In recent years, there have been growing expectations for regional revitalization and development through reward-based crowdfunding and hometown tax donation （Furusato Nouzei; quasi crowdfunding by local municipalities）, but as these markets expand, competition among projects nationwide is intensifying. Local companies and small and medium-sized enterprises （SMEs） alone are finding it difficult to compete in this market, as they may not be able to appeal to the public if they try to complete their projects with local resources alone. Also, as traditional e-commerce players have recently entered the market, attracted by the expansion of these markets, those local players are required to have higher quality in their products. In the early days, reward-based crowdfunding and Furusato Nouzei were expected to secure sales channels for local companies and small and medium-sized enterprises, but as the market has expanded, the competitive landscape of the market may have changed. We need to re-assess the degree of contribution of reward-based crowdfunding and Furusato Nouzei to regional revitalization.

Seihin Ikeda’s Perspectives on Management and the Actual State of the Reform of the Mitsui Zaibatsu

Hori, Mineo

This study interprets the intentions behind the policies from Ikeda’s perspectives on man-agement, and conducts comprehensive evaluation of the reform of the Mitsui Zaibatsu, opin-ion about which is by no means considered settled. In conclusion, the study essentially sees the start towards the modernization of the Mitsui Zaibatsu management─whereby Seihin Ikeda, with criticism of the zaibatsu as leverage, persuaded the Mitsui group and directed substantial zaibatsu reform, i.e. organizational reform of the Mitsui Zaibatsu based on ‘sepa-ration of ownership and management’─as the actual state of the reform of the Mitsui Zai-batsu.

Whilst there is a ‘theory of reform’ regarding the various Mitsui ‘reform’ policies, when evaluating the significance of the ‘zaibatsu switch’ in terms of business history, this opinion is rivalled by a decidedly strong ‘theory of disguise’ and it is believed that a compre-hensive evaluation has by no means been settled. This is believed to be because the Mitsui ‘reform’ ended incomplete, hindered by the insularity of the Mitsui group and the transition to the wartime regime. There are both sides of situational strategy and ‘reform’ amongst the five Ikeda policies, and opinion may be divided based on how one interprets the inten-tions behind the policies of Seihin Ikeda, who led the reform of the Mitsui Zaibatsu.

In this paper, I investigate a tacit needs acquisition process for industrial products by salesforce organization. Considering innovation as a process of combining needs and seeds, the tacit needs acquisition process is valuable for innovation study. Salesforce organization is the interface between customer and company as seller and salesforce organization has a potential that is to acquire customer’s tacit needs based on company owned technologies. But existing studies point out that salesforce organization does not have enough knowledge related technology so salesforce organization is not able to acquire the tacit needs. Instead of the salesforce organization, R ＆ D organization can work to acquire the tacit needs because R ＆ D organization has deep technological knowledge. But this is not acceptable discussion because customer’s tacit needs is composed not only technological factors but also various environmental factors which customer is located. If R ＆ D organization can cope with the situation which is non-technological matter, it can work successfully but typical R ＆ D organization’s purpose is to focus on technology and product development so R ＆ D organization might not be able to handle this kind of activity. As an example of acquiring the tacit needs by salesforce organization, I analyzed foreign firm A’s salesforce organization case in industrial products. The reason for choosing firm A as the example case was firm A take customer’s tacit needs by salesforce organization in order to build a competitive advantage in unclear market. For case analysis, I built an analytical framework by utilizing knowledge on existing studies and analyzed the case. As a result, I found the hypothesis of the tacit needs acquisition process to be “credit, “belief”, “dialogue”, “virtual needs”, “realizing the tacit needs”. I also presented “dialogue within salesforce organization” as an important factor to encourage each process. The concept of “ dialogue within salesforce organization” promote “dialogue between salesforce organization and customer” and the tacit needs become obvious.

In Japan, business start-up activity has been stagnating since the early 1990s, so the government began providing start-up support in the second half of the 1990s. Start-up support was explicitly introduced in the amended “Basic Law of Small and Medium Enterprises （SMEs）” in 1999 as a new and major goal of the SME policy. Additionally, the new “Basic Law” prescribes an appropriate sharing of SME policy resources between the central and prefecture or municipality governments considering regional and local circumstances. The national policy program for approving the “Start-up Support Business Plans” proposed by municipalities that began in early 2014 based on the “Law for the Strengthening of Industrial Competitiveness” integrated these two directions of the new “Basic Law” into a single policy for the first time. This policy also formed the basis for the “Regional Revitalization” policy that began in September 2014.

This policy has a unique scheme characterized by multilevel collaboration between national and local governments, and local public-private partnerships. The national government encourages municipalities to draw up and submit their own business plans to support start-ups in collaboration with local supporters, including chambers of commerce and industry, and local banks. Upon approval, the national government subsidizes municipality governments, local supporters, and individual founders. By January 2016, 1,000 proposals were approved from among 1,740 municipalities in Japan.

I empirically investigated the effects of this policy on local start-up ratios using municipality panel datasets. The estimation results for panel fixed-effects DID （difference-in-differences） models suggest that this new policy significantly increased the start-up ratios in municipalities with approved proposals compared to those without approved proposals, particularly the ratio of new corporations and subsidiaries of existing firms, as well as in municipalities that appeared unfavorable for start-ups.

This study investigates how local entrepreneurs innovate in production areas. In particular, this study considers the implementation of the changes in production areas by local entrepreneurs from other industries, instead of by inside entrepreneurs, a topic of interest in existing research.

Today, society emphasizes regional activation, especially innovation in the region through cooperation between different industries. Prior studies point out that the realization of strategic sociality is a key to gaining legitimacy in the region for small and medium enterprises with roots in the region, and existing work discusses the realization of regional innovation from the view of entrepreneurial activities. However, previous research mainly addresses innovation arising from groups in the same industry, and does not sufficiently examine the innovation of production areas originating in different industries. This study explores this kind of innovation through a case analysis. Specifically, this study analyzes the utilization business of waste mandarin oranges by a butcher in Mikkabi Town, Kita Ward, Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, and clarifies the route of the business creation and changes in production areas.

The case analysis indicates two findings. First, it was not easy to obtain cooperation from producers, even if the venture created a business satisfying strategic sociality. Secondly, the key to transforming the production area was that the local entrepreneur modified his business model and encouraged producers to participate in his business. This case analysis suggests the significance of the entrepreneur who changes the region itself, which is different from the image of the local entrepreneur as the entity using local resources, as presented in prior research.. Abstract