These, the late industrializers, raised their income and transformed their productive structures using borrowed technology.
Amsden's uses her thesis of late industrialization to discuss the following countries: South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, India, possibly Mexico, and Turkey and also Japan although this last country is regarded as, in many respects, special.
These learners compete, initially at least, via low wages, state subsidies or other forms of government supports, and gradual increases in quality of, and efficiency in producing, existing products.
The shop floor in businesses tends to be the “strategic focus” when competition is based on borrowed technology.
The late industrializers have moved into the more mature markets of the innovators and the productivity of long-established innovators has been successfully challenged by the learners' lower wages, intense efforts to raise productivity and firms supported by industrial policy.