Crisis-Induced Adaptation

Although collaboration eventually emerged in the form of ESPRIT, it did not replace national programs to build up domestic IT industries. In fact, national programs to support IT flourished with renewed vigor in the early 1980s. In this first section I describe the adaptive process in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, focusing on changes in national policies. It bears remembering that although each country adopted new national strategies, the ESPRIT program was being created during the same period (1982–1984). In other words, collaboration did not replace national policies but took its place beside them.

Several themes link the national cases. First, each government believed more firmly than ever in the importance of IT in driving economic development and growth. Even those governments ideologically opposed to public intervention in industry (the Helmut Kohl government in Germany and the Thatcher government in Great Britain) provided massive new supports to the IT sectors in the early 1980s. Second, government officials, company executives, and Brussels technocrats all spoke in the early 1980s of the urgent necessity of meeting the Japanese and American challenge.

Third, as Malerba points out, government and industry had come around to the view that strength in telematics required a presence in the design and manufacturing of advanced semiconductors. Both business and government had missed the boat the first time around, and Europe by the late 1970s was absent from world microprocessor and memory-chip markets. Only then did governments conclude that "a domestic productive capability in LSI devices was of strategic value for reasons of national security and for sustaining the electronic and the manufacturing industries as a whole ."^[1] Although it is not his analytic concern, Malerba thus provides evidence

[1] Malerba, Semiconductor Business , 162, my emphasis.

of the kind of policy adaptation I expect. Further confirmation of this adaptation comes from a well-placed observer, Pasquale Pistorio, president of the Italian firm SGS: "European governments are beginning to see that they've got to protect this very important industry [semiconductors] if they're going to preserve the quality of the European electronics industry."^[2] The programs described in this section show that governments were looking for new ways to support their domestic firms' reentry into advanced digital microelectronics.

The semiconductor companies themselves were also trying to return to advanced digital ICs; by the early 1980s Siemens, Philips, Thomson, SGS, and Inmos were all starting again to produce highly integrated memory devices.^[3] A Financial Times survey of the European electronics industry in 1984 summarized the by-then general consensus that the production of standard ICs (especially memories) was essential as it drove product, design, and production innovations.^[4] Furthermore, as final electronics systems were increasingly built into the chips, the competitiveness of European systems makers increasingly depended on mastery of chip technologies. Executives from Europe's major semiconductor firms confirmed this observation. Klaus Ziegler, vice-president of the Components Group at Siemens, explained his company's efforts starting in the early 1980s to rejoin the competition in advanced semiconductors: "First, for a company like us that integrates microelectronics into its finished products, it's essential to avoid becoming dependent on our competitors. Secondly, increasing system know-how is going into components all the time, and we're justifiably reluctant to have our expertise siphoned off by others."^[5] Cees Krijgsman, managing director for ICs at Philips, speaking of Europe's position in electronics and advanced manufacturing more generally, declared, "To be competitive, we simply have to be strong in semiconductors."^[6]

Fourth, and last, promoting collaboration among companies and between industry and academia became a feature of European IT

[2] Quoted in Thane Peterson, with Amy Borrus, "Europe's Chipmakers Pull Out of a Long Losing Streak," 22.

[3] Paul Betts, "Thomson Has Another Try," Financial Times , 25 October 1985, p. 18.

[4] Guy de Jonquieres, "Electronics in Europe," Financial Times , 28 March 1984, Survey, p. 1.

[5] Siemens, "Japan's Challenge—Europe's Response: Interview with Klaus Ziegler," 18.

[6] Quoted in Peterson, "Europe's Chipmakers," 22.

support programs. Such links were a central part not only of ESPRIT but also of national programs in Germany and the United Kingdom. Collaborative R&D was perceived as a crucial part of American and especially Japanese successes in promoting high-technology industries. In a sense, then, collaborative R&D in Europe was an adaptive response based on imitation of the acknowledged leaders. Table 7.1 presents a chronology of the major events in IT policy.

France

French electronics and data-processing programs in the first years of the Mitterrand government were even more nationalist than previous ones, difficult as that may be to imagine. The French trade deficit in electronics goods doubled from 1981 to 1982, to FFr 12 billion.^[7] President Mitterrand was determined to reverse that trend. The Giscard government, prior to leaving office, had commissioned a series of studies on French high-tech capacities. The new government expanded these studies and used them as a basis for the colloque national on research in January 1982, designed as a forum in which those interested (unions, industries, banks, researchers, civil servants) could provide input for a new science and technology policy. The new policy emerged in July 1982 with the Loi d'orientation et programmation (LOP). The LOP laid out ambitious goals to make France "the world's third scientific power" by the 1990s.^[8] The overall goal was to spend 2.5 percent of GNP on domestic R&D by 1985, from a base of 2.01 percent in 1981, with the effort focused on seven high-priority programmes mobilisateurs .^[9] One of the priority programmes was for the electronics sector, the filière électronique .

