Abstract
The landscape within which Japanese companies innovate stands altered by events of the past two decades. Buffeted and metamorphosed by the forces of a severe asset value decline beginning in 1990, and a decade of economic malaise, followed by a subsequent decade of growth – and now the recent financial crisis – Japanese firms are transforming their innovation strategies because the national institutional framework of those strategies is altered by new economic realities. Even though the basis of the strategies that evolve from the framework, and perhaps the strategies themselves, are changing, Japan is more than maintaining its level of innovation, according to recent data. Even small companies seem to be increasingly part of recent innovation outcomes. So we ask, how is the level maintained given that the strategies that created Japan’s acknowledged industrial innovativeness seem to be transformed by events?
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Notes
- 1.
As an indication of the efficiency of Japanese manufacturing, Japan’s advantage remains substantial after scaling for the percentage of (less polluting) services in the economy (Japan 68% of GDP, China 40%, and Singapore 68% in 2006, according to World Bank figures).
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Eberhart, R., Hoetker, G. (2012). Japanese Firms’ Innovation Strategies in the Twenty-First Century: An Institutional View. In: Assimakopoulos, D., Carayannis, E., Dossani, R. (eds) Knowledge Perspectives of New Product Development. Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0248-0_10
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