1. Leading Without Followers: How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan's Domestic "Galapagos" ICT Sector
- Author:
- Kenji E. Kushida
- Publication Date:
- 03-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
- Abstract:
- Despite global leadership by Japanese firms in sectors such as automobiles, precision equipment, and various high tech components, Japanese firms in the telecommunications sector have followed a persistent pattern of leading without followers. While leading the domestic market to ever-high levels of sophistication, sometimes beyond that of most other advanced industrial countries, Japanese ICT companies have retreated dramatically from international telecommunications-related markets. Moreover, in technology after technology, Japanese ICT firms invest heavily, undertake extensive R, and for network technologies, deploy infrastructure rapidly, only to find that global technological trajectories shift in a different direction. While globally successful Japanese industries were able to use their domestic market as a springboard into international markets, Japan's telecommunications sector became decoupled from global markets, trapping Japanese firms in the domestic market.
- Topic:
- Globalization, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Japan and Israel