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The so-called sharing economy has spread to a variety of fields such as cars and homes, and Japan has seen another rising trend in recent years—bicycles.

A growing number of municipalities and private firms are providing bikes to gauge whether such services will catch on.

According to NTT Docomo Inc., which has been teaming up with municipalities to offer a bike-sharing service on an experimental basis, its bicycles were used about 1.8 million times in fiscal 2016, which ended March 31, up from 20,000 in fiscal 2012.

Docomo, Japan’s largest mobile phone carrier, is partnering with Koto, Chiyoda, Minato, Chuo, Shinjuku, Bunkyo and Ota wards in Tokyo. Around 4,200 two-wheelers were available at 281 “stations” as of March. Docomo also offers bike-sharing in the cities of Yokohama, Sendai, Hiroshima and Naha, Okinawa Prefecture.

Japanese workers devoting themselves to working massively long hours for their employers might be becoming a thing of the past.

Nearly half of newly employed people said they would leave the office when their work was done even if their superiors or colleagues were working overtime, according to a survey released Monday.

In the survey conducted jointly by the Japan Productivity Center and the Junior Executive Council of Japan on 1,882 workers participating in training sessions in March and April, 48.7 percent of participants responded positively to the notion of leaving the office when their work was done, up 9.9 percent from a year before.

According to the survey, 42.6 percent — a record high percentage — of the respondents also said they work in order to lead happy lives, while the ratio of people who said they work to test their abilities continued to decline, marking a record low of 10.9 percent. Those who work to contribute to society dropped to 9.2 percent.

Amazon swooped in to buy the high-end grocer Whole Foods on Friday, paying $13.7 billion, or $42 a share—a healthy 27% premium on the previous day's closing price.

So what's in it for Amazon?

There are a couple of strategic plays at work for the online retail giant.

For starters, acquiring Whole Foods' 440 US stores—many of them in prime locations—could bolster the network for AmazonFresh, the company's grocery delivery service.

"To efficiently ship groceries to consumers, you need physical distribution (item-picking to put parcels together, click-and-collect points) close to the consumer," analysts at Bernstein wrote in a research note. "Stores are ideally located for that. They won't look like stores in five years' time, but they will be in those locations."

The service allows customers to order groceries online, then set a time for pickup as soon as 15 minutes after. So far, there are only two locations, both in Seattle, but AmazonFresh Pickup could scale rapidly after Friday's deal.

The move could [also] improve the selection of grocery items for AmazonFresh users, as well as strengthen Amazon's bargaining position with suppliers, according to Credit Suisse.

"[UK tech startup] Improbable is building breakthrough technologies that are becoming vital and valuable platforms for the global gaming industry," Deep Nishar, managing director of investments at SoftBank, said in a statement. Beyond gaming, Nishar said, SoftBank believed Improbable’s simulation technology could be used to help explore disease, improve cities, understand economies and solve other complex problems. Nishar is joining Improbable’s board.

SoftBank founder and chief executive officer Masayoshi Son has been trying to establish the Japanese company, which has a history investing in telecommunications and game companies, at the forefront of a host of emerging technologies. In particular, Son has been staking SoftBank’s future on the growth of machine learning, where software is able to learn from data and experience, and the Internet of Things, the idea of connecting everything from home appliances to industrial equipment to the internet. His largest investment in the U.K. to date was the $32 billion purchase of chip designer ARM Holdings Plc last year.

The majority of affluent and high-net-worth individuals recognize the potential of robo-advisors and automated investment services to add value to their wealth management services.

[According to a study of 600 investors in the UK and US] more than 70% of overall respondents think that such tools can positively influence their wealth manager’s advice and decision-making process and that automated advice potentially speeds up onboarding processes such as registration and account opening, making these processes more efficient and convenient. This underlines how the young and the wealthy are especially showing a great openness, awareness and knowledge about robo advice.

The falling cost of industrial robots will allow manufacturers to use them to replace more factory workers over the next decade while lowering labor costs, according to new research.

Robots now perform roughly 10 percent of manufacturing tasks that can be done by machines, according to the Boston Consulting Group. The management consulting firm projected that to rise to about 25 percent of such "automatable" tasks by 2025.

In turn, labor costs stand to drop by 16 percent on average globally over that time, according to the research.

The shift will mean an increasing demand for skilled workers who can operate the machines, said Hal Sirkin, a senior partner at Boston Consulting.

Factory workers "will be higher paid but there will be fewer of them," Sirkin said.

The research found a tipping point for installing robots: Companies tend to start thinking about replacing workers when the costs of owning and operating a system come at a 15 percent discount to employing a human counterpart.

For example, in the U.S. automotive industry, which is predicted to be one of the more aggressive adopters of robots, a spot-welding machine costs $8 an hour versus $25 an hour for a worker.

Three-fourths of robot installations over the next decade are expected to be concentrated in four areas: transportation equipment, including the automotive sector; computer and electronic products; electrical equipment and machinery.

Adoption is forecast to be slower in industries in which tasks are more difficult to automate or labor costs are low, such as food products or fabricated metal.

Certain countries also are expected to be more brisk adopters. China, the United States, Japan, Germany and South Korea now account for about 80 percent of robot purchases and are expected to maintain that share over the next decade.

In 2015, 85% of global GDP was generated in cities. Growing cities require substantial investments in infrastructure if they are to continue expanding at their present rate. It’s estimated that we will invest $78 trillion in global infrastructure over the next 10 years alone to accommodate this growth. New York, Beijing, Shanghai and London will need $8 trillion in infrastructure investments alone. 

Faced with slack consumption and soul-searching over Japan’s notoriously poor work-life balance, the government is asking companies to allow their workers to leave at 3pm on the last Friday of the month.

The hope is that they will use those extra hours of freedom to shop, make an early start to their Friday libations or go on a weekend break.

In 2030, there will be more jobs than workers able to fill them in many of the world's largest economies, according to Boston Consulting Group senior partner Rainer Strack.

In his October 2014 TED Talk, Strack explained that the world is facing a labor shortage and skills mismatch. However, he said it's not too late to begin employee development and recruitment strategies that take a global perspective.

Part of the problem will be a surplus of low-skilled workers and a significant lack of high-skilled workers. The emergence of new technologies will simultaneously replace low-skilled jobs and create high-skilled ones.

BCG found that 60% of high-skilled workers are willing to work abroad, which can help lower the skill gap in certain countries.

Strack concluded that the current workforce trend is not sustainable. Companies and governments need to forecast which jobs need to be filled in the next 15 years; how they will bring more millennials, women, and retirees into high-skilled jobs; and how they'll adapt their corporate cultures to become a global destination for these employees.