The role of regional areas for innovation has recently began to be reassessed. From the perspective of knowledge, areas are conceptualized as BA(place)of rich embedded knowledge. Beyond infrastnuctural moduls such as networks or clusters the concept of BA offers the opportunity to differentiate platforms supportive to specific processes of knowledge conversion in an area. In addition, the poly-agent theory emphasizes the subjects involved in regional knowledge creation. Finally the conceptual framework of regional knowledge creation is tentatively tested against data on Silicon Valley, Route 128 and Ohta-ku.

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A regional company is a medium and small-sized enterprise which makes a growht by using region-specific resources and knowledge. It's strategic characteristic is to construct interorganizational networks in order to gain external knowledge which lies scattered in markets. The purpose of this article is to examine following two point through a case study. 1)how to integrate many knowledges within networks. 2)how to promote a dialog process with market or end-user. And the inter-learning model between organization and market is presented.

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The entrepreneurial networking gives opportunities for an entrepreneur to meet business partners. The network is theoretically distinguished into inter-personal or inter-firm, and tight or loose coupling. Using this framework, two case studies are conducted. There are three major findings. Looseness or tightness is determined by six variables. Second, inter-firm networks emerge from inter-personal networks. Especially, a loose inter-personal network has a potential to create a tight inter-firm network. Lastly, the utilization of the Internet makes the loose network to be both much looser and slightly tighter.

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Japanese makers advanced many factories seeking cheap labor force into Asian countries after Plaza agreement in 1985. In this process, technology of local many makers was transferred with capital and factory, it is necessary to discuss relationship between Asian and Japanese local area for explaining process of local industrial conversion. This paper was shown subject of local industry by referencing governmental statistics of technology trade.

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One of the top priority of retailers in the states is better understanding their customers. Their emphasis is shifting from increasing market share to expanding their customer share. In order to achive this objective, some of innovative retailers started Frequent Shopper Loyalty Program(FSP). This report study about the recent status of supermaeket industry in USA and successful FSP operation at Dorothy Lane Market, Dayton Ohio, as a case study.

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The innovation of information technologies has opened new business chances also for small businesses. In order to assist small businesses with few management resources in Hiroshima Prefecture, many joint projects among industries, academics, and governments have been proposed. Hiroshima Prefectural Organizations for Industrial Technological Promotion is one of the major organizations coordinating those projects. The objective of this paper is to clarify basic problems surrounding these organizations to effectively promote new information technologies and successfully assist small businesses. The following are our main points: (1)The joint projects do not always reflect the actual conditions and needs of small businesses because of their"idealistic"thinking. (2)Small businesses have their own faults. Most of them passively accept results of the projects and do not have"a creative challenging"attitude. (3)In order to overcome these difficulties, strong commitment of top management of businesses is suggested. Top management should realize the potential ability of these new technologies as management tools and the importance of new business chances they are offering in the fields, e.g., of digital revolution of management, active applications of Electronic Commerce as strategic means multimedia market.

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A regional vitalization is one of the most important economic problems in Japan. Since ten years ago, in Gifu prefecture many regional vitalization projects are put into practice. Softopia Japan project, which is main one of these projects, aims at constructing the software development center and creating new knowledge. The purpose of this article is to examine the process of this project and to present a regional learning model.

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Triangular partnership has been used since the earliest times to be at the core of crearing the new industry in Japan. The means of`triangular partnership'derives from main three players, which are industry, university and public. Thus for creating the new industry, coordinating and combining diverse and heterogeneous knowledge across the organizational boundary are essential for triangular partnership. This study submit the concept of`knowledge based networking'which is knowledge interaction around the different organizations. We analyze the present situation of triangular partnership in two different areas and discuss some difficulties for the future.

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Today, many politicians regard the RII, the Regional Information Infrastrucure, as the key factor of regional advantage. But, to invest in the RII successfully, excellent regional information strategy will be needed. The RII boom created politically, often makes local government miss the appropriate information strategy. Equipments, netwark, contents and nerizens are the important factors of the RII. Especially, good netizens will lead citizens to the regional information environment of quality. We should pay more attention to netizen than to hardware. The purpose of this paper is to show an insight into vitalizing the regions by using the information technology.

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To create comfortable work spaces in the satellite-office, weight with a very important role of media-communications besides office-amenity is occupied. This is clear from a current survey result. Especially, "comunicationslags"and"Facing-substitution"of media-communications largely influence the satisfaction degree of comfortable work spaces of the satellite-office. In the paper, comfortable work spaces are analyzed based on an original survey and what role"communication-slags"and"Facing-substitution"demonstrate in the creation is analyzed. And, the ideal way of effective use for suitablemedia-communications for the computer technologys and the network systems in the age because of both the technological side and the corporate side is investigated.

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Location of commerce might be theoretically evaluated from several points of view, that is, from population, from shopping behavior, from cost, etc. But from practical point of view, top management is desirous to have a more useful tool. This paper, first, presents the outline of location theories of commerce. And we define an objective function and major prerequisites. Our objective function is maximizing the profit, and major prerequisites contain the following elements:(1)distribution of population(2)a scale of shop(3)a type of commerce(4)access to the shop under consideration. Second, we decide the optimal location of commerce by using a computer. Then we show a typical example of display on the input and output. And we present one of interactive computer models. We also show how the optimal location changes, when top management modifies his policy. Moreover, we perform a sensitivity analysis on the major factors and prerequisites. Finally, the effectiveness and flexibility of this study are explained by the result of simulation.

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[in Japanese]

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