"Industry Words and Near-Future Roadmap" ---The Changing Definitions of "Industry" and "Competition"

 With the adoption of IoT, "Experience 4.0" merges experience with big data analytics, transforming all manufacturing industries into a new type of service industry. Companies must define their near-future "livelihood" from a medium-to-long-term perspective and create a "Near-Future Roadmap" (strategic scenario).

What is a "livelihood word"?
At Dentsu Inc.'s Experience Team, we call the state a company reaches when it overcomes "disruptive innovation," successfully creates experiences customers have never had before, and establishes a unique business model, the "livelihood word." Originally, "livelihood" (なりわい) means one's "occupation" or "bread and butter," signifying the very source of a company's revenue.

The "livelihood word" is the customer-centric translation of the goal described in the company-centric language of a company's mid-to-long-term business strategy. At the Experience 4.0 stage, the "livelihood word" is defined by the company itself, based on deep consideration of the substance of the experiences it provides, integrating the operational use of experience and big data, and in a form that is as easy as possible for customers to understand.

Draw the Near-Future Roadmap Using Backcasting
What should our company's "livelihood" look like after overcoming disruptive innovation? Can our company even survive this wave? The deeper the success of a large corporation today, the more profound this concern likely is for its executives. Here are two critical proposals for those involved in corporate management and marketing activities:

First, establish a clear goal image for the experience your company provides, and anchor this as your "core business word" at the heart of your management and business strategy. Second, to ensure this "core business word" doesn't become a pipe dream, backcast from the goal to identify necessary actions and create a clear "Near Future Roadmap."

Often, the more reputable the large corporation, the more inclined it is to proceed extremely cautiously using a forecast-based approach, carefully assessing customer needs, competitor movements, and its own technological capabilities and available resources. Unfortunately, this approach not only fails to keep pace with the speed at which "disruptive innovation" driven by Experience × IoT is advancing, but also inevitably leads to significant energy loss when considering the twists and turns likely to occur due to various factors.

The strategy to adopt is to aim for the realization of "livelihood words" as the goal, using a backcasting approach, as illustrated in the diagram below.