New Strategies for New Challenges: Corporate Innovation in the United States and Japan (1999)

Summary: Innovation, is vital for companies wishing to remain competitive in today's rapidly changing high technology industries. American and Japanese firms are among the world's most technologically innovative and competitive. However, the changing dynamics of global competition are forcing them to rethink their technological innovation strategies. The choices they make will have great impact on their futures as companies as well as on the livelihoods of their employees and the communities in which they operate. In developing this report, the task force used the concept of convergence—the idea that U.S. and Japanese corporations are beginning to function more like each other than they once did—as a lens with which to focus and clarify the complex and often confusing array of adaptations in corporate technological innovation strategies. This approach naturally led to searching-out similarities and differences in corporate innovation practices as they are currently evolving and also to a comparison of current practices with past paradigms of U.S. and Japanese corporate innovation systems.