Explanations of why firms exist and evolve and how intellectual property—including trademarks—contributes to their growth, survival, and impact on globalization and deglobalization have been widely studied in business history and in other fields. Drawing on the study of firms with multinational activity, this article argues that ownership of strong brands can have multiple impacts on the nature of the firm, on the dynamics of industries, on processes of globalization and deglobalization, and on shifts of power and wealth. In the process of doing so, this paper also argues that business history has great potential to have an impact beyond the field, serving as a “hub” for dialogue between disciplines. To achieve that, business historians need to remain truthful to their core competences, which include conducting well-grounded archival-based research, taking into account the uniqueness of the firm and the complexity of the environment, and conducting research that is comparative and international. This article is based my presidential address presented at the Business History Conference on March 16, 2019, in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.

Cooperative corporate behavior has often been explained through the social anatomy of business leaders and structural ties among firms. Our alternative approach investigates how quotidian interactions built trust and routines among a group of major firms in the Australian wool trade—a sector that required regular interaction to be effective. Deploying extensive archives of their meetings, we use social network analysis to examine interactions among the key group of firms and individuals. Through content analysis we infer the behavior and atmosphere of meetings. Finally, an evaluation of meeting agendas and outcomes demonstrates cooperation and a shared commitment to improving the operation of the wool trade in the 1920s.

This article investigates innovation and knowledge circulation in the North Staffordshire Potteries during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It evaluates new empirical evidence of formal and informal patterns of knowledge creation and dissemination in order to highlight tensions between forms of open knowledge sharing and the private appropriation of returns to innovative activity. By presenting new patent data, it shows that formal protection was not a widespread strategy in the industry. It uses patent specifications to determine what types of knowledge were, and could be, patented in the district, and by whom. A range of sources are used to demonstrate evidence of innovation and knowledge appropriation outside of the patent system. The article identifies distinct types of knowledge in the industry and shows how differences in these led to a range of strategies employed by potters, with the role of secrecy highlighted as a particularly prevalent and effective strategy.

Privatization is closely associated with the ideological turn to neoliberalism and regarded as a cornerstone of Britain’s “Thatcherite project.” Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government did not undertake its major privatizations of state-owned businesses until its second term began in 1983. We argue in this article, however, that the 1980 disposal by the National Enterprise Board of its controlling interest in the engineering and electronics company Ferranti offers significant insights into the development of privatization policy and practice, as well as the changing role of the state in British business. This disposal reflected the early caution of some of the Thatcher government’s actions but contributed to fulfillment of an electoral commitment and provided valuable privatization experience in addressing difficult financial, industrial, and political issues.

In studying the patent medicine industry in colonial Korea (1910–1945), I pay attention to the inordinately large number of peddlers and small retailers—45,688 in 1935—who functioned as human intermediaries in the burgeoning medicinal market. By almost exclusively studying printed advertisements, previous scholars have depicted the patent medicine industry as the vanguard of modern marketing or as a willing partner in the commercial propagation of the hegemonic vision of the colonial biopower. Conscious of the severely limited reach of modern media in the colonial context, I argue instead that incentivized sales intermediaries were equally significant in the success of the patent medicine industry. But the significance and contributions of the peddlers to the patent medicine industry were double-edged—the peddlers helped the industry by facilitating physical dissemination of patent medicine to end consumers, but their constant use of deception and fraud tainted the reputation of the industry. The anticipated move toward stricter regulation, however, did not happen due to two interrelated factors—a nascent group of pharmacists trained in modern pharmacology had strong ties to the patent medicine industry and the lukewarm response from the colonial government put the brakes on any meaningful reform. Overall, by bringing to the fore the pivotal roles peddlers played, my article provides a more nuanced discussion of the marketing practices of the patent medicine industry, the nature of the emerging professional class of pharmacists, and the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the regulatory power of the colonial government.

Between 1976 and 1994 the UK Government’s Welsh Development Agency made 2,304 loan and equity investments totaling £117.8 million. The agency aimed to address difficulties faced by firms in obtaining finance, and such intervention was justified by the market failure and spillover hypotheses. This article assesses the agency’s investment activities against both justifications. It finds that while some investments succeeded, the portfolio’s financial performance was poor, and the agency did not address widespread market failure. Evidence of spillover returns existed, but cannot be quantified accurately across the portfolio. The article argues that the agency’s two venture capital objectives, to assemble a profitable portfolio and to grow employment levels through boosting commercial activity, were incompatible within a poorly performing regional economy. Although spillovers can justify public venture capital in such economies, expectations as to financial performance should be realistic in the absence of an ecosystem that facilitates demand for capital.

This study analyzes the variables that influence international competitiveness, both in industrialized and developing countries. Based on rich archival resources, the study explains the intense international competition between European and North American publishers in pursuing Latin American book markets throughout the course of the First Global Economy. The case of Spain provides an opportunity to study the patterns of the internationalization process of a nonleading country and compare them with the strategies developed by German, U.S., French, and British companies. This research sheds light on the importance of social networks and national cultural influences in the internationalization of this singular industry.

This article examines the Reynolds Metals Company’s political networking activities in Washington, D.C., and the state capitals of the U.S. South in the 1940s and 1950s. It argues that Reynolds’ astute recruitment of senior staff from federal and state governments, its adept building of elite networks in the legislative and executive branches, its judicious espousing of key political rhetoric (antitrust, regional development, national security), as well as its nurturing of Democratic circles in the South were crucial to their attainment of competitive advantage. This saw the company rise from being a new entrant in the U.S. primary aluminum production during World War II to the second-largest national producer by 1946 and a major global player by the mid-1950s. This same political networking was critical in maintaining that advantage after World War II in the face of competition from the Aluminum Company of America and the Canadian multinational Aluminium Company of Canada. Both “wartime” (covering the period from World War II and into the Cold War) and the legacy of government intervention (from the early twentieth century until the 1960s, including the New Deal) provided a fertile context for RMC’s business strategy. The company’s success owed much to founder Richard S. Reynolds Sr.’s acumen in hiring the right people, creating or joining the right networks, having the right social capital, as well as his experiences and connections accrued from working with his uncle, the noted tobacco magnate R. J. Reynolds. The article offers insights into the nature of U.S. business–government relations.