Capability Leapfrogging in the Japanese IT Services Industry

The focal question that we address is about how firms transition their IT product capabilities to the IT services capabilities. In particular, we were interested in exploring the unexpected observation that some incumbent firms in the Japanese IT industry were able to leapfrog capability development for transitioning to the IT services model, while others struggled to do so. We use a multi-method (Mingers 2001) approach consisting of four complementary stages for addressing the research question: (a) multiple case studies in eleven leading Japanese IT firms, (b) a large scale survey of division managers in 208 firms in Japan, (c) quantitative sequence analysis of archival product development logs for over 1,800 IT products in 208 Japanese firms during the ongoing transition, and (d) a Monte Carlo simulation of a subset of the insights obtained in the preceding stages

Internationalising to create Firm Specific Advantages: Leapfrogging strategies of U.S. Pharmaceutical firms in the 1930s and 1940s & Indian Pharmaceutical firms in the 1990s and 2000s

Internationalisation is a useful strategy to gain firm specific advantages during periods of technological discontinuity. The pharmaceutical industry offers us two such episodes as examples: when the antibiotics revolution was beginning and when the possibilities of genetic routes to new drug discovery were realised. This paper compares the strategies adopted by laggard U.S. firms scrambling to gain capabilities in antibiotics, and Indian firms equally eager to acquire positions in new biotechnology based drugs and shows that both groups used internationalisation strategies to gain technological advantages and build up their firm specific advantages.Technological leapfrogging, Internationalisation Strategies, Indian Pharmaceutical industry, Antibiotics revolution, US Pharmaceuticals

Introduction to innovation in the East Asian automotive industry:Exploring the interplay between product architectures, firm strategies, and national innovation systems

East Asia is the origin and target market for an increasing number of technological innovations. We use the East Asian automotive industry as a focal point to discuss central questions of innovation research such as modularity, product architecture, and the dynamics of state sponsorship in national innovation systems. Two developments in the East Asian automotive industry are of particular interest to the broader innovation community: 1) East Asian firms and consumers are forerunners in the current transition to energy-efficient innovations and the future of automobiles. These technological developments will lead to a 'hybridization' of product architectures that need to be reflected in firm's competitive strategies. 2) Particularly in China, the role of the state for national innovation systems is pronounced in the automotive sector. The way national and regional frameworks interact with broader technology trends shapes business innovation, and this understanding can inform firms in other sectors as well. Before highlighting the contributions of each paper of the special issue, we provide contextual background regarding the unique trajectories of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean automotive industry, and summarize the current state of research. We conclude with an outlook on future research topics

The Challenges of Technology and Economic Catch-up in Emerging Economies

This book synthesizes and interprets existing knowledge on technology upgrading failures as well as lessons from successes and failures in order to better understand the challenges of technology upgrading in emerging economies. The objective is to bring together in one volume diverse evidence regarding three major dimensions of technology upgrading: paths of technology upgrading, structural changes in the nature of technology upgrading, and the issues of technology transfer and technology upgrading. The knowledge of these three dimensions is being synthesized at the firm, sector, and macro levels across different countries and world macro-regions. Compared to the old and new challenges and uncertainties facing emerging economies, our understanding of the technology upgrading is sparse, unsystematic, and scattered. While our understanding of these issues from the 1980s and 1990s is relatively more systematized, the changes that took place during the globalization and proliferation of GVCs, the effects of the post-2008 events, and the effects of the current COVID-19 and geopolitical struggles on technology upgrading have not been explored and compared synthetically. Moreover, the recent growth slowdown in many emerging economies, often known as a middle-income trap, has reinforced the importance of understanding the technology upgrading challenges of catching-up economies. We believe that the time is ripe for “taking stock of the area” in order to systematize and evaluate the existing knowledge on processes of technology upgrading of emerging economies at the firm, sector, and international levels and to make further inroads in research on this issue. This volume aims to significantly contribute towards this end

The internationalization of Chinese and Indian firms: trends, motivations and strategy

