This new book discusses the extent to which the Japanese economy encourages entrepreneurship and innovation.

Although Japan has a strong reputation as an innovator, some people argue that this reputation is misplaced. Contrary to earlier expectations, the USA rather than Japan emerged as the leader in the biotech industries in the 1990s, and also many small firms in Japan supply only a few - or just one - other company, thereby limiting their view of the marketplace and the commercial opportunities within it. Despite the increase of international patents, international scientific...

Institutional and technological change is a highly topical subject. At the theoretical level, there is much debate in the field of institutional economics about the role of technological change in endogenous growth theory. At a practical policy level, arguments rage about how Japan and the Japanese economy should plan for the future.

In this book, leading economists and economic historians of Japan examine a range of key issues concerning institutional and technological change in Japan, rigorously using discipline-based tools of analysis, and drawing important conclusions as to how the...

The concept of "innovation systems" has gained considerable attention from scholars and politicians alike. The concept promises not only to serve as a tool to explain sustained economic development, but also to provide policy-makers with scientifically grounded policy options to advance the growth of economies. The thrust of much recent literature has been to review existing empirical findings in order to deduce "best practice" models which are assumed to benefit all countries in a similar fashion. However, as this book argues, such universal models often fail in both analysis and policy...