NEC: A new R&D site in Princeton

The Japanese have historically been "absorbing" innovations from Western countries through reading the latest publications in English, which was a good strategy when they were behind. Japanese (especially in large organizations) have a strong "the nail that sticks out gets hammered" tendency, keeping innovative individuals from working with their full potential. Strangely they tend to worship Western innovations (anything coming from the US) more or less blindly instead. NEC had research labs in Japan by then (Shinoda had been the president) but it was perhaps the case that the atmosphere was not suitable for long-term basic researches with freedom. But problems started to surface as they were catching up with the technology level, and, the NEC lab story can be regarded as a struggle to deal with such external changes.
NEC was established in 1899 as a joint U.S and Japanese enterprise, as a telephone manufacturer, financed by Western Electric Company. After the Second World Wa...