The last two decades have seen significant internationalization of firms from developing economies, in terms of their greater participation in international trade, growing outflows of foreign direct investment (FDI), and a recent surge in their cross-border mergers and acquisition activity. Outward investment from developing countries is not a new phenomenon but in recent years there has been a marked increase in the magnitude of flows and a qualitative transformation in their pattern. Within this broad trend, the growing internationalization of firms from two fastgrowing developing countries, China and India, is particularly notable. Exports have been a central feature of the growth of the Chinese economy over the last three decades and, more recently, they have made a visible contribution to Indian growth too. Outward FDI from China and India has grown rapidly in recent years, and firms from these two countries are increasingly involved in overseas mergers and acquisitions

The Challenges of Technology and Economic Catch-up in Emerging Economies

This book synthesizes and interprets existing knowledge on technology upgrading failures as well as lessons from successes and failures in order to better understand the challenges of technology upgrading in emerging economies. The objective is to bring together in one volume diverse evidence regarding three major dimensions of technology upgrading: paths of technology upgrading, structural changes in the nature of technology upgrading, and the issues of technology transfer and technology upgrading. The knowledge of these three dimensions is being synthesized at the firm, sector, and macro levels across different countries and world macro-regions. Compared to the old and new challenges and uncertainties facing emerging economies, our understanding of the technology upgrading is sparse, unsystematic, and scattered. While our understanding of these issues from the 1980s and 1990s is relatively more systematized, the changes that took place during the globalization and proliferation of GVCs, the effects of the post-2008 events, and the effects of the current COVID-19 and geopolitical struggles on technology upgrading have not been explored and compared synthetically. Moreover, the recent growth slowdown in many emerging economies, often known as a middle-income trap, has reinforced the importance of understanding the technology upgrading challenges of catching-up economies. We believe that the time is ripe for “taking stock of the area” in order to systematize and evaluate the existing knowledge on processes of technology upgrading of emerging economies at the firm, sector, and international levels and to make further inroads in research on this issue. This volume aims to significantly contribute towards this end

Technology, Innovation and Latecomer Strategies: Evidence from the Mobile Handset Manufacturing Sector in China

Since the entry of Chinese domestic mobile handset manufacturers in 1998, Chinese domestic suppliers have successfully surpassed the market share of joint ventures (JVs) while direct imports have been largely phased out. By examining China’s mobile handset manufacturing sector as a whole and through case studies, we found several factors that contributed to the success of China’s domestic handset manufacturers which can be classified into three categories: market conditions, competition, and government’s support.

Asian Pacific Marine Minerals and Industry Structure

Eventual development of marine minerals potential in the Asian Pacific would likely draw on the technology, skills, and experience of the emerging international seabed mining industry. As a result of strategic behavior by its firms, this small-numbers industrial "strategic group" has created a level of capacity for seabed mining exploration and research and development (R&D) that far exceeds the near-term level of activity expected in seabed mining. The paper reports on the nature of preproduction industrial structure (or "protostructure") in seabed mining and draws implications for efforts to develop the resource potential of Asian Pacific marine minerals. Seabed minerals exploration and R&D services might be offered to Asian Pacific nations at bargain prices (below unit cost) by firms with first-starter advantages in the emerging industry. However, cautionary notes are included about constraints on the economic potential of the region's deep-sea minerals such as manganese nodules, polymetallie sulfides, and cobalt crusts.Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Innovative Asia: Advancing the Knowledge-Based Economy - Highlights of the Forthcoming ADB Study Report

[Excerpt] The development of knowledge-based economies (KBEs) is both an imperative and an opportunity for developing Asia. It is an imperative to sustain high rates of growth in the future and an opportunity whereby emerging economies can draw from beneficial trending developments that may allow them to move faster to advance in global value chains and in position in world markets. Over the last quarter of a century, driven mostly by cheap labor, developing countries in Asia have seen unprecedented growth rates and contributions to the global economy. Sustaining Asia’s growth trajectory, however, requires developing economies to seek different approaches to economic growth and progress, especially if they aspire to move from the middle-income to the high-income level. KBE is an important platform that can enable them to sustain growth and even accelerate it. It is time for Asia to consolidate and accelerate its pace of growth. Asia is positioned in a unique moment in history with many advantages that can serve as a boost: to name a couple, an expanding middle of the pyramid—Asia is likely to hold 50% of the global middle class and 40% of the global consumer market by 2020; and the growing importance of intra-regional trade within Asia, increasing from 54% in 2001 to 58% in 2011. Many developing economies are well placed to assimilate frontier technologies into their manufacturing environment