In this paper, I investigate a tacit needs acquisition process for industrial products by salesforce organization. Considering innovation as a process of combining needs and seeds, the tacit needs acquisition process is valuable for innovation study. Salesforce organization is the interface between customer and company as seller and salesforce organization has a potential that is to acquire customer’s tacit needs based on company owned technologies. But existing studies point out that salesforce organization does not have enough knowledge related technology so salesforce organization is not able to acquire the tacit needs. Instead of the salesforce organization, R ＆ D organization can work to acquire the tacit needs because R ＆ D organization has deep technological knowledge. But this is not acceptable discussion because customer’s tacit needs is composed not only technological factors but also various environmental factors which customer is located. If R ＆ D organization can cope with the situation which is non-technological matter, it can work successfully but typical R ＆ D organization’s purpose is to focus on technology and product development so R ＆ D organization might not be able to handle this kind of activity. As an example of acquiring the tacit needs by salesforce organization, I analyzed foreign firm A’s salesforce organization case in industrial products. The reason for choosing firm A as the example case was firm A take customer’s tacit needs by salesforce organization in order to build a competitive advantage in unclear market. For case analysis, I built an analytical framework by utilizing knowledge on existing studies and analyzed the case. As a result, I found the hypothesis of the tacit needs acquisition process to be “credit, “belief”, “dialogue”, “virtual needs”, “realizing the tacit needs”. I also presented “dialogue within salesforce organization” as an important factor to encourage each process. The concept of “ dialogue within salesforce organization” promote “dialogue between salesforce organization and customer” and the tacit needs become obvious.

University-industry R & D collaboration has been attracting much attention as an effective means to promote innovation. Also in Japan, public support has been provided to such local R & D collaboration through cluster policies. However, no empirical evaluation has been made using micro data regarding MEXT （Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology）’s knowledge cluster policies, which are comparable to the cluster policies in Europe. Thus, using micro data from public statistics and employing fixed effect panel estimation, this paper empirically examines the direct effects of these cluster policies on R & D expenditures of cluster universities and firms, on the business performance （including sales growth and productivity） of participating firms as well as its spillover effects on all manufacturing plants in cluster regions. Estimation results show that after cluster participation, ① universities and public research institutes significantly increased internal and external research expenditures and research fund from private firms, ② participating firms’ business performance did not significantly improve, and ③ manufacturing plants in cluster areas rather significantly decreased labor productivity, compared to their counterparts that were not located in cluster areas. These results suggest that MEXT’s cluster policies promoted university-industry R & D collaboration, which, however, did not induce overall growth of participating firms’ and local manufacturers’ productivity.

Nihon Kotsu Co., Ltd was one of the largest companies in the taxi industry in Japan. In the 1990s, its performance was lower and the company faced a serious crisis with huge debts. However, after the organizational change carried out by Ichiro Kawanabe （chairman, third generation of founders） in 2000, the performance of Nihon Kotsu recovered and increased. How and why Nihon Kotsu was successful with its V-shaped turnaround?

The aim of this paper is to analyze entrepreneurial behavior of Ichiro Kawanabe and the organizational change process led by him. In this analysis, the author incorporates the knowledge of the organizational identity theory to the organizational change process theory.

In summary of this case study, first, Kawanabe developed a high-quality taxi service selected by customers. Second, he increased the motivation of taxi drivers and changed their career views. Motivated taxi drivers themselves increased the quality of taxi service and tried to develop new services. Through these, Nihon Kotsu made it possible to differentiate their services on the taxi market, which were regarded difficult to differentiate.

In theory, this paper suggests the following mechanism. At the implementation stage of the organizational change process, employees are motivted to change their identity by recognizing themselves through feedback from customers and colleagues. Furthermore, empowerment and assignment of responsibility to employees will encourage employees’ business improvement behavior to go beyond the assumption of top management. The V-shaped turnaround of the performance of Nihon Kotsu was brought about by this mechanism which was activated by organizational change led by Kawanabe.