Introduction

A major theme of this book is the relationship between competition and cooperation in the Japanese industrial electronics industry. This relationship has been analysed in detail in the previous chapters, largely on the basis of intensive interviews with the representatives of Japanese companies, government and universities. In a number of areas, however, it was felt that greater precision was required. For example, when a respondent said there was ‘strong competition’ between his firm and another and that this influenced the extent of research cooperation between the two companies it was felt useful to attempt to quantify the degree of competition and to compare it with that existing with other companies. There was a similar need when, for instance, a respondent estimated that the finance provided in a government-initiated national cooperative search project was ‘very important’ for his company.

Accordingly, a questionnaire was prepared and sent to very senior research managers in four of the major Japanese industrial electronics companies. In order to preserve confidentiality it will only be said that these four companies were drawn from the following group: Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Oki and Toshiba. One questionnaire was completed for each of the national cooperative research projects examined in this book (with the exception of the VLSI Project).

The intensity of competition between the companies participating in the national projects

The conventional methods for measuring competition are not particularly helpful in the present case. This applies, for example, to concentration ratios, the Herfindahl index, and market share.