Testing techno-globalism in ministry of international trade and industry R&D consortia

Abstract

In 1989, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) opened all its R&D consortia to foreign participation on more liberal terms than those offered by publicly sponsored consortia in the USA and the European Union. MITI calls this policy 'techno-globalism'.This article assesses MITI's techno-globalism with case studies of the ministry's two most controversial international consortia-the Real World Computing Program and the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Initiative.The article argues that MITI learned from mistakes made in research consortia during the 1980s and is adapting to its diminished leverage over Japanese firms with consortia that offer greater flexibility in organization and research goals.The article also examines the structure of contemporary consortia in terms of techno-nationalism. It contends that Richard Samuels' notion of techno-national ideology fails to capture the nuances across MITI's international consortia which cover a range of technologies and forms of collaboration.These programs are not the efficient mechanisms for indigenizing foreign technologies that techno-national ideology suggests. Moreover, internationalization is not simply a token gesture. MITI has limited itself to a strategy of international co-operation across all programs-not just ones where Japan trails the state-of-the-art. In 1989, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), the ministry most closely associated with Japan's post-war industrial policy, opened all its large-scale research programs to