Digital technology is bringing not only new possibilities, but also new risks. In the IoT era, companies will need to confront many risks while also making the most of digital technology. This issue describes what Hitachi is doing in three management foundation areas, namely intellectual property management, MONOZUKURI (manufacturing) infrastructure, and the training and education of human resources.

Amid rapidly changing consumer values brought by the momentum of digitalization, companies are faced with a situation that diverges from the current business models and past practices. Kenichiro Senoh, Director and CEO of the Industry-Academia Collaboration Initiative, gives his views on the background of the paradigm shift and the management fundamentals.

As globalization and digital innovation accelerate, management reform is becoming an urgent issue for companies. What sort of innovations are needed to turn macrotrends and the changing business environment in which companies operate to their own advantage? Key people in the fields that are the foundations of management share their visions and actions.

Intellectual property strategy is undergoing major changes under the diversification and complexity of the business environment and relationships with customers and other partners accompanying digitalization. Makoto Kobayashi, who has worked in intellectual property consulting, talks about the intellectual property strategy in corporate management.

How to feed back the results of advanced analysis to the real world is the key to making use of vast amounts of data for solving social problems. Google provides many services globally. Masanori Satoh from Google Cloud in Japan talks about the new forms of system development associated with such subjects as “openness” and “safety and reliability.”