It is possible that there once was a time when scholars used to sit
isolated with their cogitations in their attics, emerging now and then
to publish their latest e- dite offerings which no one had ever thought
of before. If such a time did once - ist, it certainly does so no
longer. Writing a scientific or scholarly book in our era is to a large
extent a team effort in which your team members are continually changing
and you are unceasingly grateful for the privilege of enjoying and be-
fiting from the exertions, ideas, comments and support of a large number
of very able people. Scientific and scholarly work nowadays is a process
impossible wi- out the existence and use of social capital. This book is
no exception to the above stated. There are very many colleagues (some
of them referees and thus anonymous) and friends who have made the book
possible. The foremost of these is Roger Bolton, with whom I wrote my
first paper on social capital. Most of that paper has found its way into
various passages of this book, while Chapter 6, Social Capital and
Entrepreneurship, comes almost c- pletely from Roger's pen. Thank you,
Roger, for letting me use your text! The empirical studies of the
biotech industries of Japan, California and Sweden would have been
impossible without a great deal of help.