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The offshoring of services is rapidly growing in magnitude and scope. To understand this evolution, observation-based research is vital. In the last decade, services offshoring has rapidly expanded from software to any information technology-enabled business process. This paper draws upon two rounds of interviews with executives and managers in India and the case studies of Sloan Foundation-funded conference to explain the dynamics of offshoring to India, the largest recipient of offshored services, from the perspective of the firm, the industry, and the recipient nation. We show that the growth in offshoring was intimately linked to the prior development of India's software sector and an enabling regulatory and other institutional environment. Multinationals played a key role, although domestic firms were early adopters. The role of multinationals has deepened substantially moving from the large firm to include smaller firms, outsourcing specialists, and startups offering innovative new services. As this has happened, the value-addition and sophistication of the work done has increased. The most sophisticated work being done in India increasingly resembles the most sophisticated work being done anywhere else. Services exports required well-educated labor from the beginning, which is fundamentally different from the origins of manufactured goods exports from developing nations. However, a value-chain exists and it is possible that some lower-end services will relocate from India as the country moves up the value-chain. Finally, the speed at which services exports can grow in scale and scope is noteworthy and is occurring more quickly than was the case with manufacturing exports. This raises important issues for structural adjustment in developed countries. The 2 conclusion also considers the implications of the offshoring of services for developing nations and possible policy initiatives for developing nations interested in entering the ITES sector.

Research Summary In recent decades, two emergent phenomena have jointly transformed the nature and pursuit of entrepreneurship across industries and sectors: open innovation and platformization. Open innovation involves a shift toward more open and distributed models of innovation, while platformization refers to the increasing importance of digital platforms as a venue for value creation and capture. Together, open innovation and platforms have created numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs and their firms—from serving as inputs for innovation for established firms to participating as complementors on existing platforms. While these entrepreneurial opportunities (and conditions) have manifested themselves in rich and varied ways, our understanding of these new forms of entrepreneurship has lagged behind. In this essay, and in this special issue, our objective is to bring a sharper focus on the important research issues and questions that frame open innovation, platforms, and entrepreneurship. Managerial Summary Digital platforms and open innovation environments have unleashed numerous promising opportunities for entrepreneurs, in industries ranging from consumer software, entertainment, and home appliances to auto, health, and energy. To pursue those opportunities, however, entrepreneurs will need to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that facilitate and constrain them. In this essay, we identify and discuss several of these factors and the associated challenges and highlight the need for additional research. We also consider some of the broader contextual factors, including regulatory policies, digitization, and globalization that shape the emerging opportunities.

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Silicon Valley and Route 128 have been the centers of innovation and commercialization for the electronics, computer and data communications industries in the postwar period. However, since the 1960s Silicon Valley has grown more rapidly and from approximately 1985 through 1995 Route 128 experienced retarded growth. Their success has diverged dramatically in the last decade. The most common explanations for this divergence are differing cultures, interfirm relations or/and internal organizational style organization. This paper builds upon path-dependent and dominant design explanations of technical and industrial change, arguing that the technological trajectories of the industries underlying the two regions were different and this led to their differential destinies. To explain the dynamics of the two regions, an analytical separation is made between the economy of the existing firms and a separate economy of institutions that evolved to nurture new firm formation.

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