The book features contributions on the history of government-business relations, regional and local business relationships, the development and formation of Silicon Valley, and the rise and fall of the US machine tool industry after the Second World.

John F.Wilson is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Business and Law) at Northumbria University at Newcastle. He has published widely in the fields of business, management and industrial history, including ten monographs, six edited collections and over seventy articles and chapters. Most notably, his British Business History, 1720-1994 is still being used in UK universities. He was also the founding editor of the Journal of Industrial History, as well as co-editor of Business History for ten years.

Nicholas D. Wong is Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. His research areas cover historical organization studies and uses of the past, family business studies and entrepreneurship. He has published in Business History, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and Entreprise et Histoire. Nicholas won the John F. Mee Best Paper Award at the Academy of Management in 2018 for his contribution to the Management History Division.

Steve Toms has 15 years of senior management, at Nottingham University as head of the undergraduate programme, chair of teaching committee and research director, before becoming Head of York Management School in 2004. Professor Toms's research interests cover the role of accounting, accountability and corporate governance in the development of organisations, particularly from a historical perspective. He is interested in perspectives that integrate financial models with economic and organisational theory and corporate strategy. Specific applications range from business history, in particular cotton and other textiles trades to capital markets and social and environmental accounting. He was editor of the journal Business History, 2007-2013.

Introduction (John F. Wilson, Nicholas D. Wong and Steven Toms) 1. Trying to keep the customers stratified: Government, Business and the Paths of Innovation in American Railroading and Computing (Steve Usselman) 2. Webs of Productive Associations in American Industrialization: patterns of institution formation and their limits, Philadelphia, 1880-1930' (Philip Scranton) 3. Electronic Component Manufacturing and the Rise of Silicon Valley (Christophe Lécuyer) 4. Too Many Bends in the River: the Decline of Connecticut Valley machine tool industry, 1950-2002 (Robert Forrant)