Overview

The biomedical industry, which includes biopharmaceuticals, genomics and stem cell therapies, and medical devices, is among the fastest growing worldwide. While it has been an economic development target of many national governments, Asia is currently on track to reach the epicenter of this growth. What accounts for the rapid and sustained economic growth of biomedicals in Asia? To answer this question, Kathryn Ibata-Arens integrates global and national data with original fieldwork to present a conceptual framework that considers how national governments have managed key factors, like innovative capacity, government policy, and firm-level strategies. Taking China, India, Japan, and Singapore in turn, she compares each country's underlying competitive advantages. What emerges is an argument that countries pursuing networked technonationalism (NTN) effectively upgrade their capacity for innovation and encourage entrepreneurial activity in targeted industries. In contrast to countries that engage in classic technonationalism-like Japan's developmental state approach-networked technonationalists are global minded to outside markets, while remaining nationalistic within the domestic economy. By bringing together aggregate data at the global and national level with original fieldwork and drawing on rich cases, Ibata-Arens telegraphs implications for innovation policy and entrepreneurship strategy in Asia-and beyond.

Full Product Details

Author:   Kathryn C. Ibata-Arens
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford Business Books,US
ISBN:  

9781503605473

ISBN 10:   1503605477
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   16 April 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Contents and Abstracts1Introduction chapter abstractThe book discusses the importance of global competition in biomedical and new-technology sectors to understanding international trade and investment in the twenty-first century. It argues that countries that pursue networked technonationalism (NTN) have been the most effective in improving innovation capacity and fostering frontier-industry growth. Technonationalism is state-led strategic investment in new technologies, perceived as key to national security. From the most closed system (Japan's classic technonationalism) to the most open, or technoglobal system (Singapore) technationalism exists on a continuum. A typology of knowledge and network regimes is proposed to explain variations in domestic capacities, institutions, and policy and network practices. Comparisons of human capital development (STEM education), knowledge production (scientific citations and patents), institutions supporting innovation (technology licensing organizations, incubators), and interfirm networks and international openness (inward foreign direct investment, engaging with diaspora, and immigration) elucidate distinctions. 2Theory and Methods chapter abstractThis chapter develops a matrix that plots variations in open/tacit versus closed/codified system architectures supporting or limiting innovation capacity and new-business creation in targeted sectors. Aggregate global- and microlevel data are analyzed to identify concentrations of innovation and firm-level activity. Emerging hubs of knowledge and firm creation in biomedical industries, including biopharmaceuticals, are identified. Aggregate data is supplemented with firm-level case studies and interviews with entrepreneurs, government officials, incubation managers, and investors. The conceptual framework outlined in Chapter 1 and specified in Chapter 2 provides the lens through which innovation and entrepreneurship strategies in China, India, Japan, and Singapore are viewed. The analysis is supplemented with firm-level entrepreneurial case studies. 3Classic Technonationalism in Japan chapter abstractJapan's strengths in intellectual property production have since the 1990s failed to translate into globally competitive new-product and new-business creation. Insular institutions and business practices have created ""sticky"" networks. These structures, while protecting weak industries from global competition, have trapped nascent entrepreneurs and undermined human-capital development. Yet Japan remains the largest market for biomedical products and services in Asia. Its aging population is driving ever-increasing health care consumption, while the shrinking size of its working population means that growth must be based on productivity gains. These demographics provide opportunities for foreign firms and investors to enter Japan, potentially enriching Japanese networks in the future. The Japanese state has encouraged international science and technology collaborations since 2000, which has led to growth in international copatenting, a potential first step to broader internationalization and open networks. 4New Networked Technonationalism in China chapter abstractFeatures of China's networked technonationalism (NTN) include aggressive science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and entrepreneurship policies. Further, the biomedical industry has been identified by political and economic leaders as a ""strategic emerging industry"" and has become a focal point of state-led economic development. In contrast to Japan's insular and closed (""sticky"") domestic knowledge and business networks, since the 1970s China's expatriate and diaspora returnee communities and active inward FDI have contributed to evolving globally competitive business networks. Over time, China used its growing domestic market as a lure to foreign firms from which technology appropriation can occur. However, China's population size and urban-rural disparities mean that egalitarian redistribution of new wealth has not been guaranteed in this system. Further, introduction of Western chemical pharmaceuticals threaten traditional medicine and therapies. 5From Closed to Open in India chapter abstractDecades ago, led by the technonational rhetoric of self-reliance and improvement in human health, India delayed opening its market. Consequently, India spent decades on import substitution and other exclusionary policies in a classic technonational system architecture like Japan. Later, India invested in generic-drug research and development and production capacity, complemented by advances in information technology. State-led human-capital development—for example, in the semi-independent Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs)—targeted initially information technology and more recently has focused on biomedicine. Expatriate and diaspora returnee networks of Indian professionals, via its networked technonational architecture, since the 1990s have contributed to the development of innovative capacity and new ventures, but at a slower pace than in China. 6Singapore chapter abstractSingapore's developmental model had to be based within its multiethnic Chinese, Indian, and Malay population and from its very inception was global in outlook. Its meritocratic Economic Development Board (EDB) and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) tied inward FDI to domestic human-capital development and redistribution of internationally derived wealth to its domestic population. Its ""guppies to whales"" human-capital development programs contributed to productivity gains through attracting the region's best and brightest STEM youth and offering them citizenship. While the Singaporean city-state's small population has proven an impediment to establishing a critical mass of new technology entrepreneurs, open immigration policies have the potential to fast-track future developments. However, indigenous Singaporeans have been displaced in this process. 7Conclusion chapter abstractChapter 7 summarizes the key findings of the book, reflecting on the framework of networked technonationalism and the conceptual typology of knowledge and networks. It compares variations in networked technonationalism as measured by variation in the knowledge and network architecture and governance regimes in China, India, Japan, and Singapore. The book concludes with theory and policy implications of networked technonationalism for Asia and the world economy."

