Abstract
Tsubame-Sanjo area has been known in Japan for tableware exporting industry especially after World War II. But for the high evaluation of Yen and increasing of wages, this cluster lost her competitiveness in terms of export in the middle of 1980’s. However some of the companies are now innovating their competitiveness to entry into new industries based upon their accumulated technologies. We would like to describe the way in which they drastically changed their structure of industries in 1990’s.
When we research for the past history of industries in this area, firstly we confirm they have been sustaining industry cluster for 400years. First of all, we ask why Tsubame-Sanjo has been sustaining cluster. The answer is that they have been changing the structures of economy during 400years.
Secondly we observe for the past 400 years similar kinds of mechanism and dynamics to promote changing industries. Tsubame-Sanjo area has been sustaining clustering 400 years by innovating their structures of industries to changing situations. We will describe the characters and dynamics of these innovations as regional innovation system.
We observe and analize two different dimensions of mechanizum, one is in the firm level , and another is in the cluster as a whole. 1) in the firm dimension, each firm promotes its own business into new industries and 2) in the cluster dimension, cluster leads competition to each firm that induce differentiation in term of technology to each firm. If R& D based start ups or development based firm did not exist there were no integrations among the professional firms. We realize the importance of the function of R& D based start-ups in the cluster.
