Focusing on making things smaller – an ‘innate propensity’ of Japanese culture can lead to creative product ideas.
Example: Plus and Company developed a bulky portable copier for copying images on a blackboard. It failed but a group of researchers persisted in making it smaller and smaller until it was ‘pocket-sized’. This led to a ‘pocket razor sized’ photocopier which was bought by Matsushita and created a new product category with resulting spin-off products such as portable scanners.
Source: Tatsuno, S. (1990). Created in Japan: from imitators to world-class innovators.