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gained in designing and building two of the es- sential parts of a gas turbine engine: the compres- sor and turbine, the contract may have gone to another firm and GE may never have entered the jet engine business.19 The company did get the business, though, and the fledgling aircraft gas turbine division got its start in Lynn building en- gines for the new U.S.–designed military jets dur- ing the late 1940s. The division’s unexpectedly rapid growth during the early Korean War years forced the company to move many of its opera- tions to Evandale, Ohio, taking advantage of an empty plant that had turned out Wright Aeronau- tical engines during World War II. The division’s headquarters remain in Ohio today. The River Works in Lynn, however, has continued as the site of GE’s small gas turbine business, building engines that power a range of smaller aircraft and helicopters. GE’s story says something about the often-unpre- dictable nature of technological trajectories. Technological competencies developed as the re- sult of one product line (electrical power genera- tion equipment) may lead to the opportunity to enter an entirely new business (aircraft engines). Recognizing the importance of this type of phe- nomenon to competitive strategy, a number of management scholars have developed a “re- source-based” view of the firm. This view sees the firm not as a mere aggregation of product lines but as a bundle of competencies, the most impor- tant of which are the technological knowledge and skill bases that form the basis of competitive advantage.20 Pratt & Whitney’s ability to reestab- lish its prewar level of dominance in engine man- ufacturing in the jet age, however, also shows that technological “first-movers” do not always have the advantage. Being first to the post in ushering in a new technology is not everything in competi- tion; organizational strengths are important, too. For Pratt & Whitney, the jump back into the jet race was aided by successfully leapfrogging the competition technologically. First, though, it needed to get a foothold in the newly redefined industry. During the immediate postwar years, the company produced Rolls-Royce designs under license. Soon, though, Pratt scored a coup when its J57 engine, which featured a novel dual- rotor, axial-flow compressor, was chosen to power the B-52 bomber. A commercial spin-off version, the JT3, went on to power the first U.S.–built jet- liners, the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8, in the 1950s and 1960s. The JT3 was just the first in a long series of commercial engine successes. How, despite GE’s head start, did Pratt surge ahead during the postwar years? Though the science of jet propulsion was based on fundamentally differ- ent principles than piston engine designs, the technical skills involved in actually producing jet engines were not all that different and were in ample supply within the Pratt & Whitney organi- zation. Moreover, the final customers—airlines and the U.S. military—remained the same. The company knew what it took to make sales and keep customers happy: producing a reliable prod- uct and responding quickly if and when problems arose. As the 1960s drew to a close, Pratt & Whitney enjoyed a remarkable 95 percent share of “free world” engine orders and half of all military engine orders.21 Successive design innovations over the years have ensured the firm’s continued competitive position. NEW ENGLAND’S SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE AND REGIONAL AGGLOMERATION As noted earlier, the jet age ushered in an era where the engine building business became based more in science. In this respect, the technical strengths of local universities supported the devel- opment of the technology. University research laboratories such as MIT’s gas turbine lab, estab- lished in the early 1950s, contributed to an ex- panded understanding of the principles underlying jet propulsion and addressed practical questions of thermodynamics, gas flow, high-temperature ma- terials, and so forth that improved the design and construction of engines. New England’s institu- tions of higher education also supplied a steady stream of graduates, filling the needs of Pratt & Whitney and GE for mechanical engineers, materi- Jet Engine Manufacturing in New England 9PDF Image | JET ENGINE MANUFACTURING IN NEW ENGLAND
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