The challenge and response of Japan´s corporate research institutes in the 21st century

The environment surrounding Japanese companies has changed immensely as the result of various factors. Some commonly known matters include the extended downturn in the country´s domestic economy in 1990s, the trend of attaching more importance to individualism with the advance of the knowledge-based society, the advancement of IT, and expansion of the relative importance given to financial economics. The former two are domestic factors, while the latter two are global factors. To date, Japanese industry has adhered to technological innovation and maintained a tendency to neglect the revolutionary movement to novel business models. The most important fact in the construction of a business model is to fully understand the future direction of the economy; thus one must closely analyze the main flow of business today. It is the business manager, not the IT specialist, that should assume the responsibility for designing business models, and corporate research institutes must play an important roles here as well. Designing a business model is completely different from designing operational procedures, and it must include strategic decision-making. What signals should be read from market trends, which data and analysis models should be used for reading such signals, what kinds of measures should be taken therein; all of these questions must be studied and resolved by corporate research institutes. The roles to be played by these facilities continue to grow in importance. If provided with the ability to learn using proper business models and techniques, the business scale of major corporations will produce decisive advantages over the competition