ABSTRACT
According to this perspective, the transformation of the industrial Midwest thus reflects a deeper and more fundamental transformation in the nature of capitalism – a shift to a new knowledge-intensive economy, where the keys to success are harnessing the ideas and innovative capabilities of all workers from the R&D lab to the factory floor to turn out the high-quality, state-of-the-art products the world’s consumers want to buy. Under this new form of organization, the factory itself is becoming more like a laboratory, with knowledge workers, advanced high-technology equipment, and clean-room conditions free of dirt and grime. Indeed, as Drucker (1993) and Nonaka (1991) suggest, capitalism may be entering into a new age of knowledge creation and continuous innovation. This new system of knowledge-intensive capitalism is based upon a synthesis of intellectual and physical labour: a melding of innovation and production (see also Florida 1991, Kenney & Florida 1993). This new system of economic organization, these scholars argue, represents a major advance over previous systems of Taylorist scientific management or the assembly-line system of Henry Ford, where the principal source of value and productivity growth was physical labour.
