This book presents a bold and original reinterpretation of Western industrialization from the eighteenth century to the present day in terms of the interplay between flexibility and mass production. Drawing on extensive new research by a multinational and multidisciplinary team of scholars, the volume challenges standard views about the inevitable triumph of the large-scale, vertically-integrated corporate enterprise. In contrast, World of Possibilities highlights the plurality of forms of successful industrial organization, past and present, throughout the Western world.