Tech Policy, Innovation, and Startup Ecosystems: Silicon Valley, Japan and Comparative Perspectives

This course asks big questions and provides detailed analysis about how governments, policies, and politics can shape technologies, innovation, and startup ecosystems through closely examining Silicon Valley as an economic region and Japan's political economy in a comparative perspective. The course will utilize introduce scholarship about governing and shaping markets, analyses of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, and numerous specific cases of policy areas, technologies, and firms, and it will examine the experience of Japan's technological advances, historical trajectories of innovation, and its recent struggles and maturing startup ecosystem. There are no prerequisites for this course. Each class session will consist of lecture material and active discussion.