Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.1
Product cycle variations.
technology or fashion which allow a product to retain, or to regain, its value. Cast
iron stoves, popular in Scandinavia and formerly in much of Europe, have
attained a new importance through a combination of changing fashion and the
invention of the chain saw, making more small-diameter wood available to
farmers and homeowners. What are the results of this set of processes for
speciflc regions or countries? Innovation in the first stage causes no divergence
of wealth or income, so that it presents no threat to anyone. At the other end,
spreading out production to all areas again spells no problem to specific
countries or regions. Attention thus focuses on the intermediate stages, when the
products are being brought in at the centre, but have not, or have only partially,
been distributed to the periphery. In the comments that follow, a link is made
directly from product to firm to region. In reality, of course, the effects are
tempered by diversification within the firm and within the region. A gross
simplification is thus made to present the case.
For those at the centre, the problems depend on the organization of
production, and on power systems. The theory of dependency, discussed earlier,
is relevant to the consideration of power and control. Firms, like governments, may
restrict knowledge of key processes to their home-workers and factories, leading
to the current demands from most LDC governments that there be a technology
transfer with any major new investment. But even without a power system that
causes imbalance between regions and states, there may be special problems. In
the case of a region that produces only a single product, with no variations and
no innovation, there is an obvious danger in the product cycle because after the
early stages the role of the centre is lost. Thus a region that specializes in the
manufacture of basic steel is liable to become a crisis region when the
steelmaking process is learnt by a variety of other countries, and the first region
is unable to change its industrial structure. In this particular industry there has in
fact been some innovation, such as the introduction of direct reduction
techniques in the 1960s, avoiding the traditional two-stage blast furnace-steel
