Global companies, local innovations.

摘要

This dissertation investigates why Japanese multi-national firms concentrate new product development activities geographically, particularly in high cost locations like Tokyo or Nagoya. This seems a puzzle because it is the age of globalization and information technology. Previous literature in regional economies would answer this puzzle by focusing on the roles played by intra-regional agglomeration factors. In short, the close linkage between rival firms, suppliers, and customers within the same region will prosper information flows, and hence generate innovation. However, an analysis at an aggregated regional level blurs the notion of innovation. Only after dissecting (1) who makes (2) what kind of innovation can we understand (3) how the process of generating innovation is organized and tied to geography. With an interdisciplinary approach of integrating regional economies and business administration, this dissertation extends the analysis on the technical and organizational aspect of creating innovation in the spatial context.; This is an in-depth case study of three products developed by three internationally successful firms: Sony, Canon, and Toyota. Each case reveals three common features in the nature of innovation. First, a modern consumer product is complex and consists of hundreds to thousands of components. Development of a new product means simultaneous development of myriad components and coordination among them. Second, a technological advance often takes place with an interdisciplinary approach. In these cases of computers and automobiles, each firm has to integrate knowledge in the fields of electric, mechanical, software engineering, chemistry, and physics. This integration requires the presence and constant interaction among engineers and scientists, as well as marketing specialists and executives. Third, a product has a face orientation. Face-to-face communication is essential to share and transmit tacit knowledge. A product must be tested with a prototypes to meet the product concept, to confirm the functionality, and to improve the performance. With these three features in the process of generating innovation, it is most efficient for each firm to co-locate its development related divisions within two-hour distance. Because innovation is a complex, evolutionary, interactive process, firms have to plan, ironically, for unplanned, uncertain situations.