Hi, I'm the author and I'm delighted that people are still interested in this topic.
There are a lot of great comments, but I'd like to collect and respond in bulk to the ones about keiretsu, since there are a lot of misunderstanding about them.
1) It's not the keiretsu, it's X.
It's not just the existence of keiretsu in isolation. They keiretsu produced incredible innovations in the 60s and 70s. It was the combination of the keiretsu control and the shift to domestic markets (which the keiretsu also controlled) that killed the PC software industry in its infancy.
2) Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google are like keirestsu.
They really are not. In fact, they operate on a radically different philosophy. Keiretsu would be willing to lose money (and a lot of it) in order to keep business in-house. Their supply chains were owned, integrated, and exclusive. Employees did not leave their keirestu group It fostered innovation as long as they were export facing, but it fell apart once they started to focus on the domestic market.
Thank you again for reading. I'm happy to discuss.
How much do you think the MITI Fifth Generation Initiative negatively impacted the Japanese software industry by side-tracking so many educational and corporate initiatives?
The list of US firms are media companies and also the reason people choose their products is software.
Why didn’t Sony, Nintendo and Sega become the biggest firms in Japan? They were well positioned to become its biggest media companies. Why is WhatsApp adopted widely without preloading but not LINE, which was way ahead of the curve in terms of media apps?
Those are all strong and (at varying times) very innovative companies, but I don't see how any of them were positioned to be media companies in Japan. Sony owns a lot of media assets (ie Sony Pictures) but those are from M&A rather than something developed by the core business.
LINE is far more popular in Japan than WhatsApp. It's a Korean company, and if you mean why it never took off outside of Asia, I suspect its a matter of network effects, but I have not looked into it in detail.
There are a lot of great comments, but I'd like to collect and respond in bulk to the ones about keiretsu, since there are a lot of misunderstanding about them.
1) It's not the keiretsu, it's X. It's not just the existence of keiretsu in isolation. They keiretsu produced incredible innovations in the 60s and 70s. It was the combination of the keiretsu control and the shift to domestic markets (which the keiretsu also controlled) that killed the PC software industry in its infancy.
2) Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google are like keirestsu. They really are not. In fact, they operate on a radically different philosophy. Keiretsu would be willing to lose money (and a lot of it) in order to keep business in-house. Their supply chains were owned, integrated, and exclusive. Employees did not leave their keirestu group It fostered innovation as long as they were export facing, but it fell apart once they started to focus on the domestic market.
Thank you again for reading. I'm happy to discuss.