The economic performances of Japan and the United States have contrasted sharply over the past two decades, with Japan's boom in the 1980s and the strong U.S. recovery in the 1990s exposing differences in management styles and the changing nature of models of success.

"In the 1980s, Japan emerged as the strongest economy in the world. The U.S. experienced stagnant growth beginning in the 1970s and throughout the 1980s," recalled professor Donald L. Stevens, managing director of the Institute for International Business at the University of Colorado at Denver.

That, however, changed over the last decade.