STANFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
  
Cover of Territories of Profit by Gary Fields
Territories of Profit
Communications, Capitalist Development, and the Innovative Enterprises of G. F. Swift and Dell Computer
Gary Fields


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2003
304 pages.
from $38.00

Hardcover ISBN: 9780804747219
Paperback ISBN: 9780804747226

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Territories of Profit compares Dell Computer, the dominant computer manufacturer of the late twentieth century, and G. F. Swift, the leading meatpacking firm of the late nineteenth century, to reveal how communications revolutions in different periods enabled businesses to innovate their operations, reorganize the structure of the firm, and reshape the geography of profit-making. By depicting the parallel experiences of Dell and Swift, which both deployed revolutionary communications technologies in their business systems and transformed patterns of development through their innovative advances, the book challenges simplified representations of the contemporary economy as historically unprecedented. Territories of Profit also incorporates information from interview sources within Dell to portray the "Dell Model" in ways never before revealed in existing studies of the PC maker.

About the author

Gary Fields is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego.

"This remarkable book, besides being timely, sophisticated, penetrating, informative, and well researched, also provides significant additional evidence that the hype surrounding the so-called information revolution of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is just that."

Economic Geography

"Territories of Profit is a welcome addition to the literature on learning, innovation and regional development."

Regional Studies

"In this interesting and thoughtful book, Gary Fields pursues the analogy with exceptional sophistication and rigor."

The Journal of Economic History