To address an aging population and sales declines, a major Japanese homebuilder considers pivoting to provide and support an in-home health detection platform, in competition with tech companies. This case considers the point of view of major builders regarding how aggressively to adopt smart home technologies as the nature of demand changes and as they navigate the digitalization of a very traditional bricks and mortar industry. The company has to consider its core business of building and selling homes, which is now under pressure in Japan as the creation of new households is slowing and the population is aging. Should the company incorporate smart home components, particularly regarding health monitoring and early response to health crises, and establish an ongoing service relationship with the occupants? How will major building products manufacturers like Toto and Panasonic respond? Health insurance companies? Can the company's health detection service compete with voice recognition offerings like Alexa and Siri from Amazon and Apple? With respect to serving this aspect of an aging population, will expertise in the tangible real property aspects of homes be a stronger or weaker influence than digital services in this evolution of business and global society?

Mitsuharu Kurokawa was the 18th generation leader of a family firm that produced and sold premium Japanese sweets, Toraya Confectionery Co., Ltd. He had succeeded the business from his father, Mitsuhiro Kurokawa who had led the firm for thirty years. Mitsuharu was committed to following his predecessors who had strived to please customers with delicious Japanese sweets. The challenge was how he could further improve product quality and diversify the product line to please the customers of today without affecting Toraya's brand image. Mitsuharu also believed that plant-derived "yokan" (a traditional sweet using azuki bean paste) was healthy and had the potential to become a global popular sweet, like chocolate. Thus as a long-term goal, Mitsuharu had an ambition to offer Japanese sweets to customers around the world. In planning ways to further grow the business, Mitsuharu had to pin down exactly how the family business was defined in relation to his family. He also needed to identify what role of prominence his family's position within the highest tier of decision-making meant for the rest of the larger "Toraya family," which included longtime employees. Would Mitsuharu's endeavor to expand the product line to reach a wider customer base be in line with the well-being of the company? Would there be a risk of damaging Toraya's image as a luxury brand? Would global expansion be the right decision for the firm with a long history of offering traditional sweets to premium customers in Japan?

This case is a follow up to HBS Case No. 721-373, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (A). Following the events of the previous case, Takeda reached an agreement to acquire Ireland-based Shire Plc. The case follows some of the achievements and challenges Takeda and its employees face following the acquisition. It outlines the company's situation in 2019 and raises discussion about its future prospects.

This case follows Christophe Weber, President and CEO of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, a leading pharmaceutical company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, as Takeda considers acquiring Shire Plc, a biotech company based in Ireland. The acquisition would turn Takeda into a top ten global pharmaceutical company; however, other pharma companies were showing initial interest in acquiring Shire, and the acquisition would require a large amount of funding. Other concerns about the bid were nonfinancial. Over the last two decades, Takeda had aggressively pursued globalization and was now a global company with two thirds of revenue raised outside Japan and a diverse management team. What was the implication of acquiring Shire? Was now the right time to take such a big step? Was the acquisition in line with the company's goals? How would the combined company be managed? Would the acquisition put an end to Takeda as a Japanese company?

Updates the Tokio Marine (A) case by providing information on the organisation structure adopted by the Japanese insurance firm as it moved to integrate its global operations, along with changes in HR policies that sought to balance traditional Japanese practices with those of its foreign subsidiaries.

Tokio Marine, Japan's leading insurance company, has spent nearly two decades building a global footprint in different insurance businesses around the world. As the company becomes majority non-domestic it has to make a choice of what organisation structure to adopt to best manage the global footprint. Should it separate the domestic and international businesses, or should it attempt to integrate the two organisations in meaningful ways?

This supplement describes the strategy and organisation changes made by British executive, Alistair Dormer, after he is made head of Hitachi Rail's global business. The company acquires an Italian company, continues to win contracts in the UK, but struggles to bring its greenfield manufacturing facility up to speed as knowledge transfer from Japan proves difficult. Dormer creates a new global organisation structure with executives based in different geographies and tries to maintain the traditional Hitachi values in the new organisation.

