Why do some country’s hi-tech firms innovate better than others? Why did hi-tech firms from the United States outperform such Japanese companies in the 1990s? Through a wealth of empirical evidence, the book compares the development trajectory of manufacturing technology and information...

Japan’s chemical industry is currently amidst mega‐competition in the paradigm shift from an industrial society to an information society that emerged in the 1990s and consequent globalizing economy. The checkered development trajectory of Japan’s chemical industry has resulted in a...

Under the new paradigm of an information society, Japan’s institutions did not function as effeciently as they did in an industrial society. Consequently, Japan experienced a vicious cycle between non‐elastic institutions and insufficient utilization of the potential benefits of IT. However,...