Can Japan break out of its ERP prison?

Japanese companies have no words to express the money being made from services — Apple’s growth area today — so they have no IT systems in place to harvest these revenues. They have one word — monozukuri (thing + make) — and don’t believe in anything that they cannot manufacture. So, nothing like a cloud-driven app enablement device is thinkable.  So, no Apples, Googles etc. Case of Panasonic.  Make solar panels and lithium batteries.  But doesn’t have the IT to connect these to a cloud server  for time of day energy arbitrage.  Why?  Its ERP allows for unit sales only.  Management would not allow any change in ERP, no matter how profitable the product/service. So the real money product — energy arbitrage — could not be offered.  They could only compete on price with China for hardware.  Lose! Francis McInerney Managing Director, North River Ventures LLC [email protected] Creating Scalable Profitability For the Zettabyte Era