Hitachi must decide whether to make a British executive, who has successfully built its European rail business from scratch, head of its global rail division even though the bulk of revenues for the unit still come from Japan. The case describes the history of Hitachi Rail as the provider of trains for the Japanese Shinkansen and its struggles to build a European business with expatriates before the success of an outside hire, Alistair Dormer, in winning major contracts in the UK. By 2014, Hitachi is wondering whether to make Dormer CEO of the global rail business in order to further globalise the unit. Will an outsider and a foreigner be the correct choice for a Japanese company? How can the values of the Japanese company be preserved as it globalises? What changes are necessary to further globalise the business?

This case describes the history of Oriental Land Co. Ltd.'s (OLC's) Tokyo Disney Resort (TDR), its operations, the extent of vertical integration, and the challenges it faced in 2018 as OLC's chairman and CEO, Toshio Kagami, contemplated how best to deal with congestion in the park. As of 2018, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, the two parks that comprised TDR, were the only Disney parks not owned and operated by Disney. Instead, OLC paid royalties to Disney based on the parks' revenue (in yen). The parks were immensely popular, but OLC had begun to see lower customer satisfaction ratings in recent years as high attendance led to long wait times. Although it continuously added new attractions to TDR, the company now faced a dilemma regarding how to expand further, given the limited land available around the parks. Kagami also considered whether to focus on OLC's other businesses, such as hotels, and even its nascent agriculture business, which it used to grow food served in the two parks.

The case, based on extensive interviews with NTT DOCOMO's technology leaders, focuses on the opportunities and challenges that NTT DOCOMO faces with the launch of infrastructure and services for 5G wireless telecommunication technology. With higher data rates and capacity, lower latency, and massive device connectivity, 5G could support new opportunities for growing NTT DOCOMO's business, which has been on a non-growth path since the early 2000s. The case details NTT DOCOMO's actions during previous transitions across wireless generations, illustrating the tradeoffs between being a first technological mover versus learning from the experience from other players in the market. It also highlights the intricacies of making a transition within a technological ecosystem, where coordination across different players is key for a successful strategy. Specifically, the case provides a platform to discuss the strategic options NTT DOCOMO is pursuing prior to launching 5G: What new services could they offer? Should they target corporate customers? Can NTT DOCOMO return to a sustainable growth path through 5G? How can they capture a larger share of the value created through 5G enabled internet ecosystems?

Launched as a private brand in 1980 to counter the increasingly brand-conscious consumer in Japan, MUJI offered beautifully designed, fairly priced, no-frills quality goods. The once modest private label brand with 40 products had expanded significantly by 2019 to more than 7,000 products with more than half its 975 stores outside its home market in Japan. It had even expanded into the service industry, opening hotels. President Matsuzaki of Ryohin Keikaku, MUJI's operating company, was charged with reorganizing the product portfolio and prioritizing new initiatives, tasks complicated by the absence of a clear definition of "MUJI-ness," the meaning of which had always been intentionally left open.

Raksul, 2018 Forbes Japan "Startup of the Year," ran an e-commerce platform drawing upon thousands of individual suppliers. Launched as a business-to-business printing services marketplace, Raksul had recently expanded to operate both a logistics/delivery marketplace and a television advertising marketplace. Each marketplace faces its own growth challenges; at the same time, the CEO must consider whether and how each marketplace can enhance the others.

In the spring of 2018, Kinya Seto, president and CEO of LIXIL Group Corporation, a major housing and building products and services company, called a meeting at the company's head office in central Tokyo to discuss how to implement the new three-year strategic plan. LIXIL had been established in 2011 through a merger of five of Japan's major companies across a broad spectrum of building materials and other housing-related businesses. The company had subsequently acquired established international brands such as American Standard and GROHE and had become a global company of over 70,000 employees operating in more than 150 countries. Its business lines included manufacturing and marketing construction materials and products for both commercial buildings and private houses, with subsidiary home-building and renovation franchises. The predecessor companies that formed LIXIL had each had a long history of business success, some dating back a hundred years. To accelerate the implementation of LIXIL's global strategy, Seto and his senior management team had expressed ideas about creativity and innovation centered around differentiated products, services and business models. How could Seto position LIXIL for success? How much integration was needed at LIXIL? How could Seto build one LIXIL brand that would be recognized globally? Could design, new products, and a shift in business model from B2B to B2C be the drivers of growth? How should Seto execute LIXIL's three-year plan? What is or are LIXIL's source(s) of competitive advantage?

