Apple enjoys only 15% of industry unit sales but garners over 80% of the industry’s operating profit. However, almost of all Android smartphone vendors suffer from low profitability. This situation seems to break the rule of both the winner-take-all competition in the network goods market and economies of scale. In this paper, I unveil why asymmetrical profitability exists in the smartphone industry, by analyzing a consumer survey to discover both the horizontal competition between operating systems and the vertical competition between Android handsets.

The objective of this paper is to propose a new framework that can analyze the case in which existing non-platform businesses are exposed to the envelopment attack of powerful platformers and help the former develop strategies for counterattacks against the latter. The envelopment attack has become a serious problem for existing non-platform businesses with the arrival of Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (GAFA) and the 5G Era in which giant platformers including GAFA are wielding power with boundless ambition to invade existing business areas that were previously seen as irrelevant to platforms.

What was proposed is the crossing-type framework of platform strategy. It was constructed by synthesizing existing theories—the theory of platform strategy and the theory of dynamic strategy (proposed by Kawai). From the perspective of existing theories, the constructed framework implies their extension. For the theory of platform strategy, it is an extension of platform envelopment strategy specifically in its practical usage. For the theory of dynamic strategy, it is an extension of its external validity to two-sided (or multi-sided) markets.

This study discusses the interaction of alliance governance and inter-partner diversity by considering two forms of alliance governance, namely contractual governance and relational governance, as well as two types of inter-partner diversity, namely diversity of corporate culture and diversity of capabilities. Based on the empirical analysis using the data of 457 alliance samples from survey to alliance managers, it was clarified that contractual governance is effective in governing diversity of capabilities, while relational governance is effective in governing diversity of corporate culture. It was also shown that other approaches to govern the diversities are counterproductive. The results of this study point out the importance of matching a proper alliance governance to inter-partner diversity in realizing good performance of alliances.

The meaning of work has changed due to changes in the economic environment such as a decreased labor force and economic fluctuations. Japan’s domestic labor market continues to be characterized by the dominance of job-seekers, due to the human labor shortage. In this context, companies need to create workplaces that satisfy the needs and desires of both consumers and employees. Many people judge the “motivation” for their job based on working conditions, including monetary compensation and relationships with colleagues, but the variables that influence work motivation vary over time. The authors conducted a questionnaire survey among non-regular employees of three major food and beverage chain stores and extracted the factors that affected work motivation. The results confirmed that non-regular employees rate relationships with colleagues and managers as more important than other work-related factors, such as wages.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the externalization process of tacit customer needs for industrial products. Tacit customer needs are not articulated well, creating highly sticky information that depends on customer context. If a firm can extract tacit customer needs from this context, it would become a source of competitive advantage. This paper focuses on sales organization and the interface between customer and firm. This interface has the potential to decipher tacit customer needs based on firm-owned technologies. Our research employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Qualitative interview data were collected from five employees belonging to a sales organization at a precision equipment manufacturer, Japan Equipment (JE), a pseudonym. For the quantitative data, 46 new product development cases at JE were surveyed using a structured interview. Our paper discusses the externalization process of tacit customer needs via the sales organization, focusing on their structure and internal processes. From this discussion, it is clarified that, under highly sticky information environments, concepts relating to customers’ dialogues with the sales organization can accelerate customer feedback and promote the externalization of their tacit customer needs.