Identifying and gaining access to lead users (LUs) in the market is very costly and time-consuming. To enable more efficient access to LUs, this study examines how the proportion of embedded lead users (ELUs) of the organization as employees differs from that of LUs in the market as consumers. An organizational survey and a survey of consumers were conducted in the travel market, and differences in the distribution of lead userness were examined based on the samples obtained from these surveys. The results indicate that the proportion of individuals with high lead userness is higher within the organization than in the market. However, no significant differences in lead userness within the organization was found according to employment type.

Since the emergence of free software in the 1980s, the belief that software should be free has been quite widely held. During this period, the software developers took the leading role. As the 1990s began, there was a notable increase in the number of general users of open source software. Furthermore, developers and distro developers (who acted as both licensors and licensees, as well as users and developers) began to take a more active role in driving the direction of open source development. This period marked the emergence of the open source era, characterized by a greater convenience for distro developers. However, in the 2010s, the importance of platforms increased and previous control on licensing diminished. In other words, the history of free software and open source has been the history of how the parties holding the business initiative have been changing at each period.

Roadmap sales & marketing is a medium- to long-term solution sales & marketing conducted by teams. Compared to one off sales & marketing, the sales scale will be dozens of times. As a result, Company X changed its sales & marketing strategy from improving the efficiency of one-time sales to roadmap sales & marketing; however, the sales organization could not immediately adapt. Nevertheless, Company X adapted its sales organization through trial and error, and, as a result, achieved a dramatic increase in sales. This paper analyzes these efforts and presents them as three standardizations and one course correction mechanism. At first glance, this seems to be a case of organizational sales & marketing being superior to individual sales & marketing. However, the main aim was to switch to a superior strategy, and the organization succeeded in adapting to it later.

Based on a detailed case study of a Japanese venture firm, this study suggests that the unconscious routines practiced by entrepreneurs in innovation processes are critical. Research on organizational routines has asserted the following two points. First, when existing routines become proficient distant searches of new fields become difficult (Levitt & March, 1988; March, 1991) (the exploration problem). Second, existing routines tend to be lost during distant searches as they are impossible to combine with the outcomes of the distant searches to make new routines (Gavetti & Levinthal, 2000; Levinthal & Rerup, 2006) (the fusion problem). Nevertheless, Takao Kimura and Kimura Information Technology Co., Ltd. (KIT), discussed in this study, have succeeded in overcoming such problems to create a business with a competitive advantage. Our analysis of this process shows that if the existing routines are so proficient that they are practiced unconsciously, (1) it can help distant searches, and (2) the outcomes of the distant searches can be combined with existing routines.

To date, there has been a tendency to think that difficulty for service operations to run smoothly in healthcare organizations is attributed to resistance by professionals to changes in practices. By contrast, in the Kurashiki Chuo Hospital case reported in this paper, the true cause that obstructed safe and smooth service operations was in fact a lack of communication between units.