Simultaneous with the LOP process the government set up within the Ministry of Research and Technology a special Mission filière électronique to study that sector in particular. Under Abel Farnoux (who lent his name to the report) the Mission submitted its conclusions in March 1982. The Farnoux Report declared, "If France is to maintain its independence, master the new communications systems and put the crisis behind it, it is imperative for the country

[7] David Marsh, "Bid to Narrow the Gap," Financial Times , 21 March 1983, Survey, p. 6.

[8] OECD, Innovation Policy , 67.

[9] Ibid., 71–75.

to master the key activities of the electronics sector."^[10] The report became the basis for the Programme d'action pour la filière électronique (PAFE). The PAFE envisioned a wholesale revamping of French telematics policy, with the different sectors seen as parts of a single whole extending from ICs to final systems in communications, consumer electronics, data-processing, and office and factory automation. Again, ambitious national goals were the order of the day. For the period 1983–87 France would shoot for a production increase of 9 percent (versus the actual trend of a 3 percent increase), 50,000 new jobs in the sector (trend: 10,000 lost), and a trade surplus of FFr 14 billion (trend: FFr 20 billion deficit by 1987).^[11] This program would be accomplished via several major actions:

Structuring the program through national projects resembled the Japanese model for mobilizing whole industries.^[13]

In semiconductors French goals were ambitious: The microelectronics segment of the filière électronique aimed at French independence in semiconductor technology by 1986. The government was convinced that "without integrated circuits, the entire French electronics industry would crumble."^[14]

The report also mentioned the possibility of eventually including firms from other European countries in the national projects and

[10] Quoted in ibid., 218.

[11] Ibid., 219.

[12] Such an obligation was apparently quite common in the early 1980s in France. Users of both ICs and computers were pressured to buy French (Kenneth Dreyfack, "France Wants Bigger Piece of Pie," 98; John Morris, "France Plans DP Sell-Off," 66).

[13] Robert T. Gallagher, "French Want National as Partner," 104.

[14] Quoted in Thomas R. Howell et al., The Microelectronics Race , 170.

possibly even American or Japanese firms in the long term.^[15] But, as the OECD study of innovation policy in France points out, the "PAFE was not set in an international context from the outset. It was not until over a year later after the programme was adopted in September 1983 that France made the first attempts at achieving some complementarity between the French vision of the electronics sector and European action."^[16] Indeed, President Mitterrand announced early in his term that his objective was "reconquering the domestic market" and making France the third IT power behind the United States and Japan.^[17]

The government reiterated in September 1983 its intention to invest FFr 140 billion over five years to achieve what Mitterrand called the "great electronic leap forward." Minister for Industry and Research Laurent Fabius declared, "Meeting the challenge of electronics and information technologies is the number one priority in industrial policy for the country."^[18] The total investment included FFr 60 billion from the state, the rest to come from industry.^[19] The state contribution to R&D support was to total FFr 30 billion, approximately double what it would have contributed otherwise. The state contributions would come from several ministries (largest shares from defense and the DGT) and take the form of contracts, grants, and equity funding. In practice the funding channels were extremely complex, so it was hard to tell whether the spending targets were attained.^[20] They almost certainly were not.

France's inability to meet its targets was behind its sudden about-face in 1983 and 1984. When it became clear that France could not possibly afford such an ambitious and nationalist strategy, the French government became a vigorous advocate of European collaboration. How this turnabout occurred is instructive, for it demonstrates the recognition on the part of a government of the failure of a national-champion approach and the subsequent turn toward cooperation.

[15] Robert T. Gallagher, "France Urged to Reorganize Electronics," 105.

[16] OECD, Innovation Policy , 219.

[17] David Marsh, "French Computer Strategy Under Fire," Financial Times , 15 April 1983, p. 32; and David Marsh, "Stronger Emphasis on Joint Ventures," Financial Times , 11 July 1984, Survey, p. 7.

[18] "M. Mitterrand: la France proposera un plan européen de haute technologie en 1984," Le Monde , 27 September 1983, p. 44.