Reviews

In Beyond Technonationalism, Ibata-Arens encourages us to look beyond the Asian developmental state model, noting how the model is increasingly unsuited for first-order innovation in the biomedical sector. She situates state policies and strategies in the technonationalist framework and argues that while all economies are technonationalist to some degree, in China, India, Singapore and Japan, the processes by which the innovation-driven state has emerged differ in important ways. Beyond Technonationalism is comparative analysis at its best. That it examines some of the world's most important economies makes it a timely and important read. -- Joseph Wong, Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation Munk School of Global Affairs * University of Toronto * Ibata-Arens examines how tacit knowledge enables technology development and how business, academic, and kinship networks foster knowledge creation and transfer. The empirically rich cases treat networked technonationalist biotech strategies with Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Singaporean characteristics. Essential reading for industry analysts of global bio-pharma and political economists seeking an alternative to tropes of economic liberalism and statist mercantilism. -- Kenneth A. Oye, Professor of Political Science and Data, Systems, and Society * Massachusetts Institute of Technology * Kathryn Ibata-Arens, who has excelled in her work on the development of technology in Japan, has here extended her research to consider the development of techno-nationalism in other Asian countries as well: China, Singapore, and India. She finds that these countries now pursue techno-nationalism by linking up with international developments to keep up with the latest technology in the United States and elsewhere. The book is a creative and original analysis of the changing nature of techno-nationalism. -- Ezra F. Vogel * Harvard University * Kathryn Ibata-Arens masterfully weaves a comparative story of how ambitious states in Asia are promoting their bio-tech industry by cleverly linking domestic efforts with global forces. Empirically rich and analytically insightful, she reveals by creatively eschewing liberalism and selectively using nationalism, states are both promoting entrepreneurship and innovation in their bio-medical industry and meeting social, health, and economic challenges as well. -- Anthony P. D'Costa, Eminent Scholar in Global Studies and Professor of Economics, University of Alabama * Huntsville *

Author Information

Kathryn C. Ibata-Arens is Vincent de Paul Professor of Political Science and Director of the Global Asian Studies Program at DePaul University. She is the author of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan: Politics, Organizations, and High Technology Firms.

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