Beyond the inflection point: how and why individuals promote inventions in Japan
- PDF / 895,271 Bytes
- 25 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 15 Downloads / 130 Views
Beyond the inflection point: how and why individuals promote inventions in Japan Miikka J. Lehtonen1 · Ainomaija Haarla2 · Masaaki Kotabe3 Received: 30 April 2018 / Revised: 30 March 2019 / Accepted: 30 May 2019 © Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract While Japan is one of the most innovative countries in the world, it has experienced a prolonged stagnant economic growth in the last 20 years. The development of new products and/or services has become critical for future economic growth. However, we know little about how individuals disseminate and legitimize inventions for new product and/or service development in Japan. This paper bridges this gap by looking at how and why material scientists, architects, and designers promote new inventions in Japan. We identified three novel roles (initiator, integrator, and interpreter) individuals take upon themselves to legitimize new uses for raw materials. Keywords Invention diffusion · Innovation dynamics · Promoter roles · Japan · University–industry relations
Introduction Both external and internal pressures have pushed Japanese companies to seek growth not only in foreign markets but also through harnessing new raw materials and utilizing these as a basis for new technological innovations and strategic directions (Schaede 2008; Schaede and Grimes 2015). Japanese companies have a remarkable track record in utilizing their core competencies in developing new products outside their core markets (e.g., Fujifilm’s Astalift product series, ANA’s Digital Design Lab, and Honda’s corporate jet aircraft), but we know little about how new inventions are disseminated and legitimized, and what role individuals play in these processes (Nicholas 2011). Put differently, extant literature tells
* Miikka J. Lehtonen [email protected] 1
School of Arts, Design and Architecture, School of Business, Aalto University, Otaniementie 14, 02150 Espoo, Finland
2
School of Chemical Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
3
The Fox School of Business, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA
Vol.:(0123456789)
M. J. Lehtonen et al.
us Japanese organizations traditionally merge bottom-up participation with topdown management (e.g., Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995). Although recent changes in Japan’s political economy have forced companies to move away from rigid business relationships towards more dynamic and fluid value constellations (Kingston 2019; Schaede 2008), we have yet to uncover how these changes on Japan’s institutional level influence individuals in organizations and their capabilities to enact change through inventions. Therefore, in this paper, our point of departure focuses on individuals and new inventions: more specifically, how material scientists, architects, and designers promote inventions so that corporations can transform them into commercially sound innovations. As such, the title of this paper pays homage to Schaede’s work (2008) who argues that an inflection point took place in the Japanese institutional context in the beginning of the twenty
Data Loading...
