Chapter 6 will compare how shareholders in the three countries monitor management by voice from the perspective of the tradeoff between management autonomy and monitoring management. Japanese and Chinese corporate laws give shareholders wider decision-making power compared to the US corporate law. On the other hand, Japanese and Chinese corporate laws provide an ambiguous fiduciary duty of directors, which allows management to balance stakeholder interests, while the US law provides a strict fiduciary duty to shareholders. The three countries share similar disclosure regulations, both by corporate law and securities regulation. Institutionalization of stock ownership structure strengthened shareholder activism since the 1990s in the United States, and now Japan is catching up. In China, shareholder activism is historically nearly absent; however, the China Securities Investor Service Center (ISC) has raised a substantial number of shareholder activism cases and has become influential in Chinese corporate governance.

Chapter 11 compares incentive bargaining of law-making in the three countries, focusing on corporate law and securities regulations. Section 11.1 describes major lawmakers and law-making procedures by categorizing corporate law and securities regulations into statutory law, case law, and soft law. The distinct characteristic of US corporate law is the existence of competition among states. In Japan, drafters of statutory corporate law and securities regulations are bureaucrats of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), the Ministry of Economic, Trade, and Industries (METI), and the Financial Service Agency (FSA). In China, although the National People’s Congress (NPC) is the supreme legislative body, it delegates law-making at several levels to many agencies. Section 11.2 introduces several examples of incentive bargaining in law-making in the three countries. In the United States, legislative lobbying also took place at both the Federal and state levels. In Japan, the incentive bargaining on corporate law-making had taken place almost exclusively in the Committee of Legal Reform. Legislation of corporate law in China includes several steps of procedure and inter-agency incentive bargaining.

This chapter examines the factors which influence the entrepreneurial ecosystems in member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). We present four stylised case studies of successful entrepreneurship featuring Asian unicorns: Bitkub, PrimaKu, Bolttech and Maya. The entrepreneurial ecosystem in Singapore is vibrant, with a growing number of start-ups and venture capital funding sources. Indonesia is seen as the home of somewhat surprisingly successful ventures, whereas the entrepreneurial ecosystems of Thailand and the Philippines are still at an earlier stage of development. The region’s entrepreneurial climate has been continuously improving, facilitating the emergence of more start-ups and a more supportive ecosystem. ASEAN economies embrace digital technologies and leverage them for economic and social advancement. E-commerce businesses in ASEAN have significant growth potential.

In this chapter we discuss the case of the Russian unicorn Yandex, also known as the ‘Russian Google’. The company has become one of the largest information technology (IT) champions in Russia over the years and seemed to be unaffected by government, political interests and geopolitical tensions. In 2022, after the military conflict with Ukraine triggered severe economic sanctions on Russia, the company experienced political pressures both from the sanctioning countries and its home country government. We analyse the journey of Yandex, which started as a national IT unicorn, and shed light on its transformation into a state-affiliated enterprise in a dynamic situation of geopolitical reshuffling.

Since the late 2000s, the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region has seen an acceleration of growth in technology-based entrepreneurship, particularly in the e-commerce, fintech, logistics and transportation sectors. However, in a region with a combined population of more than 450 million and a GDP of US$3.5 trillion, coupled with unlimited prospects across a diverse portfolio of economic sectors, having only ten unicorns means they remain rare. This chapter shares the historical evolution and profiles of these unicorns and soon-to-be unicorns (soonicorns) in the region as of 2023. The existing supporting ecosystem is analysed in terms of talent, investments, markets, regulations and enablers as well as what needs to change to scale and maximise their impact. The key findings indicate that while the current unicorns are based in only three MENA markets: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, their scope of operations and reach is regional; unicorns support and build on regional integration and complementarities between markets, talent and investments. Regionalisation is the key enabler for expanding the number of technology-based unicorns in MENA.

Benjamin Means is John T. Campbell Chair in Business and Professional Ethics at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law. He is the founding director of the United States’ first law-school-based family business program, where he has developed an innovative curriculum to prepare law students to represent family business owners. His scholarly work, published in top journals, has established a new field of legal academic inquiry.

Start-ups are newly established companies often focused on technology and with the aim of creating innovative products or services. As they often begin with limited resources and a lean team, one of the biggest challenges for them is scalability. Untangling the triggers that help turn a start-up into a company valued at over US$ 1 billion is a pending task. In this chapter, we study three Brazilian unicorns and their scalability triggers by looking at the interaction between the start-up’s distinctive competencies and market opportunities as revealed by the Canvas business model tool.

One of the key concepts of this book is “incentive bargaining.” We view the firm as an ongoing joint project, which requires both monetary and human capital. There are two main groups of indispensable capital providers to the joint project: (1) management and employees as the human capital providers; and (2) shareholders and creditors as the monetary capital providers. These two groups need to motivate other capital providers to provide their capital to maximize their own payoff. The bargaining among the indispensable capital providers that motivates each player to provide its capital to the joint project will be called “incentive bargaining.” Incentive bargaining among the four players in a stock corporation is made not as a multilateral bargaining but as a complex of three bilateral bargaining processes via management. The way of incentive bargaining, or incentive pattern, in each country can be categorized into either the balancing image, the monitoring image, or the bargaining image, based on the way of coalition among the four players.

This chapter focuses on China’s rise as an innovation leader. It examines the key actors in China’s innovation system and highlights the prime role of the state in China’s science and technology trajectory. It also underscores the ‘innovation chain’ concept recently embraced by China’s leadership. The chapter then focuses on the key role of technology hubs and the increased participation of Chinese enterprises (especially tech firms) in the transformation of China into a technology and innovation powerhouse and the birthplace of unicorns.

Chapter 4 delves into the intricate relationship between marriage and family-owned businesses, highlighting how marital dynamics can profoundly affect business governance and ownership. In family enterprises co-owned by spouses, the intersection of marital and business relationships creates complex legal and practical challenges, especially when navigating disputes or divorce. This chapter examines how marital agreements – such as prenuptial and postnuptial contracts – can help clarify ownership rights and protect business assets from being entangled in personal disputes. Through case studies involving high-profile family business divorces, the chapter illustrates the risks of poorly drafted agreements and the importance of proactive planning. It also explores how courts balance marital and business law when ownership interests overlap, emphasizing that effective family business governance must anticipate and manage the potential disruption posed by changes in marital status.

This chapter explores the evolving unicorn landscape in China, from the ‘established’ disruptors of the 2010s to the more recent breed of unicorns, reflecting the changes in the domestic and global business environment. We use short case studies to review the innovation strategies of Chinese companies and show the respective roles of the incumbents and the new start-ups and innovators in China’s innovation ecosystem.

This is a book focusing on a comparative analysis of business systems primarily involving and surrounding the firms/enterprises across three leading economies in the world, that is, the United States, China, and Japan. The book will discuss one basic question: how does law matter to business practice, together with the markets and social norms of each jurisdiction? The book’s framework is as follows: the firm acts as a forum for incentive bargaining among four major participants: management and employees as human capital providers, creditors, and shareholders as monetary capital providers. Each participant will bargain with each other to maximize its own payoff based on exogenous factors: the situation of various markets (products, labor, intellectual property rights, and capital), social norms (e.g., shareholder value maximization model and stakeholder model), and enterprise law. This book will include the government as the fifth player of this game in the sense that the government provides indispensable resources (physical, social, and legal infrastructures) to the firm, shares the pie via tax revenue, and bargains with the other four players.