Kathryn Ibata-Arens, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Kathryn Ibata-Arens, Ph.D.
Northwestern University
773.325.4716
Room 2214
990 West Fullerton
kibataar@depaul.edu

IInnovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan: Politics, Organizations and High Technology Firms, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Japan ’s innovators and entrepreneurs are a real success story against the odds, surviving recession in the 1990s to prosper in today’s competitive business environment. Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan explores the struggles of entrepreneurs and civic-minded local leaders in fostering innovative activity, and identifies key business lessons for an economy in need of dynamic change.

I analyze strategy in firms, communities and in local government. Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan examines detailed case studies of high-technology manufacturers in Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo, as well as bio-tech clusters in America —demonstrating far-reaching innovation and competition effects in national institutions, and firms embedded within local and regional institutions.

The book is ideal reading for academics and students of business, economics, political economy, political science, and sociology. It will also appeal to investors, entrepreneurs and community development organizations seeking new perspectives on global competition and entrepreneurship in high technology enterprises.

This book is based on extensive qualitative and quantitative case study analysis in Japan of three innovative clusters of high technology manufactures in separate regions, conducted from 1996 to1999 while a Fulbright Doctoral Fellow and in 2002 as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Post-Doctoral Fellow at Tokyo University (more info).

I am also working on a project that compares the socio-political foundations of innovation in Japan's Kansai region with the American Midwest, (more info).