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Presents a case study of how over the last six years a large, traditional corporation simultaneously created new service markets and established a dominant position in the competitive information and communication technology field in Japan. The corporation accepted a new organizational body that has an entrepreneurial spirit and consists of different types of personnel, then continuously promoted emergent strategies. At the same time, in an attempt to implement strategic innovation the company integrated the above strategies with deliberate strategies practised by the existing line organizational body. Through a case study, discusses the factors for success and the problems encountered in the course of achieving strategic innovation in the communications field, i.e. the creation of a new market through the creation of strategic communities based on cooperation between different organizations.

This article discusses business processes that are capable of creating new value with many new customers and in which enterprises and customers both achieve innovation through the provision of new services by the enterprise. Examples of innovation that venture companies providing IT‐based multimedia services have experienced over the past three years in Japan through mutual learning with customers are taken as case studies. In the last few years, Japan has seen rapid growth in the multipoint connection service market associated with multimedia videoconferencing systems. Behind this trend was the birth and explosive growth of the multipoint video communications market, which was initiated by NTT, Japan’s largest telecommunications carrier, in alliance with a joint venture business (NTT Phoenix Network Communication Inc.: hereafter, NTT Phoenix) comprised of heterogeneous US‐Japanese joint businesses. This article takes up the case of the world’s largest multipoint connection venture business, and considers how an NTT Phoenix’s customer value creation‐type business created a new video network service market in Japan.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Large companies and corporations are increasingly required to adapt their own internal methods of knowledge creation, to keep up with the rapid development of their products and their competitors. This adaptation, as Mitsuru Kodama argues in his case study of NTT DoCoMo, involves the creation of partnership‐based, inter‐organizational collaboration with other firms, corporations and customers.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

This article examines the role of knowledge management in the telecommunication industry.

Provides a case study on the creation of entirely new digital services for delivery over mobile telephones to the Japanese consumer market by the DoCoMo company, following the formation of a new organization directed by top management.

Points out that, by producing organizational capabilities as networked strategic communities, one can integrate the core competence of each strategic community, build a new business model, and create new knowledge in the form of successful new product and service development.

Shows that community leaders serve an important function in creating networked strategic companies.

Provides a new, practical viewpoint regarding the knowledge management and leadership theory of corporate innovation.

The article seeks to provide new practical viewpoints regarding the knowledge management and organizational development of new product development through in‐depth case studies.

Due to the exploratory nature of this research and our interest in identifying the main people, events, activities and influences that affect the progress of product innovation, the authors selected the grounded theory style of data interpretation. The authors present a basic framework in which the integration of various organizational boundaries between heterogeneous organizations both inside and outside corporations creates new knowledge.

These case studies illustrate the dynamism in which new knowledge is created by simultaneously promoting the formation of a horizontally integrated network among strategic communities between external partners including customers and a vertically integrated network among strategic communities within the corporation.

Provides new practical viewpoints regarding the knowledge management and strategy of technology management.

Aims to provide new practical viewpoints regarding the knowledge management and leadership theory of project management through an in‐depth case study

Argues that community leaders can develop a concept of a business community comprised of diverse types of business and processes to achieve business innovation. Studies a regional initiative in Japan towards electronic networking that illustrates the use of information and multimedia technologies as an instance of the latest business case of strategic community management.

Community leaders serve an important function in creating networked strategic communities. The case study shows how community leaders have created networked strategic communities in which the central government, regional governments, universities, hospitals, private businesses and non‐profit organizations take part in the advancement of regional electronic networking.

Provides new practical viewpoints regarding the knowledge management and leadership theory of project management.

This paper describes the importance of strategic community creation as a new management style. It verifies that video‐based information networks utilizing information and multimedia technologies enhance the quality of competencies and knowledge possessed by strategic communities, and it also verifies, through case studies, these networks are valid as organizational learning support systems within the strategic communities. Innovations in the area of veterinary medicine utilizing video‐based information networks over the past four years in Japan are taken as examples. This paper describes how knowledge and competencies within strategic communities comprising “industry, government, and academia” are enhanced, how the new virtual methods of telemedicine and distance learning are incorporated into the business process, and how “concepts of regionally linked cooperative bodies” are realized.

For the various cyber businesses of the future based on the Internet, multimedia, and other new electronic fields, business organization styles, management methods and the distribution of management resources must be re‐formed to accommodate the transformation of the business environment. This article examines the case of a virtual education business in Japan, which has recently been garnering attention as a knowledge‐based business that utilizes multimedia, networks, etc. This article will take the position that chains connecting different business and organizations into spiral‐shaped, strategic community arrangements will develop and expand new markets, and that it will attest to the fact that both ends in such a business tie‐up will be able to hitch themselves to yield‐growth businesses.

To produce rapid innovation, Japanese companies have learned to manage strategic communities for new product development. These communities require the merging and integration of different technologies and the coordination of relationships among all levels of management, alliance partners, and customers.

Through case studies of two Japanese companies, the author examines the successful new product development process practised by these strategic communities and their networks.

As the cases reveal, strategic teams at each company – consisting mainly of cross‐functional middle managers from a number of business divisions – formed strategic communities inside and outside the companies that included customers, and then formed networks that transcended the strategic communities' boundaries. In record time, strategic community leaders enabled companies to build new business models aimed at customers and then achieve successful new product development.

Two case studies are reported on. The author was directly involved in one of them.

As this research indicates, to successfully innovate, companies may need to form strategic communities that are not tied to existing organizational structures or cultures. Superior core technology in the leading‐edge high‐tech fields of IT and e‐commerce continues to spread throughout the world and undergo dramatic changes. Innovative companies that need to establish competitive advantage in the network economy must not try to retain full control over innovative processes under the conditions of conventional hierarchical mechanisms and closed autonomous systems. In other words, companies will from now on probably increasingly require a management that can use networked strategic communities to synthesize superior knowledge that is open and spread out both inside and outside the organization, including customers.

Companies will from now on probably increasingly require a management that can use networked strategic communities to synthesize superior knowledge that is open and spread out both inside and outside the organization, including customers.