In 1971, for example, “large parts of the shipbuilding and metal products industries were amalgamated into RSV [the Rijn-Schelde-Verolme shipyard], which received handsome subsidies to develop new lines of production (and slowly close down the old ones” (van Zanden, 1998, p. 47). During the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s the costs -and lower than expected benefits - of these old-style “defensive” industrial policies became apparent: for example, the RSV went bankrupt in 1983. As a result, the Netherlands, like other industrialised countries, shifted from supporting and restructuring ailing industries towards a more “future-oriented” policy in which technology and related instruments were assigned a key role.