This is a great example of the Japanese maxim: “The nail that sticks out is hammered back in.”
I’ve written a lot about Shuji Nakamura, the Japanese research scientist from Nichia Chemicals who developed the blue Light Emitting Diode (LED.) Nakamura was heralded as a hero by many everyday working Japanese because:
- he developed a technology that labs around the world had been unable to build
- he developed this technology in a small, back-water lab in Southern Japan (i.e. not a leading global research institution)
- he did so in an environment of little-to-no-support from his own company
- the technology that he built, enabled the creation of millions of new products that we use everyday from LED traffic lights, to DVD players to LCD televisions, and many other products
The start of the sad part of the story is that Nakamura was paid a $200 bonus for his ground-breaking, highly-profitable work. Nichia’s blue LED patents made (and continues to make) the company hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
So Nakamura left Nichia, moved to the US and is now teaching at UC Santa Barbara. He sued Nichia and after many years of struggle, last year Nakamura won an award of $194 million. Nichia then appealed the case to the second-highest court in Japan, and the award was just recently reduced to a paltry $8 million.
Nakamura’s bitterness is extremely palpable:
“Japan is treating people as though they’re all robots,” he said. “I’m so lucky I work in the United States. I can’t imagine working in Japan again.”
“The judicial system in Japan is rotten,” Nakamura said. “I am outraged. That’s all I have to say.”
The problem is, Nakamura’s right on both counts.
If Japanese companies don’t compensate appropriately for ground-breaking, highly-profitable work, then you can rest assured that there will be no ground-breaking, highly-profitable work done.
If Japanese courts side with the company and not the individual, there’s no recourse for the lone inventor, the lone businessman. Notwithstanding the fact that Japan is a nation of groups, where the individual is much less valued than the group (the company, etc.)
While I am sadly not surprised by the actions of this Japanese court in this case, it is a horrible precedent for Japan.
Do not expect ground-breaking, extraordinary work from Japanese people in big companies. If there isn’t an incentive to do so, and there’s actually dis-incentives to doing so.
Japanese Inventor Critizes Settlement [yahoo.com]
the nail that sticks out…
My friend Gen recently wrote on his blog about Shuji Nakamura, the guy the invented the Blue LED and who didn’t get anything for it.
It reminds me of Japanese school. In one class we would watch “Project X”, a program about Japanese corporate history…
Ouch.
This reminds me of James Burke’s “Connections” series where he traces the histories of various world changing technologies over time.. after a few episodes, he takes a moment aside to wonder why it seems that so many things that totally reshaped the western world (gun powder, magnetic needles/compass, printing, etc) had been around, in most cases, for centuries in their country of origin, China, with no such transformative effects… the conclusion he comes to is sociological: there was absolutely no incentive to be innovative. You have your place in the hierarchy and no matter what you do, you’ll never move. So why bother…
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$8 million? It’s a lot less than $194 million but I’m sure it’s still a lot more than what many research scientists get.
As for “If Japanese companies don’t compensate appropriately for ground-breaking, highly-profitable work, then you can rest assured that there will be no ground-breaking, highly-profitable work done. ” – isn’t this actually a clear example that in fact the work is done despite the fact that no (financial) incentives exist?
I would have some sympathy towards the idea that in some senses Japanese management culture is somewhat resistant to change, but the idea that the country that revolutionised the auto industry and electronics industry (not to mention more or less writing the book on the cellphone market for the rest of the world to follow) just doesn’t allow ground-breaking, highly profitable work is demonstrably false.
In the end the court just interprets the law as given. The amount of leeway available to the panel of judges is not at all large.
If the same happened in the United States (where scientists routinely sign contracts stating that they are not entitled to the fruits of their own research) – as I’m sure has happened many times – would you say that the US culture discourages innovation?
There is one other thing I forgot to bring up in my trackback. One reason Japanese companies can get away with this and will be able to for the forseeable future is because this is a closed society.
What do I mean by that? Well, bascially, they all only speak Japanese so they can’t leave the country for better jobs. At least most of them can’t. That means there will always be a pool of talent to be used.
I really would like to know more about this topic. Specifically from a Japanese point of view. I know often I’m told about the group think issues and how helping your company is like helping your family etc. What I don’t get is how they can’t see they are working for “the Man” as in the boss gets bank, the employees get jack. Do they not see that? If they do do they just accept it as “well, he’s the boss” as in like “well, he’s the king, so therefore he deserves it”.
I don’t know.