Big steel companies decline through market abandonment

An early-1990s study found that essentially zero of the major steel-industry process innovations over the prior 75 years originated within steel companies. AOD came from gas-supply companies, continuous casting from machinery vendors, BOP from oxygen suppliers. Tom attributes this to complacent post-WWII US steel management — including the Bethlehem Steel executives whose Learjets at Allentown airport existed to ferry them to Florida golf weekends.

So something initially developed at MIT — but it also brings up an interesting point. Someone did a study in the early 1990s of how many innovations in the steel industry were brought about by the steel industry, and essentially it was zero. Things like argon oxygen decarburization were done by a company that wanted to sell oxygen to the steel industry, and argon — the gas companies saw this as a way to sell more gas to the steel companies. Continuous casting was really brought in by companies that wanted to sell machinery to do the casting. The basic oxygen furnace was brought in by companies that wanted to sell the gas, pure oxygen, as opposed to air. No one can sell air. It's pretty free.