Vanguard
From SFC, a boost to local communities!
SFC Associate Professor Yoshinori Isagai has always conceived local revitalization through human resource development. With this idea in mind he has created the NPO Hosujuku (The School for Fledgling Phoenixes) and the Toho Village Vitality Project. For him, “community building starts with building human resources”. In the following interview he discusses his work and the ways Japanese local communities can be revitalized.
ISAGAI,Yoshinori
Associate ProfessorFacuity of Policy Management
It may have all started with the“social reformers brigade”
During my first job experience after
graduating from university, I spent about two years in international
marketing. This made me acutely aware of how much more I had to study
about business and management. I decided to leave my work to pursue
further studies at the Graduate School of Business Administration,
Keio University (The Keio Business School). My family runs a
wholesale company handling educational materials in Saga Prefecture.
After completing my MBA, I went home to run the company. I worked in
various areas such as marketing, delivery, planning and management to
develop my ability and skill. After a year or two, I won a prize in
an essay contest sponsored by the Saga Prefecture on proposals to
revitalize local communities. My work interested many government
committees of prefectures and policy-making bodies. Looking back at
my life, I can say that it was during this time that I began to get
seriously interested in community revitalization. Recently, my
mother told me something that surprised me. She said that I had
formed a group called “social reformers brigade” even before I
was in kindergarten. Apparently, I gathered about 20 neighborhood
children to go around checking for hazards near the kindergarten, and
to tell the grown-ups, “Please be sure to get this fixed”. It
seems as if in my childhood I had the making of a local
revitalization activist.
Fostering “fledgling phoenixes (future heroes)”
Regional cities offer subsidies and
business incubators to start business ventures and run businesses of
various kinds. Such support is underutilized even today, but there
were even fewer people then making use of such support system when I
was in Saga. I concluded that what local revitalization needed was a
structure for human resource development and a learning community, in
which a group of people learn from one another about the practical
side of management. In 2000, acting on the proposal outlined in my
aforementioned essay, I launched the Hosujuku to help foster
entrepreneurship in Saga. The school’s training program did not
rely on the one-way teaching method of management theory. Instead, it
encouraged students to come up with original solutions, and then
discuss those solutions amongst themselves. I believe that
resourceful people who can come up with their own solutions are what
we most need to revitalize local communities. Today, the Hosujuku has
grown into a full-fledged community of highly motivated people who
are working at resolving many different social issues. Human
connections are steadily proliferating amongst organizations and
individuals. The Hosujuku has been established in many places around
the country besides Saga, such as Toyama, Kanagawa and Saitama
prefectures. During the seven years I spent in Saga, I confronted
difficult situations and that led to some frustration as well. Today,
all such experiences are part of my good memory. My experience in
Saga proved quite valuable in revitalizing local communities
(machizukuri). My work in this area has given me first hand
experience about rural communities and small-and-medium sized
companies.
How to create vital communities
In 2002, I returned to the Business
School at Keio University. This time I conducted academic research in
the doctoral program. In 2005, I came to the Shonan Fujisawa Campus
(SFC) as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment and
Information Studies. The following year, our lab was asked by Fukuoka
Prefecture to do a preliminary study for setting up a broadband
network in a place called Toho Village. The village was a newly
created municipality formed by the merger of smaller units, and it
was without a broadband network. After considering a number of
factors, we thought the best approach would be to set up a network,
and then capitalize on it for community building. We therefore
launched the Toho Village Vitality Project. The aim of the project
was to train people in the village as machizukuri leaders who could
use information technology to advertise the attraction of the
village.
When laying the groundwork to promote local development, we need to identify local resources, create a consensus on communal assets, and advertise our strength. We call this the “resourcifying process”. In order to smoothly facilitate the “resourcifying process”, it is essential to have a leader who can coordinate the process. Even if potentially useful resources are identified, local development initiative could fail to grow without the phase, where community members create a shared vision and communicate effectively to the outside world. In local development activities, people do not work the same way as they do in a corporation. Community leaders cannot assign tasks to someone or pay him/her to expand activities. This is where high-level management skills come in. The key here is to train people in human resource management and then make them enter the actual situation and resolve problems. In the case of Toho Village itself, there were many knotty problems and challenges. Thankfully, a leader emerged who could bring a team together to find solutions. It struck me that when a community produced such a leader, it could change. Many local people also participated in the project in the hope of making a difference in their community. The project was a great success. During the project which lasted about a month, some 30 students from SFC went to Toho Village and made themselves very useful. For example, students supplied technical assistance in areas like image editing and gave advice on the resources of the village from a different perspective. The mayor was highly impressed by our work and he said that “a miracle has happened here”. I was deeply moved by his words.
Revitalizing the regions can improve Japan
I think that Japan as a whole will be
revitalized as unique local initiatives are launched around the
country. These initiatives can serve as models that can inspire other
communities nationwide. Japan cannot be changed all at once.
Therefore, what I intend to do is to create a structure that
encourages such initiatives. The first structure is to “develop
human resources”. Local initiatives cannot become national if we
merely copy the successful program of a community and use it on
another. Each locality needs its own machizukuri leader (coordinator)
and unique initiative. The second structure is to “collaborate with
students from various universities”. I believe that many community
renewal and machizukuri programs would benefit from the involvement
of various universities. Energetic and innovative young talents
invariably gather in universities. These students are a great asset,
a precious resource for the regions. Communities that embrace their
enthusiasm and perspective will thrive. As this collaborative
endeavor spreads across the country, Japan will be revitalized. I
would like to help create this momentum.
Aiming for “knowledge combined with action”
I expect students studying at SFC to
become leading innovators in the world. Many of them proactively work
on practical projects and achieve remarkable results, and get high
grades in coursework and assignments at the same time. I think SFC is
unique amongst Japanese university campuses in attracting such
students. The motto of my seminar is “knowledge combined with
action”. It means that one can learn something only by putting it
into practice. I always urge my students to take advantage of what
they have learned in classes and seminars and apply it to
problem-solving activities and projects. Integration of theory and
practice for problem-solving gives rise to synergies. I am delighted
to see many students join hands to work together and learn from each
other’s experience. My classes often take the form of a discussion.
Sometimes we get into such intense debates that we run out of time. I
enjoy teaching these classes because students have a great deal of
intellectual curiosity. I believe such students can make a
breakthrough that our society needs today. I am looking forward to
seeing them become leaders who can resolve not only national but
international problems as well.
A Brief Background of Associate Professor
ISAGAI,Yoshinori
Associate Professor Isagai was born in Saga in 1964. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business Administration, Keio University. His field of interest includes management information systems, regional informatization and community development. He joined Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. in 1987. While he was working for the aforementioned company, he was seconded to Fujitsu Limited. In 1992, he enrolled as a student in the Keio Business School. On completing his MBA in 1994, he joined the Isagai Corporation and became its managing director in 1997. In 1999, he founded the NPO Hosujuku (later a specified nonprofit corporation) to provide entrepreneurship training to students. He established the Ether Guy Corporation in 2001 and served as its representative director. He was appointed Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University in 2005, and has held his present position since 2008. He has worked on the conference relating to the issue of depopulation and served on the advisory council creating regional advantage for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and as an advisor to the same Ministry on regional informatization.
(06 January 2010)
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