specific country’s specialization, the say change implying a higher level of technology and/or R&D content. A caveat is also rarely mentioned here: the link that exists between labor productivity and wages. An increase in labor productivity might correspond to an increase in payment to highly-qualified employees, resulting in an increase in labor cost. Therefore in this case, competitiveness will not increase, neither will jobs be created. Thus, an increase in labor productivity may not imply an increase in competitiveness. Case (ii) calls for a policy that raises total factor productivity and intensifies innovation. New products or improved products might induce higher market shares. Are regarded the policies intending to create a favorable environment for firms to grow and innovate (better skills, better infrastructure, better administration, better patent protection system...). These long-term policies are promoted by most official reports. But nothing is said about their long-term achievements, the uncertainty associated with long-term issues as well as their inability to tackle immediate challenges. Nothing is said about the transition path which could have a cost in terms of jobs. Any policy aiming to increase non-price competitiveness is hard to evaluate because of a lack of precise indicators to follow. Market share is dependent on partners and on the growth of their demand as much as it is dependent on non-price competitiveness.
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From this discussion, comes firstly the conclusion that the concept of competitiveness embedded in official statements and reports is a little different from the strict defi nition given by the competitiveness indicator. On the contrary, the so common competitiveness concept is actually a very confused concept. As Krugman indicated, the concept itself is as elusive as a policy goal. Competitiveness is understood as an ability to conquer market share but also more generally as an increase in a specific country’s terms of trade, i.e. the value of exports over the value of imports. Mostly, when referring to competitiveness, these reports talk about an increase in non-price competitiveness by changing the country’s specialization towards more high-quality products, and skilled jobs. Today the competitiveness concept in our developed economies’ view is really used as synonymous with upgrading in order to increase export value and terms of trade. But there is not a single indicator to measure non- price competitiveness. Moreover there is a confusion between whether the goal is to enhance the firm’s or the country’s competitiveness. This appears mostly to be totally merged into a single goal. Finally, there is no debate about the competitiveness goal in itself in relation to the economic welfare of the country. Technological progress is meant to increase both social welfare (health, sanitary conditions, communications, lower prices) and the terms of trade. And it is assumed that an increase in the terms of trade will make a country better-off and enhance its ability to invest in social conditions including infrastructure, security and better access to medical care for examples. Though nothing ensures that such investment will be made, it could certainly not be bad for the country and people. The remaining question remains the issue of jobs. The goal of competitiveness always overlaps with this question. The issue is sustained in the US by the massive volume of Chinese imports and because of India serving as an important relocation destination for US jobs in service industries. In the EU the focus is mainly on job creation. The question of relocation regards mostly intra-European movement – from Western to Eastern Europe. But competitiveness and job creation goals do not necessarily correspond whether in the short or long term. And this deduction is not clearly stated in existing reports. The objective of competitiveness may seem to correspond to a “try anything once” concept which simply means: allowing the country to go ahead with regard to technological progress. Not much will have to be done here. All in all, all these reports or declarations of intent expressed a demand for industrial policy, specifically a demand for a horizontal policy aimed at increasing the R&D investment while also supporting innovation and education. The 2007 crisis and the following years are doomed to feed a specific moment for industrial policies. The fi nancial and economic crises has emphasized the need to help manufacturing industries whose situation has worsened during the crisis. It has also emphasized the harsh competition from Asian economies which didn’t suffer as much from the crisis. This increased the pressure on manufacturing competitiveness while trade imbalances have emphasized the need to export more. All of these aspects establish good conditions for this obsession with competitiveness to be accentuated in the short-term future.
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4. Concluding remarks: why this obsession will be accentuated and why it should be mitigated
This obsession should keep its strength, first because competition from emerging economies is not going to slow down, and second because trade equilibrium constraints coming from the sovereign debt situation emphasizes the need to export. Both causes demand more support in favor of industry – mostly manufacturing industries – and a focus on tradable production and its competitiveness. Emerging economies are poised to pursue their ability to catch-up and to outperform the old industrialized countries in many manufacturing skills. Though employment in manufacturing will inevitably drop there too because of gains in productivity, their share of world manufacturing production should keep growing until labor costs reach comparable levels to those in western economies. Regarding trade equilibrium constraints – given the level of public debt and the cost of borrowing on one side and the trend of increasing raw material prices on the other, the old industrialized countries need to boost their export levels in order to be able to pay their import costs without borrowing too much. While nearly 80% of exports are composed of manufacturing products, the need to support industry appears to many observers to be increasingly inevitable, bringing some leaders to call for re-industrialization. But there is no way to return to the previous comparative advantage. Both the EU and the US, old industrialized countries, need to focus on what they do better, not on what they did better. So where is their comparative advantage today? It consists of quality, security, safety, ecology, knowledge and high technology, and all of these aspects included in manufacturing production made with high-wage workers (see Guillou and Nesta, 2011). There is only one sustainable way for western economies to keep their share of manufacturing production: by increasing the content of services by upgrading the value added achieved in their production. Industrial policy should therefore only focus on non-price competitiveness, abandoning the goal of price-competitiveness and embracing honest in relation to short-term job creation. To justify spending public money to sustain firms, industrial policy has to be designed in order to increase the welfare of the whole population. Whether the justification for supporting industry is based on the presence of external factors or increasing returns to scale, the aim of industrial policy depends on political attitudes in relation to the future. There is no other way to define such political attitudes than to construct them in relation to the needs of a country’s citizens.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bernard, A. B., J. B. Jensen, and P. K. Schott (2004). Facing the dragon: Prospects for U.S. manufacturers in the coming decade. Technical Report May, mimeo.
