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The purpose of this paper is to first suggest scanning focal areas in new product development (NPD) by comparing with design thinking and, second, to uncover what people in different occupations expect of NPD based on future scenarios.

Authors place scanning and design thinking into a matrix of product-market strategies. In addition, this study adopts several open-end-type questionnaire surveys of employees at Japanese companies who have taken part in idea generation workshops that take a medium- to long-term perspective.

Authors found that innovations generated through scanning can cover the most difficult and uncertain areas in practice compared with design thinking. This manuscript also reveals occupational categories can be divided into two groups according to different expectations of NPD: the rapid-fire NPD expectation group and late-bloomer NPD expectation group. The former group which consists of marketing and engineering experts tends to expect that NPD is simply a response to existing needs and that profit will be gained expeditiously through NPD, while the latter, which comprising design and research experts, tends to expect that NPD will realize future innovations.

This study shows some common and different points between scanning and design thinking by using a theoretical framework of product-market strategies. Also, this study reveals who will lead innovation based on foresight in business.

This study aims to examine direct effects of qualified team gatekeepers on absorptive capacity (AC), and the mediating roles of combinative capabilities – knowledge integration capability (KIC) and interteam coordination.

A social networking analysis was used to analyze a unique data set collected from all members of 32 Japanese research and development (R&D) teams to identify key individuals who perform daily gatekeeping functions. This study analyzed the data through partial least squares structural equation modeling with higher-order latent variables. Finally, cross-validation tests were used with holdout samples to test the model’s predictive validity.

Qualified gatekeepers directly contribute to teams’ realized AC but not to their potential AC. Furthermore, qualified gatekeepers can improve their teams’ capability to absorb and exploit external knowledge by facilitating their capability to consolidate knowledge, that is, its KIC and interteam coordination.

Unlike prior research that asks top managers to identify team gatekeepers, this study used social network analysis to identify these vital individuals. This study provides a new framework indicating how qualified gatekeepers impact the AC of R&D teams through the examination of both the direct and indirect paths of gatekeeping abilities, two combinative capabilities as mediators and team AC.

The purpose of this study is to measure the predictive value of future scenarios prepared using horizon scanning. The future scenarios prepared at the initiative of the Japanese Government have had low predictive value. They have frequently failed to contribute to industrial development and caused social loss. Horizon scanning, which is a key methodology applied in foresight activities, has begun to be used in countries as part of their national innovation systems in lieu of conventional forecasting methods based on the assumption of technological innovation. Research was conducted to actually measure the predictive value of future scenarios prepared using horizon scanning.

An online survey in Japan was conducted on ordinary people’s attitudes. The questionnaires presented 20 scenarios regarding future society, which were created with the conventional method or horizon scanning method.

Survey results verified that horizon scanning-based scenarios provided significantly higher predictive value than scenarios prepared using conventional methods.

Implication 1: By eliminating bias in input data and perspectives adopted when considering scenarios, it may be expected that scenarios will be derived that have even higher “predictive value.” Implication 2: By setting the layers of anticipated outputs high and the fields broad, it may be expected that scenarios will be derived that have even greater “change.”

The relatively high rate for the predictive value of the horizon scanning method, more than 40%, validated in this study was significant.

The purpose of this paper is to create socio-technological future scenarios of Japan in the year 2050 and beyond, with a particular focus on energy and its relation to science and technology (S&T).

A workshop based on the scanning-based foresight method (SBFM) was conducted. Social change scenarios were created by participants browsed scanning materials about futuristic topics. Then, energy and society scenarios were produced by combining social change scenarios and future issues describing S&T related to energy in Japan in the future.

The participants who have different scientific and technological experties produced various images of Japan’s energy society around the year 2050. Based on these depictions, future visions of scenarios about energy and society were different in terms of consistency between S&T and future needs from current visions which focus on the transient of social awareness. The sociocentric view and confidence in self-made technology were found in the workshop and the participants believed some social problems would be solved with rich experiences and expertises in S&T even if human resources were limited. It was also found that each scenario portrayed an optimistic view of the relatively near future, in which innovative energy-related technologies are developed to optimize both personal satisfaction and social efficiency. On the other hand, we found rather pessimistic survival scenarios about the far future as concerns climate change and natural disasters.

Experts from several fields used their insight to apprehend an energy future and depicted, from scientific and technological perspectives, a vision of a different future society from the one that would emerge in a traditional linear scenario in which a proper balance is struck between the usage of S&T and its limitations. SBFM was also found to be beneficial for insight into energy S&T with its many uncertainties.

This is a study that aims to explore a new conception of marketing management based on the analyses of the demand side in Japanese high‐tech industries. Currently, due to the rapid development of technologies, conventional marketing and management methodologies sometimes cannot explain why emerging technologies and new usage diffuse epidemically among consumers in a short time.

As a major example of successful technological development, this study focuses on a collaborative structure between Japanese high‐tech manufacturers and two types of consumer communities, “otaku” and “kogal.” The paper explores a hypothesis that each of the two consumer communities gives a different type of feedback to the manufacturers, and thus Japanese manufacturers can develop and improve their products very efficiently.

Japanese management has been understood as “kaizen,” – a management way to improve the efficiency of the supply side. However, today's Japanese high‐tech companies focus relatively on the demand side and have found interesting dynamics of consumer behaviors which can make one technology more valuable and useful in the daily lives. The paper also shows a comparative framework from the viewpoint of the user‐collaboration to contrast the basic difference of management styles among the USA, Europe, and Japan, and suggests that each company in each region can use other region's collaboration dynamics to develop its products, or build a technological standard more efficiently.

The hypothesis and framework in this paper can be expected to fill a vacuum in studies on Japanese management after the 1990s, as a successor to “kaizen” methodology.