The Business Reinvention of Japan: What has changed since we last looked | SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 10/11/2020

The Business Reinvention of Japan: What has changed since we last looked was recorded with Prof Ulrike Schaede (University of California San Diego) on the 28th of October 2020. Find out more at: https://bit.ly/32tN1xA

Japan’s business organization was a hot topic in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, Japan has been overshadowed by China, and whatever we hear about Japan tends to be either negative or quirky. But contrary to the image that Japan has “lost it”, Japan is still the world’s third largest economy, and Japanese input materials and components critically anchor many global supply chains. The background plot is that leading Japanese companies have relinquished many consumer end product markets and moved upstream, to make the deep-technology inputs needed to make those products. This is also opening new important avenues for Japan in the digital transformation, from robotics to edge computing and AI applications. All this has required a strategic repositioning and a change in business culture. Ulrike Schaede will explain how Japan’s leading manufacturing companies are moving into these new territories, and how they are managing the requisite corporate culture change.