Unleashing Innovation the East Asian Way: Startup Ecosystems in Japan, South Korea and China

This Open Access book provides a new perspective on startup ecosystems in East Asia – a region which has over decades shaped innovation and global competition. It specifically focuses on Japan, South Korea and Mainland China. The study of startup ecosystems in East Asia is of relevance not only because of their size and performance, but also because they continue to differ from their counterparts in Western countries in important ways. Country chapters sketch the dynamic development of East Asian startup ecosystems along diverse paths due to particular national conditions. Such differences matter for our understanding of startup ecosystems in general and their possible role for economic policy. East Asian startup ecosystems are mostly neglected by mainstream academic research in search for a universal model. The book systematically analyzes and compares startup ecosystems in East Asia considering their wider historical and national contexts. In this way, both commonalities and differences across East Asia are discerned. The chapters use both secondary sources as well as data from the authors’ decade long collaborative work. The book aims to make these findings, which have so far only been presented in academic journals, accessible to a wider readership.

Ying Cheng is an Associate Professor of Management at the School of Economics and Business Administration in Chongqing University, China, with a PhD in Business Economics from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Her research focuses on institutional complexity and entrepreneurship, particularly women’s entrepreneurship empowerment and technology startup incubation. 

Adam Cross is Professor of International Business and currently serves as Associate Vice-President for Education (AVP-E) and Academic Director of the Graduate School at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), Suzhou, China. 

Martin Hemmert is Professor of Global Business at Korea University. He received his doctoral degree at the University of Cologne and has held research and teaching positions at DIJ Tokyo, the University of Duisburg-Essen, the National University of Singapore, Hitotsubashi University, and Keio University. His research interests include international comparative studies of management systems, innovation systems and entrepreneurial ecosystems, organizational boundaries of firms and inter-organizational research collaborations, with a focus on East Asian countries. 

Agata Kapturkiewicz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Management, Faculty of Economics at Sophia University in Tokyo. She received her doctoral degree (DPhil) in Management from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford in 2021 and afterwards worked in the School of Commerce at Waseda University in Tokyo. Her research interests center on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial ecosystems, organization theory, and comparative research. 

Masahiro Kotosaka is Professor at Keio University and an Associate Fellow of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He is an expert in Internationalization strategy and early-stage business development, and advisor to several global start-up/multinational companies. He graduated from the University of Oxford with D.Phil. (Ph.D) in Management Studies and MSc in Management Research with Distinction. 

Franz Waldenberger is Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo. He is on leave from Munich University, where he holds a professorship for Japanese Economy. He received his PhD in economics and his habilitation from Cologne University. His research on the Japanese economy has covered many areas including industrial organization, employment, financial system, industrial policy, monetary policy and international trade. His current work focuses on corporate governance and knowledge infrastructures. At the DIJ he has, among others, implemented a research cluster on the digital transformation. He is editor in chief of the international peer reviewed journal Contemporary Japan.