It's the Black Ships, round II. JETRO reports that foreign direct investment into Japan leaped 89.4 percent last year, topping $10 billion for the first time in history. Making those investments pay off is the next great challenge. Bill Farrell, a consultant and former executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, offers indispensable assistance with "Crisis and Opportunity in a Changing Japan."
Parse that title, beginning with the last bit. Farrell is convinced that Japan is changing. Of course, the country has always been good at adapting to circumstances, and adopting foreign ideas as seems necessary. Under the pressure of a decade-long economic crisis and a structural transformation of the international political and economic environment, the pace of change has picked up. In a recent interview, Farrell called this "accelerated incrementalism."
The trick, he argues, is to exploit the pace of change. That brings us to the first half of his title, "crisis and opportunity."