Instead of moaning about arguable unfairness of Japanese business and trade practices, William Taylor, a contributing editor of the Harvard Business Review, writing in the Wall Street Journal, argues that American companies should go on the offensive: he outlines a three-point programme suggesting that US companies should take advantage of storm-damaged share prices in Japan to buy substantial minority stakes in targeted Japanese companies, enough to buy seats on the board – he suggests that the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co, Sun Microsystems Inc and Apple Computer Inc should take advantage of their strong share prices to buy say 20% of Sharp Corp to get privileged access to its display technology; for his second measure, he proposes that companies like IBM Corp, Motorola Inc and Microsoft Corp should apply their electronic, manufacturing and financial strengths to create mass-market home entertainment and personal communications products that gizmo-addicted Japanese consumers will not be able to resist; he completes his recipe by pointing out that the US is making a mistake by treating South Korea as a mini-Japan, that the Koreans fear Japan even more than the US does, and that alliances that exchange use of Korean skills and strengths for American ones would be a far more appropriate approach – and in such a war, no-one gets hurt and everyone would benefit!
