Demand articulation is looking below the surface to create totally new product types. That yields CD players, home video recorders, Walkmans, etc. We do that sporadically. Kodama claims that Japan has developed this into a national system and extended it into public policy. The West, seeking quick pay-back, stereotypically picks the most complicated and expensive applications for a new technology.
Japan prefers low-cost mass markets.
Hence, where the West targeted carbon fibers for military aircraft, they started with sporting goods. Japan has won market dominance in carbon fibers, flat panels, and several other large, fast-growing markets that the West invented. Knowledge creation is perhaps the Kodama paradigm most hopeful for the West. Canon needed breakthrough cost reductions for its copiers. Instead of Western reengineering, downsizing, and squeezing more from less, they instead committed top talent, invested deep thought, spent patient money, and looked all over the world for technologies that would solve their problem.