Differences in competitive strategies between the United States and Japan

The author deal with differences between the strategies employed by firms in Japan and the US towards the generation and utilization of technology. The subject is introduced with a taxonomy (called product genesis) of the process of bringing an idea from the laboratory to the marketplace. The strategies are mapped against the various stages of product genesis. The hypothesis is developed that the competitive threshold for Japanese firms is much further downstream than the onset of competitive sensitivity in US companies; i.e. US companies protect applied research activities whereas their Japanese counterparts still cooperate in this area and protect only design or prototyping of products and processes