Other major developments by Apple also had their “roots” in federal research, among them, Mazzucato writes, the global positioning system of the iPhone and Siri, its voice-activated personal assistant.

In a speech at the Nobel ceremony, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science explained that this breakthrough made the iPod possible. The process enlarges the storage capacity of computers and more recent electronic devices. Nearly every state-of-the-art technology found in the iPod, iPhone and iPad is an often overlooked and ignored achievement of the research efforts and funding support of the government and military.Ī major government-funded discovery known as giant magnetoresistance, which won its two European inventors a Nobel Prize in physics, is a telling example of such support. “While the products owe their beautiful design and slick integration to the genius of Jobs and his large team,” writes Mazzucato, These later breakthroughs were almost completely dependent on government-sponsored research. The touch-screen technology, specifically, now so common to Apple products, was based on research done at government-funded labs in Europe and the US in the 1960s and 1970s. Jeff Madrick en The NY Review of Books, 2014įor example, she shows in detail that, while Steve Jobs brilliantly imagined and designed attractive new commercial products, almost all the scientific research on which the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were based was done by government-backed scientists and engineers in Europe and America.

Plus, of course, there’s the development of the Internet, another government funded venture, which enables the iPhone to be a valuable tool and makes Google searches possible. And for Google, the creation of its algorithm was funded by the National Science Foundation. government, such as the global positioning system (or GPS), the touchscreen display, and the voice-activated personal assistant, Siri. For the iPhone, many of the revolutionary technologies that make it and similar devices “smart” were funded by the U.S. In both cases these extremely popular consumer products benefitted mightily from state intervention. Seguimos con un artículo de la propia Mazzucato en INETĬonsider Apple’s iPhone and Google’s search engine. Steve Jobs’ real genius was not in developing new technology but integrating technologies invented somewhere else, often backed by tax dollars. Apple’s five-year R&D spending as a percentage of sales has hovered around 2% to 3%, while companies such as Nokia and Samsung Electronics spend 9% and 8%, respectively. The “stay foolish, stay hungry” geniuses ran away with the gains, says Mazzucato, and now the company is under fire for not paying enough taxes or creating enough high-wage jobs in the U.S. Did the public see an iPhone dividend? Not really. Each of its core technologies–capacitive sensors, solid-state memory, the click wheel, GPS, internet, cellular communications, Siri, microchips, touchscreen-came from research efforts and funding support of the U.S. Her case study for myth-debunking is the iPhone, that icon of American corporate innovation. Incluiré también presentaciones de la propia economista, por precisar qué palabras y de qué manera enmarca el ejemplo del iPhone en su esquema explicativo.Įn el próximo artículo, criticaré los argumentos expuestos en el libro.Įmpezamos con Bruce Upbin, quien en 2013 escribe en Forbes

La fijación con el ingenio de Apple está justificada: Es tomar uno de los ejemplos habituales de presunta creatividad empresarial, esfuerzo de emprendedores de garaje y triunfo del capitalismo y subvertirlo, haciendo ver que realmente, la mano visible del Estado ha estado detrás del mismo, sin haber, injustamente, recogido beneficios de ello.Įn este artículo preliminar recopilaré artículos de internet donde se habla del ejemplo de Mazzucato, por capturar la reacción popular de la gente ante el mismo. El ejemplo más importante de libro de Mazzucato seguramente sea el del iPhone: se le llega a dedicar un capítulo entero sólo a ese ejemplo.

Iphi dividend