ARI Working Paper Series

The purpose of this paper is to understand the transition that Japan must make to regain its global economic competitiveness. It examines the significance of foreign technical talent to the Japanese high technology sector, specifically, the information and communications technology (ICT) industry.  Japan is the second largest ICT market in the world. And since ICT services such as software development is labor intensive, under unfavorable demographic developments, Japan is likely to confront shortages of talent and thus competitive challenges. Given that both the Chinese and Indian economies and ICT sectors are growing rapidly, albeit differently, my hypothesis is that there will be greater mobility of technical talent to Japan and by extension greater engagement of Japanese businesses with Asian ICT firms. This study aims to shed light on why and how Japan must adjust to globalization by bringing out the patterns of talent movement from Asian countries to Japan.