[19] Paul Betts, "France Campaigns for Electronics Collaboration," Financial Times , 28 September 1983, p. 1.

[20] OECD, Innovation Policy , 221.

What is surprising is how quickly the shift occurred: The Farnoux Report was issued in March 1982; by September 1983 the French government was beginning to speak out for European high-technology cooperation.

As the OECD report on France points out, economic growth rates were far lower in the early 1980s than the government had predicted. The economy was not producing at the level needed to support the huge investments planned for the filière électronique . Evidence of trouble came in July 1983, when a large chunk of the PAFE program was placed under the DGT. This switch meant that DGT revenues from its profitable network activities (which were independent of the national budget) would be used to underwrite the electronics plan, including huge subsidies to loss-making firms like Bull and Thomson and in addition to the usual funding for telecoms suppliers like CGE and CGCT. Not surprisingly, the reshuffling quickly ruined the DGT's former extremely strong financial position.^[21] The following year the Direction des Industries Electroniques et de l'Informatique, which had been in charge of the filière électronique , was quoted as saying, "Unfortunately, in the present context, we cannot afford to make the effort required. Certainly for the new [microelectronics] plan which will start in 1987, a European effort will have to be considered."^[22] In short, France was rapidly discovering the limits to what one European nation, even one of the largest, could hope to achieve autonomously in high technology.

Thus, by the fall of 1983 the French were already beginning to sing a cooperative tune. The Mitterrand government in September 1983 circulated a memorandum among its fellow EC members advocating "un espace industriel européen ." President Mitterrand announced at the end of the month that France was preparing to propose a European plan for high technology, especially IT. The French president declared in a speech: "We should show the same ambition in high technology; our independence as Europeans and our identity are the stakes. Otherwise we will be submerged by competitors like the United States and Japan."^[23]

[21] Ibrahim Warde, "French Telecommunications," 109–10.

[22] Howell et al., Microelectronics Race , 171.

[23] "M. Mitterrand: la France proposera un plan européen de haute technologie en 1984," Le Monde , 27 September 1983, p. 44.

By this time France also had a new minister for industry and research, Fabius, who was a strong advocate of increased European R&D collaboration. Fabius had replaced Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who was in office during the preparation of the LOP and the PAFE and who was a vigorous proponent of French technological independence. Indeed, Chevènement had issued instructions that French scientists publish their research in French and defend French as a scientific language in international meetings.^[24] Chevènement resigned amid controversy over his interventionist approach to the nationalized industries in March 1983 and was replaced by Fabius.

As Mitterrand began talking up European cooperation on high technologies, Fabius also took up the theme. The minister for industry and research spoke out in favor of European collaboration in electronics and telecommunications, including the gradual opening of public procurement markets. The government also expressed the view that alliances among European industrial groups should be favored over those with non-European firms.^[25] The French even criticized an AT&T-Philips deal as a Trojan horse for the American company.^[26] At the same time, however, French electronics firms were striking alliances with U.S. companies—Thomson with National Semiconductor, Matra with Harris. Nevertheless, from that point on the French became consistent supporters of the Commission's efforts leading up to ESPRIT.^[27]

Just over a year later, Fabius ascended to the post of prime minister. Mitterrand's selection of Fabius reflected both his hopes for the technological modernization of French industry and his growing commitment to European cooperation. As chairman of the Council of Research Ministers of the EC during the first half of 1984 Fabius had been a staunch supporter of the Commission's technology plans and had been a consistent backer of ESPRIT, whose first phase was approved during Fabius's tenure. To fill his former cabinet position, Fabius chose Hubert Curien, though the industry brief was moved

[24] John Walsh, "France Readies New Research Law," 712.

[25] Paul Betts, "France Campaigns for Electronics Collaboration," Financial Times , 28 September 1983, p. 1.

[26] Guy de Jonquieres, "Government Aims to Float Off Slice of BT in U.S.," Financial Times , 20 September 1983, p. 6.

