Europe should learn from the mistakes Japan made in the 1990s, Japanese innovation leaders say
Hiroshi Komiyama, chairman of the Science and Technology in Society forum. Photo credits: European Parliament
For the past 30 years, Japan’s economy has been stagnant. Europe now faces comparable problems and must urgently learn from Japan, according to Hiroshi Komiyama, chairman of the Science and Technology in Society (STS) forum, a Kyoto-based business conference.
“Europe has the advantage of being able to learn from Japan's experience without having to live through three lost decades first,” he told Science|Business. “The question is whether European policymakers will move with the urgency the situation demands.”
He pointed to several barriers to growth that Japan faced in the 1990s and that Europe faces now. These include insufficient risk capital, weak research commercialisation pathways, fragmented markets and risk-averse institutional investors.
All are familiar themes from the debate on EU competitiveness that has dominated EU policy making for the past two years, from https://sciencebusiness.net/news/fp10/high-power-report-urges-big…
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