Intensifying competition - driven in part by the worldwide economic slowdown - is forcing Japanese companies to abandon their "copycat" or "me-too" strategies and adopt new Western-style strategies based on proprietary technologies. In the past, Japanese competitive advantage arose from superb interdepartmental cooperation, which allowed Japanese firms to continuously reduce manufacturing costs and improve business processes from R&D to production. Today, however, Japanese companies recognize that to survive in increasingly competitive markets they need more powerful measures. Japanese managers now generally agree that the winners in global competition will be those companies that exploit technology to maintain an edge in product innovation and product quality, an advantage in productivity, and the ability to respond quickly to market needs.