Innovation management: the Japanese way

Nowadays the automotive industry is facing big threats from rapidly evolving technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, connected technologies, clean energy demands for renewable energy and electric vehicles. Furthermore, business expectation of carmakers is lower than that of IT giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Alibaba. Since the Second World War Japanese have demonstrated their outstanding ability to innovate. For example: Shinkansen opened a new era of high-speed railway by changing the concept for travel and boosting the convenience which resulted from precise timetables and excellent safety developed by Japanese high-level engineering; the Nobel Prize winning blue light-emitting diode (LED) was invented by Japanese researchers just recently. The chapter explains the key factors that enabled Japanese to initiate and implement such outstanding innovations and what can be learnt from their experience.