Japanese versus American Innovation Strategies
Both Japanese and American firms have capitalized upon the use of innovative forms of technology and have changed the way the world does business. This is embodied in the creation of the wildly popular Toyota Prius as well as the ubiquity of Microsoft Windows on almost every computer screen around the world. However, although examples of successful American and Japanese firms are easy to find, both countries have radically different corporate cultures. America has a business culture of entrepreneurship and individually-generated innovation, while Japanese stresses the value of having stable corporate institutions that hone talent in a collaborative fashion. America's core innovative advantage is in deploying entrepreneurship funded through the strategic use of venture capital. Entrepreneurs profit by taking risks like Bill Gates, who made the decision to drop out of Harvard and begin a compan
Some strategies introduced by one nation have been adopted by the other nation-American companies have begun to successfully deploy the principles of continuous improvement and zero-defect manufacturing, most famously at General Electric, and although Japanese companies were the first institutions to introduce the principles of lean manufacturing, or just-in-time manufacturing, in other words, suiting inventory to demand, rather than allowing inventory to build up, American firms have also embraced these ideas. Japanese competitions tend to set goals for improvement based upon their own company's past rather than against their competitors. In contrast, Japanese companies emphasize evolution, and using teams and workgroups to create innovative solutions that generate value for the company and the consumer. This is one example of how Japanese companies strive to stay true to their founding quality principles, to uphold the reputation of their company and generate consumer loyalty and respect, as well as to generate profits for shareholders. Japanese companies often reward workers in a collaborative fashion, unlike American companies that tend to stress competition and individual achievement (Kotelnikov, 2002). But Japanese companies, like Toyota, stress continuous improvement-creating a bureaucratic system that sets benchmarks, and then tries to improve upon those benchmarks and eliminate defects. Rather than creating completely new technology, Japan has often radically improved upon existing technology, such as Japan's improvement of the American automobile industry's manufacturing processes, most famously at Toyota, or Sony's improvement of American transistor radio technology. American companies, to "make things better," stress radical innovation, redefining the market, and developing new technology to create efficiency. y in his garage, the company that became Microsoft. The Japanese dream to get into an elite university, and to use that degree to become part of a great company for the duration of one's working life. The American dream is to start one's own business, and to be independent of a corporate clock and a boss in a grey flannel suit. For example, Toyota may still be number one, and General Motors and Ford may lag behind, but it is still setting new benchmarks of excellence: "Another way to understand Toyota's system is to look at it as being value-based-being driven by the need to continuously deliver more value to the customer," eschewing American companies' "short-sighted tendency is to focus on little more than a cost-based strategy" (Teresko, 2006, p. These different attitudes towards labor have a subtle but discernable effect upon the Japanese perception of competition. Yet attitudes towards workers remain entrenched-rather than stressing loyalty, American companies have been more eager to outsource labor and to use automation and robotics to replace human labor (Kotelnikov, 2002).
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Acceptance Essays
