Before we begin delving into the specifics of these seven priority challenges, I felt it was crucial that we bring into sharper focus the sense of urgency underlying them all, which I spelled out in a kind of written proposal.
We must squarely confront the question of whether individual companies continuing to do their best and pushing each other to excel, as they do now, will secure the future international competitiveness of Japanese monozukuri as a whole.
The days when our competitors consisted solely of free private enterprises are over, and we are seeing the emergence of competitors with their own industrial systems, to great effect. At the same time, we increasingly find ourselves in an era where politics influences trade and other areas.
Given these fundamental changes in the environment, can we simply carry on growing stronger in the same way, as a collective of individual companies?
Perhaps we need to go so far as to reexamine the industry structure itself and boldly redefine the boundaries between areas of cooperation and competition.
