Japanese businesses will share industrial data with members of other sectors and even direct rivals in hopes of boosting productivity overall, through a private initiative led by retailer Seven & i Holdings and a separate government platform. Advances in artificial intelligence enable companies to use so-called big data in ways they could not before, to seek deeper understanding of customer behavior. For instance, pooling information from Seven & i's 23 million daily customer interactions and mobile provider NTT Docomo's network of 76 million mobile subscribers could help pinpoint areas where everyday shopping is inconvenient, which would help with planning the expansion of online supermarkets. Combining knowledge of people's movements and tastes could also help with building attractive towns and planning store locations. From June, Seven & i -- the department store operator and parent of convenience store giant Seven-Eleven Japan -- will link up with nine other companies, including Docomo, railway operator Tokyu, trading company Mitsui & Co. and megabank Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group.

You might want to start off by writing a resume by hand and using your hanko (personal seal) to prove its authenticity. If you actually get hired, you may need to get used to faxing documents to clients. Japan enjoys a reputation as being home to high-tech gadgets and advanced robotics. But if you look more closely into corporate culture, offices remain bound to old-fashioned, paper-based customs. "Going digital is a global trend in such places as the United States and Europe," said Hayato Koeda, president of electronic signature service DocuSign Japan K.K. "If Japan continues to stick to traditional practices based on paper and hanko, I think it won't be able to do business internationally."

Competition for talented information technology experts is intensifying in Japan's job-hopping market amid advances in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Demand for competent IT workers is growing rapidly from non-IT companies in the face of an expanding need for adaptation to the so-called internet of things (IoT), or the networking of automobiles, home appliances and other physical objects, and artificial intelligence. Automakers stand out in the market, and the new technologies not only promise drastic improvement in the efficiency of manufacturing operations but may also make self-driving technology fully practical. "Automakers are betting their fate on the development of self-driving vehicles now that Google Inc. and other nonautomotive companies are entering the sector," said Kaoru Fujii, chief editor of the Recnavi Next career-switch website. IT engineers who used to work mainly for the creation and management of in-house computer systems at non-IT companies are seen offering extra value to final products.