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Buch-Hansen, H. and A. Wigger (2010). Revisiting 50 years of market-making: The neoliberal transformation of european competition policy. Review of International Political Economy 17 (1), 2044.
European Commission (2005). Implementing the community lisbon programme: A policy framework to strengthen eu manufacturingtowards a more integrated approach for industrial policy. COM(2005) (474).
European Commission (2010). An integrated industrial policy for the globalisation era putting competitiveness and sustainability at centre stage. COM(2010) (614), 33.
European Commission (2011). Industrial policy: Reinforcing competitiveness. COM(2011) (642), 12.
European Economic Advisers Group (2008). Europe in a globalised world. Report on European Economy 2008, CESifo.
Guillou, S. and L. Nesta (2011). Quelle politique industrielle dans la mondialisation? In Cahiers Franais 365 (Ed.), Les Entreprises dans la mondialisation. La documentation Franaise.
Ketels, C. H. M. (2007). Industrial policy in the United States. Journal Industry Competition and Trade 7, 147–167.
Krugman, P. (1994, March/April). Competitiveness, a dangerous obsession. Foreign Affairs 73 (2).
OECD (2010). Measuring globalisation: OECD economic globalisation indicators. Technical report, OECD.
OFCE (2010). L’industrie manufacturière française. Collection Repères, La Découverte, Paris.
Rodrik, D. (2010). The return of industrial policy. Technical Report March, Project Syndicate.
Schacht, W. H. (2010). Industrial competitiveness and technological advancement: Debate over government policy. CRS Report for Congress 71 (December 8), 15.
Zourek, H. (2007). The European commission’s new Industrial Policy in an Integrating and Globalizing World. J Ind Compet Trade 7, 285295.
NOTES
1. For example an EU member has to declare to the European Commisssion a three-year grant above 150,000 euros attributed to an individual firm. 2. Over 1996-2006, this share has been quite constant for the US while it has declined for the EU-15 at a rate of 1.4% per year on average. Source: World Development Indicators, 2009; OFCE (2010). 3. By European industrial Policy, I mean the industrial policy designed at the European level by an EU institution. But sometimes, in order to have an idea of what is going on in Europe regarding an indicator, it gives information presenting data from main European members. 4. Industrial policies are often classified into horizontal or vertical policies. Historically, vertical policies were first implemented and horizontal policies are now the policies at work. But often the distinction is not so easy as policies may combine both characteristics. 5. While Germany is still the main EU contributor, the enlargement of the EU has led to an increase in the EU share of world manufacturing production and export. 6. The US is the first partner of the EU-27 with 242.4 billion euros of exports and an import total of 169.3 billion euros. The second partners are China and Russia and for imports, China is first and the US is second (according to figures for 2010).
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7. There are certainly other reasons linked to the powerful status of manufacturing as the only location of production of concrete commodities and materials. Manufacturing production is deeply associated with the past growth of old-industrialized countries. 8. The Economist 2011; Jon Gertner, “Does America need Manufacturing, New York Times August 24,2011. 9. Both Gordon Brown, when British Prime Minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, French President, asked for re-industrialization. 10. This view was recently expressed by the President B. Obama in a State of the Union Address in 2011: “We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business.” 11. For the EU-15, the share is a percentage of the total import coming from non-European (non EU15) countries. 12. The Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, Washington, DC: National Academies Press, October 12, 2005. 13. “The American Competitiveness Initiative should facilitate innovation and provide our nations children a firm grounding in math and science”. To achieve these goals, the President called for the doubling over the next 10 years of the amount of federal funding for basic research, particularly in the National Science Foundation, the Office of Science in the Department of Energy, and in the core programs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Commerce. In addition, the Initiative was to increase the number of math and science teachers and make the research and experiment tax credit permanent. 14. See Krugman (1994) who qualified competitiveness as “a dangerous obsession”. His views have also been expressed more recently in a comment on Barack Obama’s State of the Union address: “Competitiveness” posted on January 22, 2011 in Krugman’s New York Times’ blog. 15. For recent examples, see the Report for Congress about Industrial Competitiveness and Technological advancement released in December 2010 (Schacht, 2010) and the Competitiveness report, 2010 from the EC released in October 2010. 16. In fact, the Lisbon Agenda ran up against serious obstacles during the 10 years period: the bursting of the ICT bubble; the recession in the aftermath of September 11th; and the enlargement of the EU in 2004 and 2007 (the Lisbon Agenda being based on EU-15). The enlargement raised institutional questions that took precedence in European debate over the aims of the Lisbon agenda. 17. The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. The Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities.
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AUTHOR
SARAH GUILLOU SciencesPo – OFCE, GREDEG – CNRS [email protected]
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