We need to overcome the current low profit business situation seen in the majority of Japanese companies. We need to innovate the market by using international standardization for avoiding unnecessary competition and achieving "innovation", i.e., creating a new market. The objective of standardization should be changed from "achieving compatibility" to "creating a new market". One seemingly effective approach is standardization on the environmental aspects of business models where cutting edges of Japanese technologies can be fit in to define an environmentally conscious market. Another approach could be contributing to "symbiotic" business models where the standards define the rules of stakeholders to cooperate for solving societal issues. A good example is ISO TC 292 which standardizes in the field of security to enhance the safety and resilience of society. Japanese companies should be more vigorous to seek for such opportunities in doing standardization which is well aligned to their business strategies.

This special issue aims at exploring the new movement of standardization with demonstrating emerging issues and the outlook on standardization. In the surge of the global networking, standardization draws attentions from both scholars and practitioners. Standardization, which helps to cope with growing complexity in the connected world, is one of the most critical vehicles to realize sustainable societies with the growth of business ecosystems and markets. By disentangling and streamlining the intricate fabric of the academic and practical debates of standardization in the circumstances, this special issue proposes the outlook on standardization with showing emerging issues and perspectives. This special issue will not only help the academic understanding of the strategies/policies relevant to standardization but also encourage the practical examination of related challenges.

Drawing on the surge by ICT (Information Communications Technologies), the article aims at disentangling and streamlining the debates on standardization strategy to elucidate the strategic issues and the outlook on standardization strategy. Centered by EU and US, a variety of firms collaboratively attempts to develop complex systems (e.g., social infrastructures) composed of multiple-technologies in pursuit of social values. In contrast to the standardization strategy bundled with specific firms' businesses and technologies, such standardization hardly allows firms to profit from standardization by bundling their businesses and technologies with standards. Rather, it is critical for firms to precede in the accumulation and exploitation of the knowledge to implement the standard into their products/businesses. Firms are required to manage implementation knowledge along with the time line of standardization process. Standardization strategies for solving societal challenges will be vital for both firm strategies and policies.

The purpose of this paper is to streamline the impact of standardization activities on each company. Triggered by the increasing complexity of the product system, consensus standards are coming play an important role for efficient R&D activities. In the tide of such this standardization, the existing leading companies to promote the standardization, to form a standard eco-system together with emerging companies, and thereby enjoy the benefits of standardization. On the other hand, the existing leading companies that do not promote the standardization could lose a competitive advantage, particularly in the case of the integral product, because it takes a great deal of switching cost for the implantation of the standard.

This paper deals with the relationship of the R&I policy of the European Commission and public-private partnership which mainly led by the private industry associations. Its objective is to reveals following three points. The first is the specific content of the "integrated approach" that the European Commission is about to rely on when it implements its R&I policy of Horizon 2020. The approach consists of Cross-cutting Approach, Challenge-based Approach, and Holistic Approach. The second is a feature of the public-private partnership that is run along the "integrated approach" of EC. It is characterized as a "bottom-up approach" that is planned and executed to reflect the interests of the industry associations called European Technology Platforms. The third is the relation of public-private partnership and standardization which aimed at the formation of the eco-system that necessary to the creation of new industries. Standardization is an indispensable activity for the European Union to stipulate the mechanism of the division of labor inside the ecosystem. It indicates the direction of the different members and is crucial activity to draw a cooperative contribution towards industry creation.

In order to clarify the strategy of the business ecosystem which German companies intend to build, the article analyzed the core strategy, namely the strategy of the standardization and intellectual property. By the comparison of some published documents related to the standardization edited by DIN, DKE, and so on, it was identified that the publication of translation versions, difference of publication periods and contents and so on were controlled based on strategical intent. In addition, by the survey of patent applications related to Industrie 4.0 in which standardization was defined as the core strategy, it was also identified that in collaboration with standardization of interoperability, there were some specific patent applications which could bring benefits and a dominant position in the business ecosystem of Industrie 4.0.

