Ruth Taplin received her doctorate from the London School of Economics and has a GDL in Law. She is the author/editor of 20 books and over 200 articles, and was the first featured author for Routledge in Asian Studies. She wrote freelance for The Times newspaper for nine years on Japan, Taiwan, Korea and was a consultant to the Federation of Electronics Industry for nine years. She studied Japanese at Durham University over 20 years ago as part of a special course for future leaders in the Japanese field in the UK in tandem with the Nissan Institute, Oxford University. She is an Honorary Advisor to the Society for Interdisciplinary Business Research and is occasionally invited by the United Nations to act as an innovation expert because of her entrepreneurial experience as an innovator. Professor Taplin is the editor of Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics and Business Law (www.ijebl.co.uk) founded by her seven years ago, in addition to being Director of The Centre for Japanese and East Asian Studies, which won Exporter of the Year 2000 for Partnership in Trading/Pathfinder. She has had a number of visiting affiliations with universities globally including Visiting Professor at Osaka City University, Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw, Poland, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Mumbai in January 2007 and in January 2008/April 2009 at the University of Bacheshir in Istanbul. In 2014 she was Visiting Professor in Nepal and keynote speaker at a conference there. She has also worked for a number of law firms specialising in intellectual property around the world on a project-by-project basis using her knowledge of East Asian intellectual property and intellectual property valuation. She can be reached at ruth.taplin.ijebl@gmail.com