[27] Paul Betts, "Government Encourages Closer European Collaboration," Financial Times , 11 July 1984, Survey, p. 2; and David Marsh, "Stronger Emphasis on Joint Ventures," FT , 11 July 1984, Survey, p. 7.

elsewhere and the ministry once again covered research and technology. The appointment of Curien was also significant. Curien was at the time president of the European Science Foundation and was a former chairman of the council of the ESA. In other words, Curien was a committed and experienced Europeanist on technology matters.^[28] Thus, two key positions in the Mitterrand cabinet after July 1984 were filled by advocates of European collaboration. Curien would later be one of Mitterrand's point men in selling EUREKA to France's partners. In barely three years the French government had evolved from a vigorous promoter of national champions and independence into an enthusiastic advocate of European collaboration.^[29]

Federal Republic of Germany

Germany, like the United Kingdom, frequently finds its desire to advance its IT industries at odds with its noninterventionist instincts. The Ministry of Economics tends to uphold market solutions to industrial problems, while the Ministry of Research and Technology (BMFT) has been willing to formulate programs to stimulate high-tech sectors. The CDU/CSU-FDP coalition that has governed since 1982 is ideologically uncomfortable with state intervention. Still, the Kohl government, like its SDP predecessors, has instituted programs to stimulate the IT industry.

In the early 1980s the BMFT's Microelectronics Program, begun in 1979, was supporting R&D for chip design, production technology, materials, and applications. Financial support shifted emphasis from data-processing equipment to microelectronics and applications. In 1980 state funding for the computer sector was more than twice that for microelectronics; in 1983 the ratio was 5:2 in favor of microelectronics.^[30] In addition the government agreed in 1984 to help underwrite the Mega project involving Siemens and Philips, whose object was the production of one-megabit static random-access memories (SRAMs) and four-megabit DRAMs. The German government would contribute DM 300 million (Siemens

[28] David Dickson, "France's New Technocrats," 486–87.

[29] See Guy de Jonquieres and Paul Betts, "The Euphoria Is Over," Financial Times , 7 February 1985, p. 14.

[30] Erik Arnold and Ken Guy, Parallel Convergence: National Strategies in Information Technology , 142.

claimed to have allocated DM 2.2 billion for the project, including investment in a new plant).^[31] The German government saw microelectronics as one sector whose fate could not be left entirely to the operations of the market.

The BMFT announced in 1984 a new Informationstechnik program.^[32] The plan had been long awaited, held up in part by objections from the Ministry of Economics.^[33] The new program allotted DM 3 billion ($1.14 billion in 1984) over five years, from 1984 to 1988. The government declared that its IT program was a necessary response to technological competition from the United States and Japan.^[34] The minister for research and technology, Heinz Riesenhuber, declared:

Our share of the world market in high technology goods is stagnating, while Japan's share in the last decade has doubled. We cannot overlook this, if we want to maintain our leading position in the 1990s. . . . To this end, the government has approved the comprehensive plan to support microelectronics, information and communications technology. . . . In this plan, we are documenting our determination to accept the challenges of information technology and to improve our competitiveness.^[35]

The BMFT report noted that IT production (components, consumer electronics, communications, computers, industrial automation) was growing far more rapidly in the United States and Japan than in Germany. The position of the German semiconductor industry was unsatisfactory: Whereas the United States and Japan were exporting ICs to the world, German industry supplied only 60 percent of the country's demand for ICs.^[36]

The Informationstechnik program was the first German IT support scheme in which industry was consulted in the planning stages; fifteen companies, including both large and small ones, helped prepare the program.^[37] Though the plan specified assistance only for

[31] Guy de Jonquieres, "Philips Joins Siemens in Microchip Project," Financial Times , 11 October 1984, p. 1.

[32] This announcement came at about the time the first year of the full ESPRIT program was getting underway.

[33] Arnold and Guy, Parallel Convergence , 140.

[34] Jonathan Carr, "Bonn Wakes Up to the Challenge of the Chip," Financial Times , 28 March 1984, Survey, p. 6; Interview 4.

[35] Quoted in Howell et al., Microelectronics Race , 174.

[36] Rupert Cornwell, "Bonn Bid to Push Ahead in High-Technology Field," Financial Times , 15 March 1984, p. 3.

[37] John Gosch, "Germany Spends for Its High-Tech Future," 101.

