Suppose the global economy comprised countries roughly equally equipped with research institutions, technology development labs, and industrial production facilities. They might compete fiercely, build rival alliances, and vie aggressively for raw materials and natural resources. But one can also imagine a more optimistic scenario. Since each country would understand its own challenges best, it could devise solutions adapted to its own circumstances, building systems and equipment at precisely the scale required. And where competences complement one another, governments could engage in mutually beneficial collaborations, mobilising scientists, technology, and manufacturing towards common goals.
Unfortunately, humankind has tended in the opposite direction. Since the first Industrial Revolution and the emergence of a truly global economy around the turn of the 19th century, goods and technologies have reached the farthest corners of the world, but the ability to design, build, market, and extract value from them has remained highly concentrated.
By the mid-1800s, steam locomotives were operational in almost 60 countries or colonies, yet only Britain, the US, and certain German states were fully capable of supplying them. Telegraphic lines followed a similarly uneven pattern, as did the auto industry, which emerged at the turn of the 20th century and became emblematic of globalisation in the post-World War II era with the internationalisation of manufacturing capabilities, especially in large developing countries in Asia and Latin America. But only two of these economies, Japan and South Korea, managed to join the exclusive club of so-called original equipment manufacturers.
