Occational lecture series jointly with IN-EAST | Moderation: Karen Shire

Ulrike Schaede (University of California, San Diego)

The Business Reinvention of Japan: How Japanese companies have responded to the rise of China and the globalization of supply chains

This lecture discusses how Japan’s industrial architecture has changed over the 20 years, and how Japan’s leading companies are now re-emerging as major players in the new digital economy and digital manufacturing. They are reinventing by moving upstream into advanced components and materials, and building new innovation capabilities to compete in connectivity, sensoring,  AI, and big data. Many Japanese companies now occupy leading market shares in deep-tech input components, and in the aggregate, these pole positions not only add up into not only a sizable presence but also make Japan the technology anchor in many global product supply chains. This discussion looks at how this business reinvention has occurred, and in what ways Japan’s societal preferences and business norms that focus on stability have affected the process.

Ulrike Schaede is Professor of Japanese Business at the University of California, San Diego, School of Global Policy and Strategy. Her work focuses on Japan’s changing corporate strategies, including business culture, employment practices, and corporate governance. She is the author of The Business Reinvention of Japan: How to Make Sense of the New Japan (Stanford University Press, 2020).