Japanese SME Innovative Business Partnering Networks

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In Japan, SMEs as a counterbalance to the large corporations and to sustain economic viability in a resource poor country such as Japan use innovation and business partnering networks to sustain much needed local community based enterprise through on the ground networks in which SMEs assist each other. This is accomplished through the conserving of vital resources through sharing
among localised communities skills, resources and workloads during the times of both boom and bust and by supporting innovation. Rodan 21 in the Osaka City region is a case example of these practices. These types of business partnering are being used to revive ,revitalize and strengthen Japanese SME companies. Rodan 21 works like a virtual corporation supporting innovative proposals such as the conservation of water. One proposal from the community members invented a pump for fire extinguishing that can work under low levels of water which was then successfully merchandised. SME companies are some of the most inventive in the world but suffer from chronic underfunding which this form of business partnering can assist in allieviating.

Stream: Economic Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

The Centre for Japanese and East Asian Studies of which Prof. Taplin is Director won Exporter of the Year in Partnership in Trading/Pathfinder for the UK in the year 2000. She received her doctorate from the London School of Economics and is the author/editor of 14 books and over 200 articles. The most recent are, Exploiting Patent Rights and a New Climate for Innovation in Japan (London: Intellectual Property Institute 2003); Valuing Intellectual Property in Japan, Britain and the United States (London RoutledgeCurzon:2004); Risk Management and Innovation in Japan Britain and the United States and Japanese Telecommunications Market and Policy in Transition ( both published by London: Routledge/Curzon 2005). Innovation and Business Partnering in Japan, Britain and the United States (Routledge 2006), Outsourcing and Human Resource Management- An International Survey ( Routledge 2007). Her next book will analyse the Japanese economy from the Koizumi years onwards. Editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics for 12 years, Professor Taplin currently is a Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London and the University of Leicester. She has a number of visiting affiliations with universities such as Osaka City University, Japan for many years and is a Visiting Professor at the School of International Business and Management, University of Warsaw, Poland and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Mumbai in January 2007 and in January 2008 at the University of Bacheshir in Istanbul.