Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- List of Abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- In Search of Answers -- Plan of the Book -- 2 In Search of Answers to Being Global and Local -- 2.1 Which Aspect of Globalization Are We Talking About? What is Globalization? -- 2.2 How Could Other Theories Answer the Questions? -- 2.3 Why Japanese Firms? Why Not Japanese Firms? -- 2.4 The Plan of Research -- 3 Sony's Vaio 505: A Portable and Good-Looking Market Niche -- 3.1 The Sony Corporation -- 3.2 Sony's R&D System -- 3.3 Sony in the PC Industry -- 3.4 Development of the Sony Vaio 505 -- 3.5 Summary -- 4 Toyota's Prius: Call for Next Century Induced Hybrid Technology -- 4.1 The Toyota Corporation -- 4.2 Toyota's R&D System -- 4.3 Overview of the Toyota Hybrid System -- 4.4 Development of the Prius -- 4.5 Summary -- 5 Canon's Bubble Jet Printer BJ-10v: The 13-Year Journey from Basic Research to Product -- 5.1 The Canon Corporation -- 5.2 Canon's R&D System -- 5.3 Overview of Printer Technology -- 5.4 Development of the Bubble Jet Printer: BJ-10v -- 5.5 Summary -- 6 Innovation and Geography -- 6.1 The Geography of Product Development -- 6.2 Reasons for Co-location -- 6.3 Further Discussions and Implications -- 6.4 A Final Remark -- List of Interviewees -- References -- Index.

Investigating the innovation activities of multinational corporations, this book uncovers and examines why the geography of innovation by multinationals is overwhelmingly local, in spite of their global operations in manufacturing and sales, through case studies of produce development by three global players: Toyota, Sony, and Canon. Providing an in-depth investigation of the engineering and technical aspects of innovation making, this book unfolds the complex and constant process of trial and error in innovation and reveals three fundamental natures of innovation making: complexity, interdisciplinarity, and prototyping and testing. In order to manage these three natures of innovation, firms have to plan, ironically, for unplanned situations and to collocate knowledge, people, and resources.

AbstractThere is a general understanding that university plays a crucial role in regional development under the current age of knowledge economy. At the same time, we have observed a fair number of counter‐evidentiary studies, demonstrating several regions that do not thrive despite strong research universities or other patterns of development in the absence of research universities. However, they are based on case studies of individual universities or regions, and the findings currently cannot be generalized. Another set of studies that have challenged the effect of universities at the nationwide scale and demonstrated its disproportionately small impact of universities, but their scope is limited to spin‐offs, patents, and license activities. In this article, we propose to investigate this subject more systematically by triangulating three methods: 1) national‐scale regression models with Business Dynamics Statistics and National Establishment Time Series data, 2) a regional survey of IT and life science firms in four so‐called "second tier regions," and 3) a microeconomic firm‐level analysis based on interviews with founders of technology intensive firms. Furthermore, we test the roles of university beyond those explicit, direct measures of spin‐offs and patents by analyzing the firm formation rate and firm growth rate at the regional level, as well as the sources of growth at the company level. All results point in the same direction: The research function of the university has been overstated, and the teaching function of the university has been underappreciated. These findings provide profound implications for the policy of regional development.

AbstractWe argue that in this age of globalization, important R&D—in automobiles and wireless telecommunication—exhibits a decisive home bias. This contrasts with findings on the rate and extent of globalization of the aggregate of activities classified as R&D. Sorting out R&D was deemed important at the outset by the firm, and comparing that to "regular" R&D by the same firms enables the argument. We take our findings on location a step further by examining, for this category of R&D, the reasons for nonglobalization.