A new base for Japan’s economy

Japan’s economic recovery from the 2011 earthquake cannot depend on billion-dollar infrastructure investments alone. It also requires entrepreneurs and SMBs to drive sustainable development.

Over the last 9 months Japanese entrepreneurs and SMBs participated in “Innovation Tohoku”, a project we initiated earlier this year to accelerate economic development in the area most affected by the earthquake and tsunami. We arranged for volunteer “Supporters” to advise entrepreneurs and SMBs on how they could use the Internet to find new paths to growth. Today some of them met and shared their experiences with the First Lady of Japan, Akie Abe, of how they used the Internet to achieve growth in even the hardest of business environments.

First Lady of Japan, Akie Abe, and Hideki Konno, to her left, with other panelists

Hideki Konno is the third generation in his family to manage Konno Konpou, a packaging-material company that manufactures wooden pallets. In recent years Hideki began experimenting with corrugated cardboard to create innovative, everyday furniture and artistic installations such as oversized dinosaurs and robots.

Konno Konpou's cardboard dinosaur

Konno Konpou operates out of a small seaside town in Miyagi Prefecture, a limited market for these exciting new products. One of our online Innovation Tohoku “supporters” got in touch with Hideki through Google Hangouts and together they figured out a way to tap urban customers through e-commerce. The Internet transformed Konno Konpou from a traditional box maker into an innovative creative design company with customers located miles away from the small fishing town where it began.

While Hideki was building a new business model, a group of high school students found potential in an “uncool” local delicacy -- tuna flakes. Fearing the loss of this traditional smoked delicacy to fast food, the students applied their ambition to bring this product to the mass market and turned it into the town’s coolest souvenir. Raising funds through READY FOR?, a Tokyo-based crowdfunding platform, their delicious chili-marinated tuna flakes are now marketed across Japan.

Tuna flakes from Tohoku

Google started the Innovation Tohoku project to match Tohoku’s businesses with Internet experts to restore the Tohoku region from a new foundation. To date, more than 100 businesses have used Innovation Tohoku. This approach is scalable. Lessons we learned in Tohoku can be applied across other rural areas in Japan and the wider region.

Governments often rely on large investments in new software, hardware or IT systems to stimulate a local economy. But we propose an alternative approach. Last week, we launched a program called "Innovation Nippon" to explore how Japan's passions can be better combined with technology to create new approaches in such important areas as education, open data, copyright and security. The first event was held at the Global Communication Center of the International University of Japan where we discussed how to solve the policy bottlenecks that currently stop innovation heroes like those in Tohoku and across Japan from creating new businesses and reinventing old ones.

People with ideas and passion, combined with freely available technology, can bring economic revival to Japan’s underdeveloped regions. It is these people who are catalysts of the regional economy that industry, non-profits and the government should work together to support.

Posted by Ko Fujii, Head of Policy and Government Affairs, Google Japan

NOTE: This post was updated to mention our "Innovation Nippon" event.