In the current environment of severe global competition, an uncertain business future as well as shorter product life cycles, companies have a pressing need to develop new products and businesses rapidly. In this book, Professor Yasuhiro Monden expounds on his theories about inter-firm networks and incentive price systems as important mechanisms to encourage innovation.

The author has coined the term incentive price system to explain profit allocation systems which will motivate inter-firm collaboration to develop new customer-pleasing products or businesses. He notes that such a comprehensive concept of incentive price has not been studied in conventional economics but is invaluable for solving various profit allocation problems.

The theories in the book are richly illustrated by many case studies from the automobile, auto-parts, smartphone, semiconductor, convenience store and nuclear power electricity industries. Examples from the automobile industry account for more than half of the case studies because the author has accumulated much practical knowledge and experience from research and related activities in the Japanese automobile industry over several decades.

This book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners of lean or just-in-time production, as well as those involved in related areas such as managerial accounting, managerial economics, corporate finance, organization theory and cooperative game theory.