Business transformation is accelerated by digital technologies. Industrie4.0, a governmental R&D program of Germany, and Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), a commercial consortium, are well-known frameworks of business transformation applicable to the domain of the manufacturing industries. This article concludes that through our continuing research into Industrie4.0 and IIC, 1) Industrie4.0 and IIC share the same technological backgrounds, 2) each has a unique approach to business development and standardization strategy, and 3) their collaboration will make possible new non-competitive areas of technology stacks and define new service interfaces that will create novel business models. This article also discusses appropriate strategies for Japanese manufacturers to utilize their capabilities in the movement of digital transformation. This article proposes two recommendations for Japanese manufacturers. The first one is that they must attempt to participate in business eco-systems that create new product/service features and interfaces, which are usually realized as API (Application Programing Interface). Of lower priority is that Japanese manufacturers still need to continue investing their efforts into enhancing and refining conventional product/service standard specifications in order to conserve basic market access opportunities.

This article is to draw strategic implications for firms by elucidating the causes of knowledge spillovers in the standardization of the mobile telecommunication industry. It has been commonly recognized that leading firms can expand the market for their advanced products by attending standardization activities. On the contrary, several recent debates have started to argue that firms' standardization activities do not guarantee these firms' successes of products in the marketplace. By examining the flow of knowledge in the standardization of mobile telecommunications industry, this study shows that technological information of technology specifications and essential patents, which are set and declared by leading firms (i.e. Nokia and Ericsson, etc.), help new entrants (i.e. Qualcomm, Samsung, etc.) acquire relevant technological knowledge and thereby declare essential patents and apply for appropriate patents. The analysis suggests that leading firms should conduct multi-faceted knowledge management to prevent such unexpected knowledge spillovers by their standardization activities.

This article starts with two major discussions of the Japanese strategy of intellectual property (IP) and standardization, one is the "Sanmi-ittai" strategy, the trinity of business, R&D and IP strategies, and the "Open and Closed" strategy. While the majority of Japanese corporations could not be fully successful in accommodating these strategies, the new SEP (Standard Essential Patents) discussion aroused. Because the limited exposure of Japanese corporations in smartphone market, the SEP discussions have been limited to the injunction issue Japanese corporations missed a good opportunity to revisit the value of the inherent strategies of IP and standardization in junction with business strategy. While this discussion has not been fully appreciated, the new challenge came from the emergence of IoT (Internet of Things). In the IoT era, the landscape of the IP and standardization strategies have to be changed. To meet this change, the "Outbound" IP strategy and "Outbound plus Top Layer" standardization strategy are proposed.

We study organizational policies aiming at aligning stakeholder's interests and creating shared values as corporations try to achieve international standardization. Focusing on international standardization in multinational corporations, we study the process of how a corporation adjusts the value evaluation criteria and, despite room for ambiguity, gains legitimacy for environmental technologies. We present an exploratory case study of international standardization of a new refrigerant by Daikin, and find that following organizational policies contribute to the success of international standardization: (1) participation in institutional creation process through various collaborations between the industry, government and academia (2) the global-level coordination between R&D, intellectual property management, and corporate social responsibility activities; (3) the strategic leverage of foreign subsidiaries. The results are applicable to analytical frameworks that integrate different research fields, corporate standardization strategies, and organizational management in multinational corporations.

In order to strengthen the competitiveness of Japanese agriculture, the government is trying to promote research and development in agriculture, especially new variety development. In the new variety development of main crops (rice, wheat, soybean, etc.), prefectural agricultural public research institutions have played an important role. However, empirical analysis on this issue is little in Japan.

In order to promoting the new variety development, it is important to clarify the effective point for that. So this paper has conducted an empirical analysis of research and development in the agricultural public research institutions, using a panel data of the management resources of agricultural public research institutions.

As the results of the analysis, the increase in research budget has the positive impact on new varieties development of major crops by agricultural public research institutions. On the other hand, the increase in the main crop production value has the negative impact on that.