Article ID: CBB001211720

Unlikely Partners and the Management of Innovation in Communist Europe: A Case Study from the Czechoslovak Textile Machine Industry (2007)

unapi

In this paper, I examine the role of management practice and Western partnerships in a revolutionary technology from a Soviet Bloc country: open-end spinning. Debuting in 1967, machines based on this technology tripled productivity in cotton spinning, making life easier for textile workers worldwide. Direct sales or licenses to the West brought Czechoslovakia some 80 percent of its hard currency for over a decade. How could this happen in a Communist country? Exemplary project management: the Czech project leaders understood management practices that became commonplace in the West twenty years later. Equally important were historical infrastructure (Czechoslovakia had been a leading industrial country) and the immediate political and economic context (the reform era that culminated in the Prague Spring of 1968). It benefited from the centrally planned economy: top-down financial support and extreme vertical integration, facilitated close collaboration among researchers, engineers, designers, and machine builders and users. User input from Great Britain and the United States and licensee input from Japan helped turn the machine from a revolutionary innovation into a runaway commercial success. With shoddy merchandise on half-empty shelves in the stores and legenda

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001211720/

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Authors & Contributors
Verena Wasmuth
Lopes, Paul
Zygmont, Jeffrey
Valníček, Boris
Thomson, Ross
Tempír, Zdeněk
Concepts
Technology
Technological innovation
Diffusion of innovation; diffusion of knowledge; diffusion of technology
Communism
Inventors and invention
Technology transfer
Time Periods
20th century, late
19th century
Medieval
20th century
18th century
Places
Czechoslovakia
United States
Spain
Russia
Japan
Italy
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