Strategic Partnerships with Innovative Customers: A Japanese Case Study

Abstract

This article presents business processes that are capable of creating new value with many new customers and in which businesses and customers both achieve innovation through the provision of new products and services by the businesses. This article points out the importance of management processes for forming strategic communities through strategic partnerships between businesses and customers, and for introducing into the strategic communities the expertise of customers who are highly knowledgeable about the products and services provided by the businesses, thereby creating new business models and at the same time extending the findings of the strategic communities to many other associated customers. This case study presents as examples innovations in the fields of education, medicine, and welfare using IT and multimedia technology over the past four years. Here a strategic community of business and innovative customers has established a new business model in the fields of education, medicine, and welfare on the basis of IT and multimedia technology. the results of the activities of the strategic community of innovative customers have then been extended to many other related customers in a chain of community creation, and the new systems were propagated throughout Japan.