R&D, and only up to 50 percent of project costs, the government indicated that state procurement, both civil and military, would provide a further stimulus to industry. The Bundespost alone was to spend a predicted $750 million annually on broadband telecommunications. The largest chunk of the DM 3 billion would go for components R&D (DM 1.41 billion), including a DM 608 million project on submicron-chip technologies. Other major areas were data-processing, industrial automation (CAD and CAM), and telecommunications.^[38] A final noteworthy aspect of the program was that it would emphasize cooperation among companies and between industry, universities, and research institutes. Indeed, collaboration was becoming a keyword in German technology policy.^[39] Two executives from major German electronics firms told me that interfirm collaboration had been stressed by the BMFT in its programs since 1982.^[40]

However, nothing like the enthusiasm of the French for European collaboration evolved in Germany. Rather, the government was divided internally. Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher (of the FDP) emerged as the most avid and consistent proponent of European collaboration. As one official in the BMFT put it, "Since 1984, Genscher has mentioned technology in nearly every speech. He always speaks of the necessity of European cooperation in space and information technologies." This official noted a high level of concern for technology questions ever since Genscher appointed Konrad Seitz as director of his planning staff at the Foreign Ministry.^[41] The Finance Ministry, in contrast, consistently questioned the value of European collaborative programs (including the EC's Framework Programme and EUREKA, for example) and sought to restrict their budgets. The BMFT favored collaboration for basic research, as in fusion, space, and synchrotron radiation. For more commercially relevant technologies, the BMFT argued for selectivity, so that European programs would complement national ones. Thus, the BMFT saw the major components of the Framework Programme (including ESPRIT) as essential but would have preferred to reduce the budget for other programs.^[42]

[38] Ibid., 101–2.

[39] Rupert Cornwell, "Bonn to Spend DM3bn on High Technology Boost," Financial Times , 9 March 1984, p. 1; Arnold and Guy, Parallel Convergence , 141.

[40] Interviews 45 and 46.

[41] Interview 4.

[42] Ibid.

United Kingdom

Great Britain during the Thatcher years had been torn between an anti-interventionist ideology and an increasing perceived need to support the IT industries. These contrary impulses led to what Erik Arnold and Ken Guy call "stop-go policies."^[43] Thus, the Thatcher government began with measures to privatize that part of the industry that had come under state tutelage. The National Enterprise Board was transformed into the British Technology Group and told to sell of its shares in ICL and Inmos. The government announced that a £35 million cash infusion for Inmos in January 1984 would be the last.^[44] After offers for Inmos from AT&T and a Dutch consortium had been turned down in 1984, Thorn-EMI bid £144 million, raised later to £192 million, for the state's 75 percent interest in the company. This proposal was approved. The same month (August 1984) the electronics and telecommunications conglomerate STC purchased ICL for £653 million; ICL had required government loans and loan guarantees in 1980–81, though it had achieved a profit in 1981–82. Some political opposition arose to the deal because 35 percent of STC was owned by the American firm ITT; but the government approved the acquisition after ITT announced a reduction of its interest to 25 percent.^[45]

In late 1980, however, the government asked the ACARD to report on whether the state should promote the IT industries in the United Kingdom. The government decided that it should, and in early 1981 Thatcher appointed a minister of state for information technology, Kenneth Baker. He immediately announced a "Year of Information Technology" in 1982. The DTI began that year to fund R&D through its Support for Innovation program (SFI). The importance attached by the DTI to IT is witnessed by the large share of its SFI spending that went to IT: In 1983–84, out of £322.53 million, £206.4 million supported IT projects.^[46] However, after a change of minister in September 1984, government support for IT moved from funding specific projects to more indirect activities. The

[43] Arnold and Guy, Parallel Convergence , 120.

[44] In all, Inmos had received £211 million in government funds, about twice the amount initially foreseen, and had not turned a profit. Still, the company was generally regarded as technologically advanced if limited by a restricted product range (Kevin Smith, "Inmos Forced to Get Off the Dole," 106).

[45] Hart, "British Industrial Policy," 154.

[46] Ibid., 121.

total DTI budget for industrial R&D in 1985–86 was £176.6 million, of which £97.7 million was earmarked for IT.^[47]

Britain's major new support plan for IT in the 1980s was a reaction to Japan's 5G program.^[48] British delegates in attendance at the conference in which Japan made its announcement returned gravely pessimistic about British prospects in the face of such an effort. The government quickly ordered a study of the United Kingdom's IT industries, to be carried out by an independent committee chaired by John Alvey, technical director of British Telecom. Reporting within months, the committee proposed a major program of cooperative R&D to be sponsored by the government. In addition the R&D would focus on areas that were of industrial interest but still some distance from production for the market; this vague category of research became known, especially within the ESPRIT program, as precompetitive.

