Japanese Firms’ Innovation Strategies in the Twenty-First Century: An Institutional View

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 compan..