In this study, adopting the “Communication Effect Model by Empathy (Revised Form)”, why empathy occurs and what kind of communication effects empathy produces were analyzed empirically. Empathy consists of three factors of tie strength, perspective taking and homophily. The findings obtained are as follows:

• Entertainment has a direct positive influence on acceptance-diffusion and trust-satisfaction. For empathy, it greatly influences as the total effects. Issue setting has a direct influence on tie strength and perspective taking, and it also is a major occurrence factor in terms of total effects. Utility positively influences the three factors.

• Tie strength positively influences perspective taking and homophily and also acceptance-diffusion directly. Perspective taking influences homophily and acceptance-diffusion, and homophily influences acceptance-diffusion.

• Acceptance-diffusion is influenced positively by the three factors, and it also influences trust-satisfaction.

Additionally, focusing on first-place Tokyo Disney Resort and second-place ANA. Japan in the annual ranking of Facebook corporation/brand pages, the difference between the two brands was examined in detail by Simultaneous Analysis of Several Groups.

Furthermore, the four groups of Critics, Collectors, Joiners and Spectators defined by Groundswell were individually divided into two sub-groups of high and low participating degree, and the difference between those two sub-groups was examined.

This research clarifies characteristics of career development in the Japanese traditional culture of Noh. Noh was built on the achievements of Kanami and Zeami in the 14th century. Nohgakushi, professional players of Noh, are participants in Japanese traditional masked dance-drama. Their skills and techniques are usually passed down orally from master to student in an apprentice system having traditional relationships.

Their career path is clearly defined. Personnel training is by a system based on career development. They have to play special compositions at turning points in their career. Then they work in cooperation with other Nohgakushi to obtain opportunities to play those compositions. As a result, their skills and technique level become clear in their community.

This paper focuses on innovation policy entitled “The Knowledge Cluster Initiative” implemented by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) in Japan. The Initiative began in 2002 and designated areas were added in 2003 and in 2004. By 2004, it included 18 regions for the University-Business-Government (UBG) alliances, for which 2.5 billion yen was granted in each region. As the Initiative included detailed assessment programs, it enabled assessing the performance over the first five-year round. The author visited all of these areas to interview coordinators, university professors and researchers, managers for startup ventures, and researchers at participating companies. Participants were required to form consortia to promote industry-based research. In this paper, the author examines policy implications from the Initiative. The Japanese innovation policy depended on UBG alliances, but it may well be sophisticated by focusing on University-Business alliances. Although the coordinators in the Initiative have actively connected participants to maintain cluster performance, they were employed by organizations in the public sector. If coordinators are directly employed by the universities, they can play agile roles in linking the participants in University-Business collaborations. The coordinators can be trained among university staffs whereby officers in the universities can support academic productivity as well as new startups based on the UBG alliances.

The purpose of this study is to explore the mechanism that fosters GNT (Global-Niche-Top) firms. The study conducts a comparative case study of two GNT firms. Both of them were founded in Kochi Prefecture and captured a dominant market share in the global high performance paper industry.

Based on the case studies, the study identifies five key factors in the growth of GNT firms: 1) Targeting markets with non-cost competition, 2) Improvement of existing technologies, 3) Reflection of feedback from customers, 4) Large scale investment in production capacity, and 5) Leadership of top management in implementing these actions.

The two case studies show that the regional cluster effect has a limited role in GNT firms’ growth and that external links with the firms and universities in other geographical areas is more important than internal links.

Previous research has shown that investors pay close attention to founding teams’ diversity when evaluating investments in startups. However, because of the differences in the investment environment between Japan and the U.S., we expected that in Japan, investors may decide to invest for different reasons. Specifically, we predicted that in the U.S., investors would jump in more quickly at the startup stage if the founding team were more diverse. In contrast, in Japan, we predicted that investors would be more cautious and more likely to invest after management teams have been optimized through changes in team membership. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a web survey targeting entrepreneurs in the web and mobile industry in Silicon Valley and the Tokyo metropolitan area. The results supported our hypotheses. In the U.S., the number of investments startups received was strongly associated with initial team diversity but not with changes in team membership. In Japan, however, the number of investment was more strongly associated with experiencing changes in membership and not with team diversity.