Looking at global challenge of IoT, German and American industrial giants, however, regard IoT as a method of getting various data. American semiconductor company Intel pointed out “Data is the foundation of innovation”. Intel is going to generate a new digital industry by using IoT data. Industrie4.0, German government led, is working together with IDS (Industrial Data Space) which facilitate the secure and standardized exchange and easy linkage of data in a trusted business ecosystem, Fraunhofer Institute led. In this way, American and German companies are going to gather IoT data and generate valuable data. Therefore IoT data is a new oil in the 21^st century. On the other hand, some Japanese industrial companies regard IoT as a method of business efficiency. In Japan it is also desirable to utilize IoT as a source of new business.

Looking at the country or company driven global IoT approaches, what can be seen behind is a radical transformation of manufacturing industry. IoT should not be treated simply as a technology but it is to be utilized as a leverage to switch the objective of the business from “things” to “actions”, i.e. from “sale of product” to “provision of service”, and to realize highly efficient and completely lean factory operation. These are the philosophies that worldwide enterprises are moving towards by aiming to create sustainable well relationship with clients and to achieve mutually profitable business. As predicted by IDC Japan that “Japanese IoT market growth rate will be 15% per annum from year 2017 towards 2022”, it looks that the implementation of IoT in Japan is steadily progressing. There are, however, apparent growth rate gaps against US or Germany, and less motivation for future introduction of IoT by Japanese companies which is around 40% as compared to 70 to 80% for US and Germany companies as reported in “2018 White paper on the economy and public finance” issued by Japanese government. This fact may lead Japanese business to be left behind the global main stream. This situation is caused by the existence of six walls which Japanese companies are facing through the promotion of IoT. This paper describes the reality of the walls and the measures how to overcome tough walls of “Security” and “Standardization of codes”.

IoT (Internet of Things) will accelerate the digital transformation and change the value creation process in corporations. IoT is transforming the existing value chain operations to more efficient and more value-added activities. But more essential impact of IoT is to support the creation of new service businesses based on POU (Point of Use) information of products and services. However, the main coverage of traditional management information systems (MIS) has been limited to the information of existing value chain activities, and it does not cover the POU information. In order to improve the ability of organizations to make innovation happen and create new businesses, MIS must enlarge its coverage to deal with POU information. The role of IS division also needs to be transformed. While the role of managing the computer resources will decrease by the usage of cloud computing, the roles of managing information itself, redesigning the operations based on new technologies, and supporting the creation of new service businesses based on IoT platforms will be more and more important for IS organizations.

This paper argues layer strategy on hardware with layer structure. More specifically, we discuss the selection of layer on hardware products with application (software) layer and content layer. In the paper, three points are discussed. (1) What kind of layer structure exists in the hardware product, (2) What kind of factor promotes the change of layer structure, (3) How to decide the layer structure. By discussing these three points, hardware companies can obtain suggestions for deciding the specific layer structure of its products. As a conclusion, (1) the layer structure in hardware should be classified into five. (2) The reason for promoting the change in the layer structure is that diversity is required for each layer. (3) The layer structure can be decided by considering the “Product factor”, “OS factor”, “Competitive factor” in this order.

Identity is a self-defining attempt, and organizational identity is one by an organization. This research focuses on the organizational identity and demonstrates the influence on factors of early turnover and its mechanism with the difference of organizational and individual identity. We divided words included in the management philosophy into clusters by text mining, and conducted a statistical analysis using data of the manufacturing industry. As a result, it was clarified that the personal identity orientation included in the management philosophy involves the relationship between employee’s identity and company’s identity and the relationship has the influence on early turnover. Theoretical contributions of this research are as follows. First, we empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of the identity orientation. Second, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of the management philosophy on an organizational behavior as one of a few empirical studies in the management philosophy research area. The practical contribution is that we present useful idea for declaring the management philosophy to create suitable organizational identity.

The electronic book (e-book) market has been expanding in recent times. However, this market expansion does not sufficiently compensate for the decline in the paper book market. E-books have many advantages, such as being accessible through smartphones, high portability, and low distribution costs. The objective of this study is to make suggestions for accelerating paper book and e-book use by consumers. For this purpose, we construct six hypotheses regarding the differences in the attributes, awareness, and behaviors of two groups of consumers: the users of only paper books (Group P) and the users of both paper books and e-books (Group E). We conducted a consumer survey to verify the hypotheses by analyzing consumer responses. Our results indicate the following: (1) E-books are used frequently by consumers aged 20 to 49 years. (2) Many Group P users are satisfied with paper books. (3) Comics, novels and magazines are promising genres for the promotion of e-books. Based on the results of these analyses, suggestions for promoting paper book and e-book usage are proposed.