I’ll Take On The Modern World—And Dominate It—Relying On No One But Myself. - Chapter 7: Lanchester Strategy.

Lanchester Strategy.

“What’s an LMS?”

“LMS stands for Learning Management System. In Japanese, it’s called a ‘gakushuu kanri shisutemu’—a system for managing learning.”

Hiiragi had announced that their next project would be to build an LMS.

“Are you planning to pitch it to a school?”

“No, to a talent training agency.”

“Wait—what?!”

The client Hiiragi mentioned was completely outside of Kagetaka’s expectations.

“Let’s put the client aside for now.”

“How can I? That’s way too intriguing!”

Reluctantly, Kagetaka agreed to shelve the topic for the time being.

“So, is an LMS different from e-learning?”

“An LMS is the platform that enables e-learning. You could say that e-learning runs on top of an LMS.”

“Like how websites are built on web frameworks?”

“Exactly.”

This era marked the dawn of e-learning.
According to Hiiragi, the e-learning market was still developing, leaving plenty of room for startups like Shoudou to enter and make their mark.

“Eventually, we want to roll out our own e-learning service, but for now we’ll use the talent agency as a beta test partner. Of course, we’ll still charge them.”

A beta test is when you release a near-final version of the software to users to evaluate.
By offering a trial early on, developers can uncover bugs and gather valuable feedback on potential feature requests.

“So, is the LMS close to being complete?”

“We’ve been getting feature requests for a while now, and it’s taken shape pretty well. Starting today, I’d like you to join the development too.”

“You think I can handle it?”

“You’re me, after all.”

“Well, yeah, I guess that’s true…”

“Now, I’m going to pass on all the skills I’ve honed as  Isurugi Kagetaka over the past twenty-some years.”

Hiiragi began explaining the architecture and functionality of the LMS to Kagetaka.

“This is amazing… it makes so much sense.”

“Of course it does—I’m teaching in a way that’s tailored just for you. In return, I want you to start learning things I don’t know and teach them back to me.”

Because Hiiragi understood precisely what Kagetaka already knew and how best to explain things to him, Kagetaka soaked up the information like an ultra-absorbent sponge.

“This is just between us, but I’ve built in a feature that evaluates students using machine learning.”

“Machine learning?”

“Put simply, artificial intelligence—or AI.”

Although this period marked the beginning of the third AI boom, the term “machine learning” had yet to gain mainstream awareness.

“Why the secrecy?”

“Because I’m using models that don’t exist yet in this time.”

“So you’re leveraging future tech? That’s… cheating!”

“Want me to take it out?”

“No way! Use it, obviously. You know what I mean, right?”

According to Hiiragi, in the future, machine learning would have a vast ecosystem of libraries—working without them would be a major handicap.

“For now, machine learning will operate as a black box, but the LMS itself will be open source.”

“Wait, you’re making all that knowledge public?”

“For highly public-use software like this, open-sourcing it helps attract developers who share our vision.
We’re a tiny company—we can’t afford massive development costs. Going open source also helps boost our visibility.”

OSS stands for Open Source Software, meaning software whose source code is available for use, study, reuse, modification, expansion, and redistribution.

“I see… that’s smart. But how will you monetize it?”

“The LMS is a framework—a starting template. Clients will need to customize it to suit their needs. Companies without the technical capabilities can pay us for implementation support. Right now, we don’t have the sales or development team to handle full custom contracts.”

“A strategy for the underdogs… isn’t that called the Lanchester Strategy?”

“Exactly. You focus your most powerful weapon—in our case, machine learning—on a tightly defined niche battlefield.”

The Lanchester Laws originally modeled survival in combat, but in business, they’re applied as the Lanchester Strategy in marketing and competition.

“Anyway, it’s still going to take a while to finish, and I’d like to bring in some help.”

“Help? You’re hiring someone?”

“We can’t afford full-time hires yet, so I’m thinking of outsourcing. When running a company, it’s vital to keep fixed costs low.”

“Ah, that’s why you didn’t get an office either.”

“Hiring full-time employees means the company has to cover half their social insurance. And Japan’s labor laws make it very hard to let someone go once they’re hired.”

“That explains why there are so many temp workers these days.”

“Even in a future where job mobility is higher and changing companies is easier, the dismissal laws remain just as strict.
That’s why companies end up with aging, unproductive employees drawing inflated salaries.”

“That’s rough… why doesn’t the legal system change?”

“Try winning an election on a platform of ‘We’ll make it easier to fire people!’”

“Yeah, good point…”

“Still, if someone is truly talented, I’d want to bring them on as a full employee. The person I want to approach this time is that good.”

“Seriously? That amazing?”

“If we’re talking pure talent, they’re beyond even Saginuma-san.”

“No way!”

Saginuma was Kagetaka’s senior and also someone he had a crush on.
She had extensive engineering knowledge, and Kagetaka considered it a great fortune to have been mentored by her.

“Right now she’s at a company called Cyber Fusion, but we won’t be able to recruit her unless we can match or exceed her current salary.”

“I wonder how long that’ll take…”

Kagetaka tried to imagine a future where the company had a full team of employees—but from where they stood now, it felt like nothing more than a fantasy.

“Back to the talent training agency—we’ve arranged for you to meet someone. This person knows that the one inside Hiiragi Shouta… is  Isurugi Kagetaka.”

“Wait—what?!”