I was just reading about what Andreesen had to say why America is a good innovative country. This was a nice supplement. Thanks for the article.
FWIW, one of the most commonly believed things about Japan (domestically and internationally) that I believe is dangerously false is some variant of "Japan is not good at coming up with original ideas. It is good at perfecting ideas made elsewhere." There exist fields/time periods/etc where Japan has clear sustained leadership in innovation, just as there exist fields/time periods/etc where the same is true of the US.
"CRUD web applications between 2004 and 2014" has not been a particularly great example of Japanese technology leadership. Videogames in the 80s/90s/2000s or "Every mobile music device prior to the iPod" or "Robots, 1970 through present, excluding drones 2010-2014" or "Cell phones considered as hardware artifacts, prior to the iPhone turning them into software platforms" are all good examples.
Did anyone ever really believe that? When a company is new to a market or behind the market leader they tend to copy the leader and add their own small innovations. That's what the Japanese did in the '70s and '80s. When they took the lead in an industry they were the ones doing the innovation, for the most part.
I remember the "Japan is going to take over the world!" days. American companies (and workers) were fond of saying the Japanese never had an original idea, but even then it was obviously sour grapes from incumbents facing determined competition.
You hear the same thing about China today, and it's just as wrong.
It's not true, but that was a big driver of the sentiment.