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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.

As a company that has continuously achieved business innovation, Apple in the United States has successfully applied strategic knowledge creation to produce a series of products that integrate various digital devices as well as diverse contents and applications, such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, based on a corporate vision of a digital hub concept. At the same time, the redefining of corporate boundaries that expanded Apple’s business in a horizontal direction from the Macintosh PC business to the delivery of music, smartphones, and tablets is also an indication of the evolution of a corporate vision involving Apple’s strategic transformation. This chapter presents the strategic and creative processes that enabled practitioners, including the late Steve Jobs, to demonstrate “strategic innovation capability” by “holistic leadership” at every level of management at Apple and successfully achieve a business ecosystem strategy through “creative collaboration” across diverse boundaries within and outside the company.

This chapter discusses the theoretical framework of the strategic knowledge creation process for realizing business innovation. It presents an explanation of the relationship between the concept of the business community that originates with the formation of “Ba” (which is required in the formulation and execution of the strategic knowledge creation process) and the strategic knowledge creation process. The chapter also analyzes and examines the theoretical framework where the holistic leadership of practitioners achieves new business innovation through the formation of a business community, which is the organizational platform for practicing strategic knowledge creation, that is, the sharing, inspiration, creation, and stockpiling of knowledge.

In particular, the chapter presents a dynamic, theoretical framework where all practitioners at every level of management demonstrate holistic leadership across a three-layered structure (three practice layers) including the formal organization layer, the informal organization layer, and the psychological boundary layer to connect elements for formulating and executing macro and micro strategies and the business community, which has its origins in the formation of “Ba,” to drive the strategic knowledge creation processes.

Bearing in mind reviews of the existing corporate management leadership theory, this chapter presents a theoretical framework of holistic leadership for top and middle management as well as the staff for strategically promoting knowledge creation activities in companies in industries with rapidly changing competitive environments. “Holistic leadership” here refers to leadership with characteristics that allow for the coexistence of centralized leadership, distributed leadership, and dialectical leadership and their dynamic application according to circumstances by practitioners at each management level (top management, middle management, and staff) of the three practice layers, that is, the formal organizational layer, the psychological boundary layer, and the informal organizational layer. This new theoretical concept of leadership has been derived a posteriori from existing theory and cumulative fieldwork by the author to date.

Through collective management at Cisco Systems in the United States, practitioners at all levels of management, rather than just a select few, overcame various contradictions through “strategic collaborations” across divisions within the company to respond to the challenge of new business innovation. Moreover, through skillful management of leadership at the formal organization layer, the informal organization layer, and the psychological boundary layer (the boundary layer between the two aforementioned layers), all practitioners of the company demonstrated holistic leadership, which enabled creative dialogue, cooperation, and understanding as well as rapid decision-making and action. Strategic collaboration based on holistic leadership enables outstanding ideas to be readily incorporated into the organization and to be examined and acted on by a single team. This chapter discusses processes whereby collective management based on Cisco System’s holistic leadership changed staff behavior and the corporate culture to achieve business innovation.