Strategy and circumstance: the response of American firms to Japanese competition in semiconductors, 1980-1995

In the mid-1980s, Japanese firms strongly challenged American dominance of the semiconductor industry. A large literature arose to suggest that, in order to survive, American firms needed to adopt the capabilities and strategies of the Japanese. Recently, American firms have indeed surged back to regain a strong position in the industry. This essay attempts to collect some of the lessons for strategy research of that American resurgence. We argue that, although some of the American response did consist in changing or augmenting capabilities, most of the renewed American success is in fact the result not of imitating superior Japanese capabilities but rather of taking good advantage of a set of capabilities developed in the earlier heyday of American dominance.