In a cross-sectional survey of seven companies, Takahashi (1996b) discovered a U-shaped curve, with (a) newly hired employees and long-time employees tending to have a high perspective index, and with (b) those with 5–10 years of service tending to be at the bottom of the index. This paper is an examination of Company X, using 12 years of exhaustive survey data. We found that (a) for data in all years, the trend was represented by a similar U-shaped curve, with recent hires and long-time employees being high on the perspective index, and with (b) those at the bottom of the perspective index having shifted over time. This points to the existence of a generation that holds a relatively low perspective index regardless of their number of years of service with the company. This phenomenon seems to develop as the number of years of service increases.

The time pressure felt by consumers in a limited time situation has long been of interest. However, there have been no discussions in the existing literature regarding time pressure in long-term time constraints, which run from a few days to a few weeks for limited time edition products. In this research, a web survey was conducted on how the perceived quality of limited edition products with time constraints changed with the strength of time constraints in limited edition products. Results showed that limited edition products with a time constraint of 1 week were assessed to be of higher quality than those that had a time constraint of 1 month, with consumers feeling stronger time pressure.

Watts and Dodds (2007) showed that in a simulation, supporters of opinion leaders have larger influence than opinion leaders themselves. In this paper, a case analysis was done of an anonymous housewife who created a network and acquired supporters on a social network and then started an apparel brand. The analysis revealed that influence strengthens by having both (a) a network centered around an opinion leader and (b) a complete network with six hardcore fans acting as supporters.

The word “Galapagos” has garnered attention in Japan as an explanation for the loss of global competitiveness by the Japanese economy and Japanese companies, even while the Japanese companies are competitive domestically. The term has particularly been used with mobile phones in Japan, which are known as “Galapagos ke-tai.” An analysis of newspaper articles showed that discussions on Galapagos mobile phones were primarily about technology, technology standards, and features. However, smartphones that looked like Galapagos ke-tai came to be called “Garaho” later, and the term Galapagos then took on the meaning of appearance.

In existing research on new product development, it has been believed that the product development by companies needs to reflect the changes in customer needs. Particularly, for products in which continual development is a characteristic, customer needs must be addressed at multiple points in time. However, by comparing the cases of two companies from the online game industry, we found that long-term performance of a company which responded flexibly suffered a drop, with the ratio of new users dropping and the user attrition rate increasing. Therefore, we believed that too much attention was paid to the requests of lead users.