Insights

At Baycurrent, “Baycurrent Institute,” our management research institute, leads the effort to derive insights for society and businesses.
In a rapidly changing world, we delve deeply into key issues and provide knowledge to help companies open the door to the next phase.

Articles

Making Corporate “Energy Self-Sufficiency” a Management Metric— A Demand-Side-Led Energy Strategy in the Wake of a Strait of Hormuz Crisis —

In the previous paper, "Redefining Japanese Companies’ Energy Chains in Light of the Strait of Hormuz Crisis" we examined how geopolitical risk propagates simultaneously through both the price and the volume of fuel and electricity. Constraints on fuel supply push up the cost of power generation and heat supply, which in turn reach end users through electricity and gas tariffs and contract terms. If companies simply revert to their previous procurement structures once a crisis has passed, the same vulnerabilities will resurface in the next one. The question companies should be asking is not merely whether their procurement prices are high or low, but how far their business operations depend on externally purchased electricity, fuel, and heat—and how much volatility or disruption in that supply they can withstand.

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Trends in the U.S. MFN Drug Pricing Policy and the Response Required of Japan

The Trump administration is advancing a Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) drug pricing policy aimed at curbing pharmaceutical spending in the United States. The policy benchmarks U.S. drug prices against those of other developed countries (adjusted for GDP per capita) and lowers U.S. prices to the level of the lowest-priced country, with specific price-adjustment mechanisms already laid out. Japan is among the reference countries, yet its drug prices are already low by developed-country standards. As other nations move to mitigate their exposure to this referencing, Japan risks becoming the floor for MFN reference prices unless it reforms its own pricing system—raising concerns of a resurgence of drug lag and drug loss. This paper outlines the structure of the MFN policy and the responses of other countries, and then discusses the measures Japan should take ahead of its next drug pricing system reform.

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Satellite Data Strategy Bridging National Security and Commercial Space: Rethinking Next-Generation Space Infrastructure in the Japan Aerospace Self-Defense Force Era

Competitiveness in space infrastructure is no longer decided by how many satellites one owns. In the first half of 2026, a rapid succession of developments—the Ministry of Defense's contract for its "Tri-Sat" satellite program, the reorganization into the Japan Aerospace Self-Defense Force, and the selection of J-LEO to carry communications autonomy—moved Japan's space infrastructure from the stage of "concept" to that of "implementation." The real question is who links the information gained from space to decisions, when, and in what order of priority. Drawing on the author's own experience operating satellite communications within the Japan Self-Defense Forces, this article examines the design of a next-generation space infrastructure that keeps national security and commercial space in mutual circulation.

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Why Regional Banks Need to Transform　— Local Economic Change and the Growing Loss of Visibility into Commerce Flows —　(Part 1)

Regional banks in Japan face structural challenges: shrinking local economies driven by population decline, prolonged pressure on interest margins, and declining visibility into commerce flows as payments and customer touchpoints shift to external platforms. Traditional banking models reliant on financial statements and ex-post transaction data are increasingly unable to capture real-time local dynamics or provide practical, high-value client support. One potential lever is the combination of BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) services and advanced data analytics. This paper examines local economic contraction and the information-infrastructure constraints facing regional banks, with particular attention to the structural problem of limited commerce-flow visibility.

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Books

2050 The Future of Industry

Tracing the Contours of the Future Through Social Transformation — Charting the Winning Strategies of the AI Era, Industry by Industry (Nikkei BP)

When forecasting the future, discussions tend to focus on technological advances such as AI. Yet the future is discontinuous, and the pace of technological change is itself notoriously hard to predict, so building a picture of the future around technology alone carries a high risk of leading us astray. This book takes a different path: rather than starting from AI, it deliberately looks ahead through the lens of shifts in industrial structure, offering a distinctive perspective.

Building a High-Growth Organization

Five Core Principles for Breaking Free from Gradual Decline and Achieving Sustainable Growth (Nikkei BP)

Can an organization transform a state of normalcy into one of urgency? Guided by this question, we analyzed companies that continue to achieve high growth and identified the shared “perspectives, ways of thinking, and behavioral patterns" that underpin their success. We distilled these into what we call the "Five Core Principles".　 We then present a change-management approach for embedding these "Five Core Principles" within an organization. In addition, we conducted interviews with thirteen executives to validate the applicability of these principles.

Sharpening the Issues

The art of questioning assumptions and getting to the heart of the matter（Nikkei BP）

The key to a breakthrough in a stalled project lies in the “issue setting" of problem solving. Although it is possible to set up some kind of “issue“, the initial point of contention may not always capture the essence of the problem. That is why it is important to keep reviewing and "sharpening" the issues. In this book, we will thoroughly explain the highly difficult process of "sharpening the issues" to find the issues that really need to be solved, along the five steps to do so.

SX　Sustainability Management Practice

(Nikkei BP)

Sustainability management is rapidly increasing in importance, and if a company lags behind in SX (Sustainability Transformation), there is a high possibility that the survival of the company itself will be in jeopardy. So how do companies actually proceed? Baycurrent, which has supported SX in many Japanese companies, thoroughly explains specific theory for practicing sustainability management with corporate case studies.

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