Whitehall fretted about industrial intervention but in the end approved the Alvey Program after cutting back some of the recommendations. The Alvey Committee had requested 60 percent funding for industrial R&D; the government reduced the level to 50 percent, apparently a personal decision by Thatcher.^[49] The government also slimmed the proposed Alvey Directorate from thirty persons to about six, and the total government contribution from about £250 million to £200 million.^[50] The funds came from the Ministry of Defense (£40 million), the Department of Education (£50 million via the Science and Engineering Research Council), and the DTI (£110 million).^[51] Industry would contribute £150 million, bringing the total budget to £350 million (about $550 million at the time). This budget dwarfed that of any previous civil R&D program. As Patrick Jenkin, secretary of state for industry, told the House of Commons, "This is the first time in our history that we shall be embarking on a collaborative research project on anything like this scale."^[52]

[47] Ibid., 123.

[48] See Freeman, Technology Policy , 126.

[49] Alan Cane, "Britain Enters the Great Race," Financial Times , 9 May 1983, p. 12.

[50] "UK Fifth-Generation Computer Program Passes Final Hurdle," 76; Jason Crisp, "State Joins Industry in £350m Research on Super Computers," Financial Times , 29 April 1983, p. 1.

[51] Jason Crisp, "State Joins Industry . . . ," Financial Times , 29 April 1983, p. 1.

[52] Alan Cane, "Britain Enters the Great Race," Financial Times , 9 May 1983, p. 12.

Alvey followed the Japanese model, being designed to encourage collaborative research among U.K. companies, universities, and laboratories.^[53] As Jenkin observed, "Industry, academic researchers, and government will be coming together to achieve major advances which none could achieve on their own."^[54]

The technical aims of Alvey fell into four major areas: VLSI technology and design tools, software engineering, "intelligent knowledge-based systems" (AI), and person/machine interfaces (display technology, speech- and image-processing). Note again the prominence of advanced microelectronics: Alvey had asserted that the United Kingdom needed access to world state-of-the-art VLSI technology.^[55]

The British Alvey planners were able to coordinate the program with ESPRIT, which was emerging at the same time, so as to avoid excessive overlap between the technical objectives of the two programs. Such planning was possible in large part because the head of the Alvey Directorate, Brian Oakley, was a U.K. member of the ESPRIT Management Committee at the earliest stages.^[56]

Other Countries

The big three were not the only European countries with a growing interest in IT. Italy in the mid-1980s began a program for R&D in VLSI technologies that focused on developing prototype ICs, CAD for chips, and process technologies. SGS, the major Italian semiconductor firm (before its merger with the commercial semiconductor activities of Thomson), was slated to receive 13 billion lire in subsidies and 13 billion lire in soft loans.^[57] The Dutch government agreed to chip in DM 200 million (compared with West Germany's DM 300 million) for the Mega project involving Philips and Siemens; Philips took charge of the part of the project aiming at producing one-megabit SRAMs.

Even Belgium was getting into the act. The Belgians began construction of a state-of-the-art microelectronics research laboratory at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1984. Called IMEC for Interuniversity MicroElectronic Center, the facility was designed to concentrate and optimize the electronics research going on at Belgium's

[53] Kevin Smith, "UK Pursues Fifth-Generation Computer," 101.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Ibid., 102.

[56] Interview 47.

[57] Howell et al., Microelectronics Race , 175.

three Flemish-speaking universities. IMEC's research would cover advanced processing, packaging, VLSI design methods, and optoelectronics. Sixty percent of the funding would come from the Belgian government and 40 percent from industrial research contracts. The government already had in place a program to train personnel from Belgian companies in advanced microelectronics.^[58] Two years later Belgium's first native IC maker came into being. The new enterprise, Mietec, was a joint venture between a development-capital company owned by Flanders state and Bell Telephone Manufacturing, ITT's Belgian subsidiary. The national government did not participate, as it had in IMEC. Mietec was given the best available fabrication equipment and the capacity to increase production rapidly.^[59]

Third, in each case the national program was a response to an acute (Japanese and American) threat to national capabilities in the IT sectors. Fourth, promoting collaboration among industry, universities, and research laboratories was a feature of national programs, most notably in Britain's Alvey but also in Germany and Italy. Finally, at the same time they were devising new nationalist responses to the high-tech challenge, each country also agreed to unprecedented degrees of international collaboration in IT. France became the most vigorous supporter among the big three of European

[58] Robert T. Gallagher, "Belgians Set Up Advanced IC Lab," 18–19.

[59] Robert T. Gallagher, "Now Belgium Has Its Own Player in the IC Game," 20–22.

IT collaboration. Even the reticent governments eventually agreed: Europe faced a crisis in the information technologies that were crucial to continued economic growth, and European collaboration could be one dimension of the response.