Recognizing that a capacity to innovate and commercialize new high-technology products is increasingly a key for the economic growth in the environment of tighter environmental and resource constraints, governments around the world have taken active steps to strengthen their national innovation systems. These steps underscore the belief of these governments that the rising costs and risks associated with new potentially high-payoff technologies, their spillover or externality-generating effects and the growing global competition, require national R&D programs to support the innovations by new and existing high-technology firms within their borders. The National Research Council's Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) has embarked on a study of selected foreign innovation programs in comparison with major U.S. programs. The "21st Century Innovation Systems for the United States and Japan: Lessons from a Decade of Change" symposium reviewed government programs and initiatives to support the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises, government-university- industry collaboration and consortia, and the impact of the intellectual property regime on innovation. This book brings together the papers presented at the conference and provides a historical context of the issues discussed at the symposium.

This new book discusses the extent to which the Japanese economy encourages entrepreneurship and innovation. Although Japan has a strong reputation as an innovator, some people argue that this reputation is misplaced. Contrary to earlier expectations, the USA rather than Japan emerged as the leader in the biotech industries in the 1990s, and also many small firms in Japan supply only a few – or just one – other company, thereby limiting their view of the marketplace and the commercial opportunities within it. Despite the increase of international patents, international scientific citations and a positive technology trade balance, the Japanese innovation system is weak in giving birth to radical innovations. The book explores fully these issues, making comparisons with other countries where appropriate. It concludes that the Japanese innovation system has both advantages and disadvantages and contributes to a better understanding of how policy changes take place.

Productivity growth in Japan, as in most advanced economies, has moderated. This paper finds supportive evidence for the important role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in explaining Japan’s modest productivity growth. Results show a substantial dispersion in firm-level productivity growth across sectors and even across firms within the same sector. SMEs, on average, exhibit lower productivity growth than non-SMEs in Japan, with smaller and older SMEs showing particularly low productivity growth. Estimates suggest that boosting productivity growth in all of the worst-performing SMEs could improve overall productivity growth by up to 1.8 percentage points. The SME credit guarantee system, SME financing constraints, demographic factors, and lack of intangible capital investment are discussed as contributors to the slow productivity growth of Japan’s small and old SMEs.

Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century surveys American geographers' current research in their specialty areas and tracks trends and innovations in the many subfields of geography. As such, it is both a 'state of the discipline' assessment and a topical reference. It includes an introduction by the editors and 47 chapters, each on a specific specialty. The authors of each chapter were chosen by their specialty group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Based on a process of review and revision, the chapters in this volume have become truly representative of the recent scholarship of American geographers. While it focuses on work since 1990, it additionally includes related prior work and work by non-American geographers. The initial Geography in America was published in 1989 and has become a benchmark reference of American geographical research during the 1980s. This latest volume is completely new and features a preface written by the eminent geographer, Gilbert White.