Since the 1990s, Japanese firms have sought to expand their capacity for innovation by incorporating Western management practices into their organizational culture. This combination of Japanese and Western management practices has been highly successful — Japanese firms are presently at the forefront of technological and service innovation in areas such as digital consumer electronics, mobile phone services, and the games industry. Much can be learned from the success of Japanese companies in these areas.This book presents an analysis of the business model unique to Japanese firms, emphasising four special features: the vertical value chain model, cross-industry collaboration, dynamic knowledge integration, and strategic innovation capability. Drawing upon in-depth case studies, this book presents a new theory of knowledge integration, and places special emphasis on inter- and intra-organizational collaboration as a source of strategic innovation. It is a good reference source for academics, graduate students and professionals in the field of innovation management.

Presents an analysis of the business model unique to Japanese firms, emphasising four special features: the vertical value chain model, cross-industry collaboration, dynamic knowledge integration, and strategic innovation capability. This book also emphasises on inter- and intra-organizational collaboration as a source of strategic innovation.

Illustrating the interdisciplinary implications for research on creativity development, this book focuses on the new concept of ‘knowledge differences’ that arise between people, organizations and various phenomena. It describes how these key differences create boundaries knowledge, a dynamic process that accelerates innovation.

Strategic innovation dynamically brings about strategic positioning through new products, services and business models, and is a dynamic view of strategy that enables a corporation to maintain its competitive advantage and establish sustainable growth. For these reasons, corporations have to be innovators that can reinforce their existing positions through incremental innovation, while at the same time constantly renewing or destroying existing business through radical innovation. This book presents a holistic theoretical model, The Strategic Innovation System, as a system of capabilities for companies to achieve strategic innovation. As a subsystem of the Strategic Innovation System, this book presents the concept of the “Capabilities Building Map”, which has characteristics of four different capabilities that correspond to the elements of speed of changes and uncertainty in the environment faced by companies. It explores how companies can change and even evolve their capabilities to achieve strategic innovation, using the latest findings of the systems-view, the process-view, and dynamic capabilities-view. The author evaluates management systems that achieve sustainable strategic innovation by utilizing knowledge assets inside and outside of organizations, including those of leaders, rather than simply relying on leaders with strong will. This book will primarily appeal to academics, researchers, and graduate students interested in innovation and technology management, digital transformation as well as strategic management and strategy planning and a broader business audience.

Exploring the theoretical concept of collaborative dynamic capabilities, this book illustrates how service innovation can be achieved in an era of technological convergence. Focusing on e-healthcare systems within hospitals and private businesses, the author provides detailed case studies and answers topical questions about generating service innovation across different industries. Making a new and thought-provoking contribution to research on innovation and technology management, this useful book engages with theory and provides applicable solutions for practitioners to implement in the future.

Innovation in technology and services was once the result of specialist knowledge developed within a single corporation; now, a single focus on the development of new products and services is no longer enough. In Interactive Business Communities, Mitsuru Kodama shows how a new business approach can enable managers to access, share and integrate diverse knowledge both inside and outside the corporation using Boundary Networks to operate across more formal organizational and knowledge boundaries at all levels. Drawing on his studies of large corporations in America and the Far East, Mitsuru, shows how different companies have already started to take this path. He explains the kind of networks and strategic partnerships that have emerged and gives practical guidelines on how to begin forming in-house business communities and extending this to interactive business communities with customers and other organizations. This book is a valuable resource for business educators and researchers, and senior executives responsible for strategy, particularly in high-tech industries, will find insights and ideas to tackle 21st century market and business discontinuities.

With recent advances in IT in areas such as AI and IoT, collaboration systems such as business chat, cloud services, conferencing systems, and unified communications are rapidly becoming widely used as new IT applications in global corporations’ strategic activities. Through in-depth longitudinal studies of global corporations, the book presents a new theoretical framework and implications for IT-enabled dynamic capabilities using collaboration systems from the perspective of micro strategy theory and organization theory. The content of the book is based on longitudinal analyses that employ various qualitative research methods including ethnography, participant observation, action research and in-depth case studies of global corporations in Europe, the United States and Asia that actively use collaboration systems. It presents a new concept of micro dynamism whereby dynamic "IT-enabled knowledge communities" such as "IT-enabled communities of practice" and "IT-enabled strategic communities" create "IT-enabled dynamic capabilities" through the integration of four research streams - an information systems view, micro strategy view, micro organization view and knowledge-based view. The book demonstrates that collaboration systems create, maintain and develop "IT-enabled knowledge communities" within companies and are strategic IT applications for enhancing the competitiveness of companies in the ongoing creation of new innovation and the realization of sustainable growth in a 21st century knowledge-based society. This book is primarily written for academics, researchers and graduate students, but will also offer practical implications for business leaders and managers. Its use is anticipated not only in business and management schools, graduate schools and university education environments around the world but also in the broad business environment including management and leadership development training.