Ulrike Schaede

Ulrike Schaede (ウリケ・シェーデ) is professor of Japanese business at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS). She is the founding director of the Japan Forum for Innovation and Technology (JFIT), and the faculty coordinator of the International Management track at GPS.

Schaede’s research focuses on Japanese business organization, strategy and management. Her main interest is to explore Japan’s business system and political economy, with the goals to analyze different systems of capitalism and ways of organizing business, and to identify the social and economic efficiency consequences of these differences. 

Her 2020 book, “The Business Reinvention of Japan: How to Make Sense of the New Japan and Why It Matters” (Stanford University Press 2020), won the 2021 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize from Japan, as well as the 2021 U.S. Axiom Business Book Award (silver medal, “Economics”). In 2022, it was published in Japanese as 再興 THE KAISHA 日本のビジネス・リインベンション by Nikkei BP. 

In 2022, Schaede also published a monograph titled “The Digital Transformation and Japan’s Political Economy” (with Kay Shimizu), at Cambridge University Press.

She is also the author of "Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century" (Cornell UP), and co-author of “Creating Ambidextrous Organizations: Exploration and Exploitation for Overcoming Inertia” (両利きの組織をつくる: 大企業病を打破する攻めと守りの経営, Eiji Shuppan 2020, in Japanese). In addition, she has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and company case studies. Her website, www.thejapanologist.com, features a blog on contemporary topics in Japanese business, society and political economy.

At JFIT, Schaede runs a weekly webinar series called JAPAN ZOOMINAR @ UC SAN DIEGO, where she discusses contemporary Japan with global scholars, business leaders and industry experts. In the classroom, she teaches GPS’s international management capstone class (“Strategy and Negotiation”) and a management class titled “Managing Business Reinvention in a Disrupted World.” For the Japan Focus of the MIA degree, she has taught the required “Business and Management in Japan,” as well as “Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan.”

Schaede is Associate Editor of The Journal of the Japanese and International Economies. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR Asia) in Seattle. In Japan, she is a member of the Advisory Board of IGPI, Inc., as well as a research fellow and supporter of ICF, “Initiative to Co-Create the Future” at Mitsubishi Research Institute, and  LINK-J, the “Life Science Innovation Network Japan.” She also serves on the advisory board of the IN-EAST program at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

Schaede is trilingual (English, German, Japanese), and has spent more than nine years of study and research in Tokyo, Japan. She has been invited as a visiting professor to Hitotsubashi University, as well as the research institutes of the Bank of Japan, Japan's Ministry of Finance, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Development Bank of Japan. She has also been a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, the Harvard Business School and Stanford University.

Education and CV

Ph.D., Japanese Studies and Economics, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, 1989
M.A., Japanese Studies and Economics, Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität Bonn, Germany, 1987
Translator's Diploma in Japanese, Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität Bonn, Germany, 1985

CV

GPS Spotlight

Expertise

Schaede is an expert in Japanese business and management, including corporate strategies by large and small firms, corporate governance and private equity, employment and HR practices, innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as government-business relations, regulation, financial markets and antitrust. She has published and commented on many aspects of the Japanese economy, and closely follows corporate developments and business matters in Japan.

Research Areas

Schaede has authored and co-authored eight books, including the award-winning “The Business Reinvention of Japan: How to Make Sense of the New Japan and Why It Matters” (Stanford University Press 2020), “Creating Ambidextrous Organizations: Exploration and Exploitation for Overcoming Inertia” (両利きの組織をつくる: 大企業病を打破する攻めと守りの経営, Eiji Shuppan 2020, in Japanese only), "Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century," (Cornell UP 2008), "Japan's Managed Globalization: Adapting to the 21st Century" (M.E. Sharpe 2003), and "Cooperative Capitalism: Self-Regulation, Trade Associations and the Antimonopoly Law in Japan" (Oxford UP 2000).

Her latest publication is “The Digital Transformation and Japan’s Political Economy” (with Kay Shimizu, Cambridge UP, 2022).

For further publications and current research output, please visit her CV or her personal website, TheJapanologist.com, esp. here.