When faced with a problem, forward-thinking people develop ideas and solutions to solve it. The driver shortage is a major issue. To address this issue, ideas for cross-industry collaboration and consolidation are emerging one after another. Four beer companies, including Asahi Breweries and Kirin Breweries, began joint beer delivery in Hokkaido. Toyota Motor Corporation used rail freight to transport cars from the Chubu region to the Tohoku region. Sagawa Express began transporting parcels using Toyota Motor Corporation’s dedicated freight trains. Collaboration between industries in logistics, both within and across industries, is driven by a driver shortage. Beyond logistics within the same industry, companies are using the vacant space on freight trains to provide alternative transportation to trucks. Leveling out a company’s vehicle utilization rate will increase revenue.
Crickets live in Hawaii, USA. Male crickets make noise by rubbing their wings together to impress females. Parasitic flies of the Tachinidae family can hear the chirping of crickets. They land on chirping male crickets and burrow their parasitic fly larvae into the male cricket’s body. Once inside the cricket, the fly larvae first eat the muscles that the cricket uses to rub its wings together to chirp. Once the rubbing muscles are eaten, the cricket can no longer chirp. This prevents other parasitic flies from approaching the cricket. Almost all of Hawaii’s crickets were wiped out. Faced with this extreme situation, the crickets began to adopt adaptive behaviors to prevent parasitism by larvae. This behavior resulted in the crickets no longer chirping. This mutation changed the shape of their wings, making them less likely to make noise. Hawaiian crickets underwent the ultimate evolutionary step to prevent parasitism.
More and more young people are finding success in Korea. They have created companies worth hundreds of millions or even billions of yen both domestically and overseas. Their success was not an extension of the path of graduating from university with honors, joining a top company, and climbing the corporate ladder. Rather, they say the inspiration for starting their own businesses came from focusing on the “inconveniences” felt by people in South Korea, which is the opposite direction. They say that not being first-class or dropping out of the competition is not a negative factor. Incidentally, the immigrants from Baekje and Goguryeo who brought a sophisticated culture to ancient Japan were people who had been driven out of their homeland on the Korean Peninsula. Even today, those who are not first-class in their own countries may be bringing new cultures to Japan and Southeast Asia.
