Las Vegas seems an unlikely place to encounter 'the new industrial revolution,' but that's exactly what's unfolding out there this week and this new revolution is totally global, driven, in part, by the enabling semiconductor, electronics and integrated circuit technologies inside all of the new and neat products and gadgets. But even more than the technology, the consumer electronics industry is being propelled by a powerful global economic and business phenomenon called 'dynamic value chains,' the same fuel that's powering the greatest industrial revolution of all time.

While you're out there this week you should look up my old friend and fellow scribe Rob Brownstein who, along with co-author Benny Madsen, has written an insightful and informative book on this very subject titled: The New Industrial Revolution –The Power of Dynamic Value Chains.

The book does something for consumer electronics, and CES goers, that no amount of aisle wandering, networking or industrial forensics will do – it offers real insight into the complex business dynamics of this raucous, freewheeling industry –and shines a light on where an entire industry – and our global economy – is headed.

I liked Thom Friedman's The World is Flat, but Rob and Benny's book takes the reader beyond simple anecdotes and the 'Bangalore outsourcing' metaphor into the real inner working of the electronics industry and traces our current path of value-based economics back to its roots; to the Information Revolution, and from there to its actual origins over 300 years ago in the first Industrial Revolution.

I reminisced with Rob recently about our first encounter nearly 30 years ago when his phone and name were the Regis McKenna contact on an Intel news release I was writing up for Electronic News about a development system for the 4040 microprocessor. Rob's seen it all, and in The New Industrial Revolution he and Benny, a EE, entrepreneur, and expert on wireless technologies, lay out a coherent context and clear perspective on what's happening in today's global electronics and consumer electronics sector that you are just not going to get anywhere else.

The book's underlying premise is as simple as it is powerful: the days of vertically integrated industrial companies –and industries – is over. They have been replaced – as anyone in the electronics consumer electronics industry knows – by a new kind of company that lives and dies by one simple principle: finding your place in the global value-chain that connects customers and products and dogmatically focusing on that attribute alone. In this world, partnerships are as important as products – as no one company can do it all anymore. It's a revolutionary shift that's pushed brand managers and marketers to the top of the industrial hierarchy, above technologists and engineers.

"The consumer electronics industry is the pioneer of the new revolution, but other industries are destined to follow suit," the book predicts noting that "consumer electronics companies that had once designed and produced their own products now manage some other companies' products, while they themselves market the products, relate to the customers, and manage their brands. The picture that emerges is one of value chains and a radical functional division of tasks, that, while more complex, are actually much faster and more efficient that the ways companies operated before."

This is where The New Industrial Revolution really gets interesting. To illustrate and shed light on the book's premise and conclusions Brownstein researched, and the book documents in fascinating detail, the economic and technological foundations of the industrial revolution that provides a valuable, and unique, historical context and perspective to the concept of 'value added.'

The New Industrial Revolution takes the reader on a colorful and entertaining journey through the genesis and evolution of the early textile, weaving and farming industries and tracks the progress of industry and manufacturing through centuries of innovation and change in industrial raw materials, power, transportation, distribution, communications –and eventually electricity – the clay that gave shape and form to the modern industrial world.

The brilliance of Rob and Benny's insight however is in explaining and documenting how one invention, the transistor, because both the corner stone and the keystone of the revolutions that followed – the Information Age – the precursor to today's global, digital revolution and the value chain economics that underpin all business and technology developments today and into the 21st century.

Young engineers and anyone new to the industry – especially analysts and PR people --will find a veritable electronics industry Rosetta Stone in the chapters and sub chapters on IC design, the evolution of design tools, design tradeoffs, design automation, the evolution of CAD, electronic design automation, the mixed signal challenge.

The book demystifies the alchemy of silicon while providing an excellent tutorial on how value-driven companies get from chips and software to MP3 players, digital cameras, DVD players, DVD recorders, mobile phones, PC, wireless devices and the entire galaxy of new, disruptive products flung across in the CES constellation out there in the Las Vegas desert.

Through keen historical observation, solid research, and decades of personal experience living and working in and around the electronics industry, [Madsen is the CEO of LitePoint Corporation, based in Sunnyvale California, a maker of advanced wireless test solutions for wireless products in the consumer electronics sector.] the authors have produced an indispensable handbook and guide for anyone seeking a better understanding of where this revolutionary global digital industry (typified by consumer electronics and its peculiar economics, technology and value-driven models) is going.

The New Industrial Revolution (ISBN 10: 0-9797002-0-5) is available from Amazon and other book stores and online sources. It can also be purchased via LitePoint’s Website at www.litepoint.com. It sells for $24.95 in hardcover.

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CES goers will also not want to miss this week's special issue of EE Times which boldly declares "It's a Big Wireless World."

Curiously, the issue highlights and explores some of the same themes covered in The New Industrial Revolution. In his page one introduction to the issue EE Times business editor Bolaji Ojo echoes Brownstein and Madsen's premise about value chains:

"Industry history holds some lessons about what it will take for a company to corner its segment of the wireless market. In the PC arena, decades of battles for dominance saw a mere handful of OEMs emerge victorious as the sector matured. Technology wasn’t the determining factor; in fact, few would argue today that technology is a key differentiator in that fast-fading market. Rather, the winners were the companies with the best technology partnerships, the most effective sales and marketing organizations and, especially, the most efficient design and supply chains. But technology innovation is only one weapon in wireless competitors’ arsenal. In addition to strong products, companies must have an effective partnering program that assembles optimal outside teams of component suppliers, contract manufacturers, designers, and astute financial advisers and financiers. In other words, an excellent design and supply chain, the ability to network and to raise investment capital, and managerial excellence are all critical to survival and long-term success in a market that will be marked by rapid technology and process obsolescence."

I get it. I get it!