The two changes in the environment were, first the intensification of global competition and second, the demographic vortex. The first change, the intensification of global competition, started to advance from around the end of the 1980s. In the high-speed growth era, Japan had no formidable rivals among industrial countries except for the United States and European countries.
Therefore, Japanese firms introduced advanced technologies in the United States and Europe and then implemented a competition strategy in which they increased exports of low-priced, highquality standardized industrial products with relatively inexpensive capital and labor. That was an optimal strategy at that time.