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.Ian Jones is Senior Research Assistant at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, and has previously won the John F. Mee Best Paper Award at the Academy of Management in 2018 for his contribution to the Management History Division.Steven Toms is Professor of Accounting at the University of Leeds. He is former Editor of Business History. His research interests are focused on accounting and financial history and the history of the textile industry.

• Introduction John Wilson, Ian Jones, Steven Toms 1. From knowledge dependence to knowledge creation: Industrial growth and technological advance of the Japanese electronics industry Charles Harvey, Mairi Maclean, and Tony Hayward 2. Management qualification and dissemination of knowledge in regional innovation systems: The case of Norway 1930s–1990s Ove Bjarnar, Rolv Petter Amdam and Hallgier Gammelsaeter 3. 'Neither a sleepy village nor a coarse factory town': Skill in the Greater Springfield Massachusetts industrial economy, 1800–1990 Robert Forrant