Japan's Innovative Technology Strategies

In Technology Policy and Economic Performance: Lessons from Japan Christopher Freeman highlights "innovation and the diffusion of innovations" (1). Freeman charts how pervasive changes in technology may be most effectively scrutinized when they are linked to their countries of origin. Freeman's assertion is that these "national systems of innovation" are central to understanding which advances in technology will be the most productively used. The great strength of Freeman's research is that he pinpoints how Japan has leap frogged ahead of other industrialized nations since World War II by establishing a country-wide system for efficient implementation of major new technological advances. He highlights Japan's national system of innovation comprised of its national education and training systems, its network of public and private institutions. The activities and interactions of these networks "initiate, import, modify and diffuse and operate" the country's new technologies" (1). Freeman's brilliance is that he combines economic and cultural analysis allowing his readers to realize why Japan's remarkable prosperity is anything but accidental.

In this cross-cultural study, Freeman compares the technological policies and institutional practices of Japan with the US, UK, West Germany and France (See charts 8-13). In 1962 the US spent almost four times as much money as its Western European counterparts on gross expenditure on