In recent years, there has been a growing need for strategies that provide for convergence in the development of products and services and building of business models that integrate different technologies and services and span different industries. The question is: What kind of strategies and organizations should a company construct for R&D activities to develop new products, services, and business models that will be realized through the integration of different technologies and convergence across industries? The key concept in a company's actions for adapting to (or creating) a worldview of such convergence lies in knowledge convergence through a boundaries vision, which this paper discusses. The paper presents a case study that analyzes in detail the R&D framework of Fujifilm as a company that achieved success in new business areas by realizing knowledge convergence through a boundaries vision. In the days of analogue photographs, Fujifilm stood alongside Kodak of the USA as a leading brand in the photo industry. Foreseeing the steady decline of the analogue business, however, it moved into other business sectors such as pharmaceuticals, health care, and cosmetics as a new departure that it refers to as the “second foundation” and, in so doing, achieved spectacular success. The main objective in its R&D strategy for the second foundation was to “create new value.” To do this, Fujifilm sets its sights on achieving what it described as “intellectual fusion” (by combining and integrating different fields and technologies) and “innovation” (by creating new, differentiated technologies) and, as a result, to contribute to society. We will now analyze the mechanism of knowledge convergence through boundaries vision in Fujifilm's R&D and new business strategy for supporting its second foundation, which was a key factor in its successful business transformation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This paper presents a theoretical framework under which large companies should be able to bring about strategy transformation. First, we present the concept of ‘strategic innovation capability’, a corporate system capability to achieve corporate strategy transformation by strategic innovation. Then, we consider strategic innovation capability by comparing it with previous theories (dynamic capability, major innovation, dynamic capability, breakthrough innovation capability). Second, we present the case example of strategy transformation at Fanuc, a company that holds the top global share in the numerical control (NC) market. In this case study research, we consider and analyze historically how the company aimed for new creativity in the NC market, developed innovative NC technology for the machine tool market, and used that technology energetically for commercialized products. From the strategic innovation capability framework, the core theory of this paper, we also analyze and consider how top management made conscious efforts to form a new development organization within the company, and the processes involved in achieving strategy transformation to establish competitive superiority in this field. Finally, we discuss the implications drawn from this case analysis, and the issues for future research.

The concept of ambidextrous organizations, allowing exploration and exploitation activities to coexist within an organization, has attracted considerable interest. We aim to advance the framework of ambidextrous organizations by incorporating the concept of product substitutability. We initially focus on the substitutability of an exploratory product for an existing core product, propose cannibalistic and complementary types of ambidextrous organizations, and discuss their effective management. This is followed by an in-depth case study of Fujifilm, illustrating how distinguishing between two types of an ambidextrous organization explains effectively the corporate transformation process of Fujifilm.

In a last few decades, innovation research scholars proposed several new concepts, one after another, but independently, and in a chronological sequence: technology fusion; digital convergence; disruptive technology; open innovation; and IoT (Internet of Things). Each concept has its own explaining power for a certain innovation at a certain time period, but has obvious limitations. A basic question is, therefore, whether each of those proposed concepts is independent among them or inter-related dynamically, i.e. in what sequences? In order to answer this question, a specific industrial product, i.e. machine tools, is selected for our study. Although the machine tool is described as the mother machine, i.e. the machine of all the machinery, this industry experienced a drastic technological shift toward NC (numerically controlled) revolution around 1975. However, up until now, this industry continues to be a pivotal industry in modern and high-tech industrial era. By reviewing the technological history of the Japanese machine tool industry from 1975 to 2015, we observed several technological shifts even after the NC revolution, each of which can be explained with one of those concepts proposed in the last decades. We find a dynamic interrelationship among those concepts in the following sequence with the publication dates in parenthesis: disruptive technology