Michael H. Best is professor emeritus, University of Massachusetts Lowell where he was Co-Director of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness. He has examined transformation of production systems in history, economic theory, and by visiting many, many hundreds of enterprises in nearly twenty countries usually in support of industrial restructuring programs. His ‘capability and innovation’ perspective is developed and illustrated with enterprise, regional and national case studies in three books, How Growth Really Happens: The Making of Economic Miracles through Production, Governance, and Skills, Princeton University Press, 2018 (winner of the 2018 Schumpeter Prize); The New Competitive Advantage: The Renewal of American Industry, Oxford University Press, 2001 and The New Competition: Institutions of Industrial Restructuring, Harvard University Press and Polity Press, 1990. He lives in Oxford.

The Capabilities and Innovation perspective was simultaneously shaped by and applied in enterprise modernization, technology management, and sector development projects he has led in various industrial settings including London, Slovenia, India, Cyprus, Jamaica, Honduras, Ireland and Malaysia as well as in Massachusetts.

Professor Best was a founding editorial board member of Massachusetts Benchmarks: The Quarterly Review of Economic News and Insight, jointly published by the University of Massachusetts and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; and was Center Evaluator and member of the Industrial Advisory Board for the Biodegradable Polymer Research Center, an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center sponsored by the National Science Foundation to carry out research on biodegradable polymers. Member companies include 3M, Monsanto, Eastman Chemical, Dow, BASF, BF Goodrich, and Cargill plus the Environmental Protection Agency of the US Government. He was on the board of the Massachusetts Product Development Corporation, a quasi-public, royalty- based financial institution from 1986 to 1992 and conducted sector strategy analyses at the Greater London Enterprise Board, a public sector venture capital agency from 1983 to 1985.

The research methodology that informs Professor Best’s approach demands going inside the firms in any region or nation to characterize both the relative position and performance of enterprises within the global business and production systems, but also to capture the distinctive regional and national ‘signatures’ of enterprises.  This involves an analysis of the ‘industrial eco-system’ in which firms operate including the deep craft skills, the specific engineering expertise, the science and technology infrastructure, business development finance, and other extra-firm characteristics that impact on business development and performance.  Yet a third layer of investigation can be undertaken, resources permitting. This involves constructing a longitudinal database populated by enterprise and product datasets both classified by engineering informed  taxonomies (see vTHREAD). 

Selected work

Contact: Michael_Best@UML.EDU