Turnkey Production Networks are networks of highly specialized merchant suppliers that provide individual components to larger manufacturers, spreading the risk around and helping to change the longtime industry model of vertical consolidation.

After nearly a decade of subpar performance, US electronics firms experienced a resurgence in the early 1990's. How can we explain this resurgence? First, by looking to the decline of Japanese firms and increased competition within Asia, and second by looking to the US' firms increased reliance on international produciton networks to cut costs.

As Korean electronics firms began to meet increased competition from Japanese and other Asian firms, they successfully turned to offshoring their production networks to lower costs. This paper tracks the experience of Samsung, a major industrial conglomerate.