Management of Technology and Innovation in Japan

XII Preface and Introduction
Based on a survey of more than 200 companies he shows that Japanese companies
undertook less internationalized R&D activities compared to North American and
Western European corporations. Also Japanese and North American companies
are shown to strongly follow a concept of generating technology at home, while
Western European companies give more room to build up centers of excellence
and own competences in R&D units abroad.
Gerybadze also addresses the issue of international R&D and knowledge generation
activities. He shows how this process is characterized by a simultaneous increase
in intensity and speed of innovation, rise of international sourcing strategies
for R&D, a greater emphasis on application and demand-pull, and an increasing
emphasis on open innovation. He also highlights the cognitive and strategic differences
in the way the innovation process in addressed in Japan and Western Europe
to analyze the different strategies adopted by the companies from these differing
cultural backgrounds.
Herstatt, Verworn and Nagahira investigate how Japanese and German companies
reduce project-related uncertainty during the early phases of the innovation process.
While most of the companies in the sample successfully reduced uncertainty,
the authors identify different approaches by the Japanese and German companies
respectively. In conclusion, the authors outline that there is no general best solution
to this problem and argue for a careful consideration of influencing factors
such as corporate culture when establishing these activities.
Part V: Implementational Aspects
Drawing on his extensive experience as a practitioner, Mori describes how the environment
for IP management faced by Japanese companies is in the midst of considerable
change. He highlights the substantial legal activity in the area of IP protection
that has recently been taking place as well as the huge importance, which
IP management has gained among Japanese firms. To substantiate the need for
further changes, he explores the objectives of IP management, using leading examples
of IP-intensive Japanese companies like Hitachi, Canon, Seiko Epson, and
Olympus.
Trauffler and Tschirky describe the elaboration and implementation of basic strategic
technology management concepts in a Japanese technology intensive company,
which were proposed and put into action during an academic consulting project
where researchers form the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich –
Chair of Technology and Innovation Management – collaborated with the company
for a of period of more than eighteen months. In doing so, the authors report
how MoT concepts were elaborated and implemented in a company that previously
did not have any such concepts in use and describe which MoT activities
were introduced and implemented and in which order. They also provide a generalized
and practitioner-oriented procedure derived from the experiences of this
particular case.