The R&D Activities of Japanese Companies Abroad

Abstract

This article presents a survey of statistical data from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan revealing the growth in the number of R&D facilities established by Japanese companies outside Japan during the last twenty years. Yet, most of the R&D activities of these facilities relate to design and development and the collection of pertinent information, with only a small share being allocated to research proper. Four reasons are given for the rapid increase of such facilities abroad. First, the need for speedy market access through the gathering of information and the identification of market trends. Second, the need to provide support to the company's local factories. Third, the need to seek new technology seeds, capture new product concepts, and cope with technonationalism. And, lastly, the need to make products to fit local conditions. Finally, the author indicates a number of future trends, these being the increase in the number of R&D facilities especially for basic research, the increase in Japan in the number of entities such as university research centres and other research bodies that will be linked by satellite facilitating thereby their support of the R&D efforts of corporations, the building of networks among R&D facilities, the enlargement of the R&D facilities, the establishment of Japanese R&D facilities in Asia, the gradual autonomy of the R&D facilities, and the levelling off of differences among the R&D management methods of Japan, the United States and Europe with the consequent emergence of a new single method encompassing the best aspects of its predecessors.