"Oraganizational Type and Performance in Japanese Video Game Industries - A Comparison of Integrated Firms and Publisher Firms -" (in Japanese)

How does information technology change the organization of Japanese firms? We try to answer this question through analysis of Japan's video game industry, which is an exceptionally successful industry among the information-related industries in Japan. According to the interview survey, there are two types of firms in the Japanese video game industry: integrated firms and publisher firms. Integrated firms keep most development staff within the firms and produce game software using these employees. On the other hand, publisher firms have few in-house development staff and produce game software using outside staff. Integrated firms have similar characteristics to conventional Japanese firms such as less incentive system and stable labor relations, whereas the publisher firms not. Both types of firms are successful in the video game industry and have coexisted. To explain the coexistence of these two types of firms, we classified game software into two categories: technology-driven game and concept-driven game. While technology-driven games intensively use programming techniques such as 3D modeling, concept-driven games need novel ideas or interesting stories above programming techniques. Econometric analysis using sales of game software titles shows that, in the case of technology-driven games, integrated firms have better performance and accumulation of production experience has a positive effect on sales. In the case of concept-driven games, however, accumulation of production has no effect on sales. This result suggests that the efficient firm organization depends on the type of the products in information-related industries.

"Market and Strategy of the Home Video-Game Software in the U.S. --- Brief Comparison with Japan ---"(in Japanese)

The purpose of this research is to reveal the characteristics of the Home Video-Game industry of the United States and to examine the reason why Japanese software publishers don't fully succeed in the US market. First, we report the present state of US Home Video-Game industry, and then make a brief comparison between the US and Japan regarding the management of software publishers. As the result of our investigation, we found that as opposed to the Japanese market, the US market is characterized by its own popular genres, the existence of PC game software as a rival market, its own distribution system, and the greater importance of advertising. Such characteristics of the competitive environment seem to affect the management of software publishers and accumulation of the capabilities within each firm.

"The Analysis of Formation Process on Korean On Line Game Industry" (in Japanese)

The object of this paper is to analyze formation process of Korean On Line Game (OLG) industry. For the analysis, the paper focused on initial conditions of industry and complementary infrastructures that have enhanced the rapid growth of Korean OLG industry since early 1990s. New type of game called OLG, has the characteristic that a lot of users play a game one another at the same time connecting on the internet with a PC or a console hardware. On this OLG industry, Korea became the most advanced country since late 1990s. Three points were especially analyzed as follows. 1) Initial conditions of industry (underdeveloped console game market, existence of potential users and illegal copy) and complementary infrastructures (PC Bang (room), ADSL and payment system by cellular phones) 2) formation process of leading companies and core engineers in OLG industry 3) main companies which have been searching various OLG game genres. In addition, the paper pointed out three problems appeared in Korean OLG industry now, oligopolistic structure, low profitability and management of product development organization. Finally, the paper shows some implications on the internet contents business.

Technological Innovation and Product Evolution : Theoretical Model and Its Applications

論文(Article

"Risk Reduction Systems of the Internet Shop---Based on the consumer survey in Japan---" (in Japanese)

Many Internet shops have appeared, and most of the shops worry about customer acquisition. We applied the focus to consumer's perceived risk as a key to the success of the Internet shop, and considered the strategy of the shop. That is, it is thought that the Internet shop adopts an appropriate risk reduction system, and the customer can be acquired. Especially, the questionnaire survey for the consumer was executed to clarify the relation between the consumer attribute and the risk reduction system. As a result of the investigation, the following two points have become clear. First, risk reduction systems are possible to divide roughly into the offer of evaluation information and the offer of detailed information, and the consumers also were recognizing the difference of these. Secondarily, the persons who had confidence in the Internet shopping had the tendency to value detailed information more than evaluation information, and were doing "Selection of the risk reduction system". They are the lowest the perceived risk, and shop at the Internet shops frequently. It was guessed that other consumers that the confidence degree was low did not relate to the repeat purchase because the perceived risk was high. It is thought that the Internet shop should adopt the risk reduction system that people with a high confidence degree chose, in order reduce the perceived risk effectively and to expand customer.

Sustainable Human–Machine Collaborations in Digital Transformation Technologies Adoption: A Comparative Case Study of Japan and Germany

The Digital Transformation (DX) megatrend is fundamentally disrupting and changing the nature of work, business, and industry at a rapid pace. Although the notion of DX has garnered much research interest from practitioners, scholarship on this topic is somehow lagging behind, possibly because of the lack of theoretical frameworks on DX. Recently, most Japanese firms have begun to use diverse digital technologies to sustain their competitive advantages. However, the return of investment on digital technologies has not been as high as expected for some firms. Furthermore, as the visions of Industry 5.0 describe sustainable, resilient, and human-centered future factories that will require smart and resilient capabilities both from next-generation manufacturing systems and human operators, it is necessary to design resilient human–machine collaborations within factories. To this end, this paper presents a research model between DX technologies and scientific problem-solving in terms of deduction, induction, and abduction inference structures as an approach to resilient human–machine collaborations. The purpose of this research is to analyze the difference in the utilization pattern of the digital technology of American, German, and Japanese firms based on three types of decision-making methods. Next, we apply this framework in a comparative case study of two Japanese firms and one German firm, where we find that there is a difference in DX technologies utilization among the Japanese and German firms. We assert that the utilization of IoT technology in the United States and Germany is pursuing IoT with the aim of autonomous control, whereas Japanese firms prioritize robot–human collaboration. Finally, we discuss how our findings contribute to the burgeoning field of resilient human–machine collaborations by showing the distinct roles of deduction, induction, and abduction inference structures. Furthermore, our research contributes to international comparative studies to identify the difference in national IT utilization. Lessons and implications are discussed