Sony used to be synonymous with "innovation" and "cool products". The case reveals how the company lost its edge and describes the leadership initiatives to restore its former glory. In 2012, Kazuo (Kaz) Hirai becomes CEO and successfully transforms Sony, including a relentless focus on differentiation through "wow" products instead of chasing scale. How should he organize and manage the company's response to digital opportunities, such as virtual reality, that could affect the company's entire value chain?

In spring 2016, Kameda's CEO, Michiyasu Tanaka, is facing difficult questions from board members over the lackluster performance of the company's US subsidiary. Kameda was the leading player in the Japanese rice cracker market and was looking to expand overseas to achieve growth, with the vision of becoming a global food company. Starting in 2008, it had tried to market its best-selling product in Japan, Kakinotane, as well as other types of rice-based snacks to US consumers. Despite years of offering samples to consumers, modifications to the naming and packaging design, the addition of new flavors, changes in the supermarkets it placed its product, and offering retailers slotting fees - sales were well below expectations and losses were mounting. The situation was especially baffling as the company believed that the gluten-free trend as well as a growing desire for healthier food should have bode well for its rice-based snacks; moreover several Japanese food makers had recently achieved success in the US (such as Calbee with snapeas and Ito En with teas). On the bright side, Kameda's recent acquisition of a US company, Mary's Gone Crackers, was showing steady sales growth; though profits were very low due to high manufacturing and raw ingredient costs, and distribution coverage was limited. Tanaka and his management team had only a few years to turn things around or consider closing the Kameda USA subsidiary. Every marketing element was on the table: from changing the packaging to rethinking the retail approach to accepting private label deals to investing in more efficient plants to partnering with a well-known US brand in the snack food space. Could Tanaka save Kameda USA and dramatically improve the profits of Mary's Gone Crackers?

Tomohiro Ishibashi (Bashi), Chief Executive Officer for B to S and Julia Foote LeStage, Chief Innovation Officer of Weathernews Inc., were addressing a panel at the Harvard Business School Digital Summit on creative uses of big data. They told the summit attendees about the Sakura (cherry blossoms) Project, where the company asked users in Japan to report about how cherry blossoms were blooming near them, day by day, had opened up opportunities for the company's consumer business in Japan. The project ultimately garnered positive publicity and became a foothold to building the company's crowdsourcing weather-forecasting service in Japan. It changed the face of weather forecasting in Japan. Bashi and LeStage wondered whether the experience could be applied to the US market.

This case tracks Jerome Chouchan's strategies and execution for a successful turn around of Godiva Japan's operations which was experiencing a decline in sales when he became the managing director of the company in 2010. Through various initiatives and innovations, Godiva Japan had targeted a variety of demographic segments in different sales points, acquired new customers and created a moment of luxurious consumption for all ages. Accordingly, within Godiva's global enterprise, Godiva Japan had become number two in terms of worldwide sales and number one in terms of profits. It exported made-in Japan products and concepts to Godiva's other markets. How could Chouchan keep the momentum and sustain Godiva Japan's top-line and bottom-line growth going forward? Would he be able to keep the balance between aspirational and accessible? How much of the success in Japan might contribute to the growth of Godiva's global sales?

In early 2016, Motoi Oyama, president and CEO of ASICS, a major sports apparel and footwear manufacturer based in Japan, lays out his company's growth plan for the upcoming 5 years. The new plan set ambitious goals in terms of revenue and profit increases. At the heart of the strategy to achieve these goals are a desire to embrace a more direct to consumer mindset, expand into new customer segments, and communicate a more consistent and emotional brand worldwide. With its primary core customer currently the "serious" runner and its innovation strategy geared towards high-end performance, pursuing these objectives in light of the fierce competitive landscape posed a multitude of challenges. Moreover, the company had recently launched several lifestyle brands (using brand names it had revived), which posed brand architecture issues. Lastly, the company had just acquired a digital fitness app, RunKeeper, and was wondering how best to leverage this asset and how it fit with the main pillars of the growth plan strategy. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games would coincide with the conclusion of the 5 year plan, and ASICS had paid over $100 million to be a Gold Sponsor of the games- Oyama wondered whether his company was on the right track to achieving the goals he intimated to shareholders.