Management of Technology and Innovation in Japan

88 S. J. Harryson
An important suggestion of our research on all three Japanese companies is that
external sourcing of technologies and skills does not have to result in a hollowing
out of internal R&D capabilities. In contrast, it seems to energize and create powerful
synergies in know-who based companies’ capability to network tacit knowledge
into innovation. Neither these networking synergies have been revealed so
far in the current literature on the topic – nor how to combine exploration and exploitation
of disruptive technologies by leveraging such networking synergies
across individual, corporate and extra-corporate levels.
Reviewing Current Literature on the Topic
As witnessed by numerous authors, the Japanese approach to managing innovation
processes – especially in the automotive and consumer electronics industries –
provided a role-model for many other industries and companies across the globe
during the 1980s and early 1990s (Ayas 1996; Clark and Fujimoto 1990, 1991,
1992; Jones 1990; Nonaka and Kenney 1991; Pinto and Kharbanda 1996;
Womack et al. 1990). National and corporate networks are often provided as rationales
for the high innovation performance of Japanese companies during this
period (Laage-Hellman 1997; Imai 1989a, 1989b). Assimakopoulos (2003, p.103)
even holds that:
The very existence of Japanese innovation is enough to confirm the responsibility of
the country’s networks; no further evidence is required.
Reviewing further key elements of this Japanese approach, another important
factor is that project managers usually rank as high as division managers and exercise
strong informal leadership. They coordinate entire projects, including production
and marketing, and have direct influence on working engineers. Through their
strong power and status, they can mobilize all the resources necessary to design,
develop, and commercialize a new product or service.
Very challenging targets are either induced by top management or emerge
within the team. They usually begin as overall visions that involve contradictions
in terms of opposing views or technological limitations, which make them hard to
reach (Itami 1987, p. 92; Nonaka 1988a, p. 15, 1988b, pp. 66–67). The initial visions
are often equivocal and gradually disintegrated into more tangible tasks and
goals 1 . The teams are quite self-organizing, autonomous and ensure overlapping
development phases in a ‘rugby approach’ (Imai et al. 1985; Kenney and Florida
1993, p. 61; Parsons 1991, p. 16; Smothers 1990, p. 523; Takeuchi and Nonaka
1986, pp. 137–41; Walker 1991) where engineers follow the project across its
overlapping phases, thus ensuring that generated knowledge is incorporated into
1 The development of the Toyota Lexus (Harryson, 1995a; 1998) illustrates how visions
are used in practice. See also Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989, p. 204); Clark and Fujimoto
(1990, p. 110, p. 118); Schütte (1991, p. 266). Kusunoki (1992, pp. 69–70) and Nonaka
(1988b, p. 10) provide good examples of disintegration.