Japanese innovation

The idea that the economic growth of the most advanced industrialized countries will depend on their ability to invest massively in basic research and R&D, to set up a real “ knowledge economy “, Is today the subject of a very large consensus. The Japanese example is particularly interesting in this regard to study due to the very paradoxical image in innovation in this country. On the one hand, the Ministry of International and Industry (Miti), created in the aftermath of the Second World War, marked the spirits in the West as one of the main players in the exceptional economic development of Japan, one of the keys to this success having been the capacity of this institution to unite industry and research, companies and university around common objectives. On the other hand, as Jean-Claude Thivolle points out in its contribution, Japan has so long been perceived as investor little in basic research, the place of the State in its financing being low and the companies based essentially on the discoveries made abroad to conduct their research and development activity. Moreover, according to Alain-Marc Rieu, in another contribution from the work, until the late 1970s “ The main function of universities to train engineers and scientists ; The role of these scientists was to master the state of research in the world and to train students who, either to take over, or would become engineers in the industry. In this context, research policy was reduced to a policy of reconstruction and industrial development ».

Also contributing to blurring the image of this country, today there is a discourse of decline within Japanese society to which the scientific fields of technology do not escape. In recent years, very far from the triumphalism of the dominant discourse of the 1980s, many doubts have expressed themselves as to the capacity of the country to find a new dynamic capable of relaunching the country after ten years of stagnation or weak growth. Many criticisms have in particular raised on what would have become his inability to prepare for his future. This criticism was formulated with regard to the government’s innovation policy in a collective work published by journalists from the political service of the greatest national newspaper, the Yomiuri. Journalists recalled that in the country without natural resources that is Japan, salvation had always resided in technological innovation and its industrial valuations and that the political leaders of today, all to their neoliberal reforms in the financial field, seemed more and more disinterested in this question. The State was in particular accused of not providing the necessary investment effort in the field of scientific and technical innovation, in particular to compensate for the risk of disengagement from companies increasingly subject to short -term profitability requirements under pressure from financial markets. A report of theOECD was also shocked the country by announcing that China had passed over the year in the second world rank for R&D investments ($ 163 billion), ahead of Japan (130 billion) and after the United States (330 billion). This same report stated that China had increased by 77 % of its research staff engaged in R&D between 1995 and 2004, which today amounts to 926,000 researchers just behind the United States (more than 1.3 million).

The return of “ Japanese model »»

The Empire of Intelligence comes to deny this pessimistic vision and shows that the “ Japanese model “, Which, in many ways has been overshadowed by the rise of the Chinese economy, can still offer a number of lessons. Alain-Marc Rieu thus shows that, unlike the representations which see in Japan a nation of second row, this country is the theater of a deep economic and social transition which makes it today a “ Knowledge Society ».

Indeed, since the 1980s, following the first oil shock, Japan has attempted to convert its economy into high -tech industries based on miniaturization, computerization and convergence of the various areas of communication, information and multimedia – such as the formula a 1982 reportAgency for Industrial Science and Technologyloaded within the Miti to reflect on the means of resolving the country’s energy dependence issue. But Japan quickly realized that if it was content to develop innovations produced elsewhere, it risked moving from an energy dependence to another type of dependence: a dependence on the United States which had initiated such a change based on information technologies. Thus, since the 1980s, “ A ‘consensus’ has established itself and has led to the gradual development of an increasing investment policy in research which will be accompanied from the 1990s of institutional reforms favorable to the production and dissemination of knowledge … Administrative, university and economic elites have set themselves on a CAP, (…) they were held, finally accepting that this policy transforms power relations ».

Japan thus undertook an ambitious administrative reform: the Ministry of National Education was strengthened in the form of a large ministry bringing together science, education and culture. THE Miti was transformed into 2001 into Meti (in English : Minister of Economy Trade and Industry) and absorbed some functions of the old St (Science and Technology Agency) and a large part of the activities of the economic planning agency. He is now intended, according to Guy Faure, one of the other contributors, to slip from an industrial policy of high technology to a real research policy. In 2004, universities were transformed into independent financial entities, responsible for the management of their budget and staff. In exchange for management autonomy, they negotiate their budget with the Ministry of National Education. They are assessed according to their ability to carry out the program in the contract.

The crisis of the 1990s did not deflect the authorities of their objective. If public spending in R&D in the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom have plunged into the 1990s, those of Japan have modestly-too ​​modestly in the eyes of those who are concerned about the rise of China-, but regularly increased to reach levels almost comparable to these Western countries. In global public and private expenses combined, Japan exceeds the threshold of 3% of GDP During the year 2000 when French expenses declined to approach the 2%threshold.

Restarting

It seems that these policies have not had no effect on the timid economic recovery that Japan has known since the beginning of the decade. Jean-Yves Bajon thus quotes a study of the economic mission of the French Embassy in Japan which shows a contribution of research and development to productivity which, after having experienced a strong erosion in absolute value in the 1990s, experienced a significant increase in the 2000s. Concretely, the article by Karine Poupée shows the considerable development of the telecommunications sector which deposited more than 15,000 patents in 2005 and Quarter of the percentage of gross domestic product growth in recent years. Some 3.75 million employees work today for this sector, is almost as much as the automotive industry. On the other hand, according to Étienne Barral, in 2005, demand for industrial robots in Japan represented 47% of global demand, 70% of these machines being produced in Japan. The development of robotics is nevertheless only in its infancy. Faced with abrupt aging of its population, Japan must now consider how to compensate for the shortage of labor generated by the retirement of 7 million employees by 2015, when the robotics market in Japan will represent 1.1 Billions of Yens (7.8 billion euros), two thirds of the current portable computers. Finally, a sector abandoned following the defeat of 1945, research in the field of defense, fueled by this poorly known reality which is the second rank in Japan in terms of military expenditure, is becoming a engine in scientific and technological innovation.

This work offers a good lesson in political voluntarism in a unanimously considered strategic area for advanced industrial companies. However, we can perhaps regret that, in his concern for demonstration and rehabilitation of a “ Japanese model Who was a little too quickly forgotten after having been the subject of an undoubtedly disproportionate admiration, a certain number of substantive debates are not mentioned. Indeed, in Japan, even if the cultural gap between fundamental research and practical application, universities and businesses, is not as strong as in France, as the authors point out several times, there are not also differences on the purposes of education and research within the nation, resistance to see them entirely subject to the needs of industry and the process of commodification of industrial property, and opposition to ensure sustainable ?