Dear Colleagues:

“Almost daily, news reports feature multinational companies—many based in the United States—that are establishing technology development facilities in China, India, and other emerging economies. General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola—the list grows steadily longer. And these new facilities no longer focus on low-level technologies to meet Third World conditions. They are doing the cutting-edge research once done only in the United States, Japan, and Europe. Moreover, the multinationals are being joined by new firms, such as Huawei, Lenovo, and Wipro, from the emerging economies. This current globalization of technology development is, we believe, qualitatively different from the globalization of the past. But the implications of the differences have not sunk in with key U.S. decision makers in government and industry.”

So write Leonard Lynn and Hal Salzman in a fascinating article in the Winter, 2006 issue of Issues in Science and Technology. This new globalization causes a great deal of uncertainty among American economic policy-makers and commentators, but also within American universities, where science and engineering education are core activities. The meaning of these developments is especially relevant to the future of our own university. Is our “leadership” threatened? What can or should be done?

Fortunately, we can ask one of the authors directly! Leonard Lynn is Professor of Management Policy and Chair of the Department of Marketing and Policy Studies at Case’s Weatherhead School of Management. His research fields include both technology policy and management and management in East Asia, and he has written extensively on different national views of what makes a good engineer.

Please join us for the Friday Public Affairs Lunch on September 8, where Professor Lynn will lead discussion on the challenge and how American institutions might best address it. We will gather in the dining room on the first floor of Guilford House. That’s the yellow building with the nice porch on Bellflower. As usual, we expect to provide cookies and beverages; I’m sorry about last week’s problems.

I’ve also attached the current schedule for the rest of the term; please note that Professors Topol and Robbins have switched dates from the original plan.

All the best,
Joe White

More About Our Guest

Leonard Lynn is Professor of Management Policy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.   He is also interim director of the Case School of Management Global Business Studies Institute.

Leonard earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan (1980). He is the author of Organizing Business: Trade Associations in America and Japan (with Timothy McKeown), How Japan Innovates: A Comparison with the U.S. in the Case of Oxygen Steelmaking, New Product Development in the Global Economy (forthcoming, with Toyohiro Kono, )and more than fifty articles in such journals as Science, Research Policy, Journal of Engineering Technology-Management, IEEE Management Transactions, Issues in Science and Technology, Organization Studies, Columbia Journal of World Business, Journal of Japanese Studies and Contemporary Sociology, most of them on aspects of technology policy and management. Several of his studies have involved U.S.-Japanese comparisons. One of his books and some of his other writings on these topics have been translated and published in Japanese. He is now principle investigator on NSF and Kauffman-funded projects exploring technology transfer via multinationals to (and from) emerging economies. Colleagues in the U.S. Germany, Japan, Korea, China, and Mexico are involved in these projects.

Lynn has been a Fulbright visiting research scholar at Tokyo University and a Japan Ministry of Education Visiting Professor at Hitotsubashi University.  He is a past president of the Association of Japanese Business Studies, member of the American Advisory Committee of the Japan Foundation, and member of the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Journal of Engineering Technology Management, The Journal of Asian Business and Management, and Managing Global Transitions.  Lynn has presented his research at universities, government organizations, and companies in Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, China, China-Taiwan, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, Thailand, the UK, as well as the United States. Several of the presentations in Japan were made in Japanese. He is a member of the Academy of Management, Academy of International Business, Association of Japanese Business Studies, IEEE, and the International Association for the Management of Technology (where he received the IAMOT Research Award at the 2004 IAMOT Annual Meetings). He was chair of the Case Department of Marketing and Policy Studies from 1995-2006.

Fall Semester Schedule

Sept 1: Ken Ledford, Associate Professor of History and Law, hosts Jon Entin, Professor of Law and Political Science, to discuss the first year of the Supreme Court with John Roberts as Chief Justice.

Sept 8: Leonard Lynn, Professor and Chair of the Department of Policy and Management at the Weatherhead School of Management, on what U.S. leadership in engineering could mean with the rise of India and China.

Sept 15: Mark Naymik, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, on this year’s statewide elections in Ohio.

Sept 22: Greg Eastwood, Interim President of Case Western Reserve University, on “The Interim Period: Tasks for Today and Ideas for the Future.”

Sept 29: Alan Weinstein, Professor and Director, Law and Public Policy Program, Cleveland-Marshall College of the Law, eminent domain: “State Legislative Responses to Kelo vs. New London: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”

Oct 6: Amy Hanauer, Executive Director, PolicyMatters Ohio, on raising the minimum wage

Oct 13: Marty Kress, Executive Director of the National Space Science and Technology Center, University of Alabama at Huntsville, on Organizing NASA for Space Exploration. NOTE: Tentative room change to Mather House 100.

Oct 20: Michael Wager, Vice Chair and Chair Elect of the Port Authority, on its role in local economic development issues.

Oct 27: Pete Moore, Assistant Professor of Political Science, on whatever is happening in the Middle East at the time.

Nov 3: Justin Buchler, Assistant Professor of Political Science, and Andrew Lucker, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science: Midterm Election forecast.

Nov 10: Eric J. Topol MD, Professor of Genetics, on concerns about conflicts of interest in medical research.

Nov 17: Norman Robbins, Emeritus Professor of Neurosciences, on class bias in who gets to vote.

Nov 24: THANKSGIVING BREAK

Dec 1: Jerome Liebman MD, Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, on National Health Insurance

Dec 8: Terry Wolpaw MD, Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs, School of Medicine, on the new demands on or expectations of medical education.