Another "Japan Inc." attempt in Semiconductors? Time to address the white elephant in the room: governance in Japan

I recently came across this great article: « 日本の「半導体産業」は復活しない…台湾の最先端企業を誘致しても「ムダ」なワケ 技術ではない、経営が問題なのだ ».  Or “Japan's Semiconductor Industry Will Not Revive... Why Attracting Taiwan's Most Advanced Companies Is a Waste of Time: It's Not the Technology, It's the Management, by Professor Noguchi or Hitotsubashi University.  https://lnkd.in/g7DTNn9
 
But my thought is that it is beyond just management.   The decline of the Japanese semiconductor industry is prime example of the effects of an ill functioning governance system.  I am not thinking of corrupt practices but more from the perspective that management, stakeholders, shareholders and government did not have balanced discussion throughout all these years.  
 
There were a couple of inflection points that I think determined the downward trend of the Japanese semi industry from a dominating 50% share. 

1. The first was the start of TSMC, the world premier semi manufacturing outsourcer. Many players in Silicon Valley took the opportunity to off load capex heavy in-house manufacturing to focus on application-oriented products and support. the likes of NVIDIA, Broadcom, Qualcomm focused on industry segments and redefined the customer - supplier interaction and partnered with customers. Japanese semis stuck to the IDM model and remained a supplier.
2. Second was the start of solution offerings, which redefined to boundary conditions of supplier and customer, with the supplier “eating into” the customers functions. But this was done willingly as customer off-loaded some of these commoditized functions and redeployed resources to develop newer values. In Japan the customer is king, and this trend was glacial.
3.  Finally, the mentality of “all Japan” essentially limited the innovation eco-system to domestic players, whilst the rest of the world collaborated with everybody else. Japan has no monopoly over innovation so as a result missing out on innovation opportunities.

 
I believe there are many areas ripe for revival but some of the traditional Japanese practices must be tossed aside proactively to generate positive chaos and to have things to realign properly. So, it’s not just management.  
 
Japan still has major champions and leaders in the semiconductor eco-systems.  Leaders in semiconductor process equipment, test equipment, manufacturing equipment, lead frames, package compounds, wafers.  

Instead of trying to dictate industrial policies I suggest that politicians and bureaucrat should clear the road for change: incentivize employees to jump ship, encourage specialization, real tax breaks into start-up investments and simple things like banning banning sex based school and company uniforms.  Last time the government tried to create a Japan foundry, they were focusing on a manufacturing node which was already there…..