Twittering of one of the founders, Takehiko Sueoka for introduction of ISPO

Q1: What kind of company is Innovation Strategy Practicing Organization LLC:ISPO?
A1: It's a new type of strategic management consulting firm founded in June 2012, managed by 3 representative directors who are professionals of market research, strategic management and business planning and audited by 1 inspector who are a superior engineer. We also invited the top executive consultant, Mr. Hashimoto, Hiroyuki as Supreme Advisor. We have regulated corporate governance in our articles of corporation that any other LLC seldom has done.

Q2: The name Innovation Strategy Practicing Organization sounds like too authoritarian Like NATO.
A2: We have already argued that issue and there is an opinion we had better have more familiar name. Also we found there are already 60 companies who have the word "innovation" in their company name even at Minato ward of Tokyo in Japan. We maybe rename our firm in the future, if we can find any other good name. However, I adopted the word “practicing” as even a strategic management consulting firm who are offering strategy to management of companies from small and middle to large size should be effective for practicing business by active workers and businessmen and useful for new business development. Also I used the word “organization” as we want to challenge to resolve socio-economic issues from the public view point. We want not only to promote sustainable development of companies and organizations but also to contribute to society as a whole.

Q3: Oh, you are talking big saying you want to contribute to society as a whole, aren’t you? What kind of idea and ambition on the earth do you have?
A3: Economy has been stagnated for about 20 years after the collapse of domestic real estate based bubble economy in Japan. On the other side, serious manufacturers of Japan are very hard at R & D to get out of depression. Japanese firms are leading R & D of main innovative industry globally, for example, fuel cell, lithium ion battery, electric car and robot. But they usually cannot keep their leading position and their position is replaced by other companies before they know when the market size enlarges. Competition of consumers’ commodity is very severe and companies are trying to provide products with both better quality and less expensive price domestically. Several food makers are selling 3 or 4 packages of natto, fermented soybeans which have been Japanese traditional healthy food contain efficient amino acids, for under totally \100. They are making pathetically sincere efforts for convenience and price down. For example, one of them attaches gelled soy source without source package. Customer services in restaurants and convenience stores and customer support for IT devices for consumers are one of the best in the world. However, average income and employment are not increasing for many years in Japan and there are forecasts that Japan maybe fall into a semi developed country from one of top developed countries by 2050. From the global view point, we are now under the global recession after the collapse of IT based financial bubble economy by Western countries, but some new emerging countries are developing rapidly. We can not only expect development of BRICS and other Asia and African countries but also have risks of drain of natural resources and global environmental destruction and war by expansion of armaments by newly emerging countries. There have been many forecasts that the earth will not afford to keep ecosystem where human beings can exist anymore in next decades. Considering these conditions, I decided to design effective methods to combine solution for global issues and rehabilitation of Japan applying wisdom and experiences developed here in Japan.

Q4: What kind of business fields are you aiming at concretely? Can you really resolve serious issues in Japan and world?
A4: We classify our business to 3 fields, one is “Process Reformation” of existing corporations and other type of organizations, second is “Creating New Industry” applying technological progress and last one is proposition on “Creating New Socio-Economy Framework” that will promote drastic reformation of public service. Please see our site for further details, we are providing our ideas in 15 fields.

Q5: OK, you should explain your idea of each field easier as it is a tough work to understand whole your ideas by reading details on your site.
A5: My bad. I will explain the outline. If you interested in our ideas, please review by PDF files you can download from “Company Information” site.

The main issue of “Process Reformation” is how company managers can create their management plan applying their original strategy and how active workers and businessmen can practice reformation by braking down that strategy to their theme and achieve their objective, such as business process reformation applying IT or smooth globalization of their company. First of all, It must be unsatisfying for Japanese that their government do not have their clear national strategy and also there maybe still only a few Japanese companies and organizations who have successfully completed business process reformation effectively applying ICT based on meaningful strategy. Reformation as just a pose is a waste of money. Furthermore, if a Japanese company wants to be a global existence, she needs global standard management also applying Japanese original to, respect of society and culture of the region where she branches out and reliable relationship with people who have a different cultural background from Japanese. How many good foreign friends do we have? We need to practice deeper mutual cultural communication with different people over the surface politeness.

On “Creating New Industry”, we need to promote to develop ICT based industry drastically, first of all. Industrial fields of music, publishing and broadcasting are declining influenced by spread of internet services. But I think it is a good chance for creators; composers, artists, authors, journalists and broadcasting producers to make their community to communicate with people who understand them. Their each community maybe smaller first, but if they are supported globally, total market size of these fields will restart to enlarge again finally. I am also trying to make my community on my music. I think we can also rehabilitate broadcast industry, if they start to provide their service to smaller local community coordinating with internet community of music and publishing and life time education I explain later. Another idea is mitigating global income gap by issuing electric currency which you can convert to internet providing service. I am also expecting a central bank’s initiative on this theme, especially Bank of Japan.

I think ultimate purpose of renewable energy industry is to make self providing energy network community. However, I doubt current situation of the industry depending on subsidies by governments. We need to develop private business independent from subsidies. Combination with a small electric generator with LED in the rural area in the developing country where people do not have any electric power grid may offer good hints. We need not only decrease energy cost on wind and solar power system but also develop advanced storage technology of electricity and more stable electric power system such as tidal and solar heat and spread application of geothermal.

One of the theme on quality of life is life time education. We need challenging spirit and had better avoid to stick to declining and protected industry in order to make economy active. We need new system to challenge to create new industry by having an education in vocational school, university or graduate school once per from 10 to 20 years after young people finished high school. We also want to bring up these kinds of human resources and also we have an idea to establish a graduate school for new business creators in the future, where students can be provided ICT based efficient lectures and seminars where students and professors have deep face to face communication.
In medical industry field, Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is also challenging preventive medicine actively, but to begin with, as premise, we need to develop simple standardized health and medical information system (EMR/HER/PHR), how to keep healthy good life to prevent diseases for individuals, how to evaluate evidence of effectiveness for various kind of supplements and how to establish optimum health care and medical system by initiative of general home doctors. There are so many issues to resolve on this field including balancing interests of related people.
Issues look like less complicated in the field of consumers’ robot, but Japanese manufactures are not interested in developing robots for consumers, influenced by strict Product Liability Act. I chose this theme as I think it is no good there are a few ideas to develop practical products applying current technology of robot in spite of great achievements on the study of humanoid in the universities and institutes.

Although recovery of ecosystem is urgent global issue to resolve, rapid increase of people living in urban area is making the issue more complicated, who do not have much experience of agriculture or gardening, are losing mind of thankfulness for nature and are lack of feeling of guilt for making vast waste in daily consuming life. I am checking to start our business in the recycling industry from reuse of wrapping, package and box for commodity and transportation, for example sharing Furoshiki: Japanese traditional all purpose wrapping.
Providing surplus agricultural chemicals, such as chemical fertilizer to agricultural land is becoming another global environmental issue. Global market size of chemical fertilizer industry has become some hundred B$ being related to explosion of population, rapid increase of food production and food culture itself that is becoming luxury. Among 3 elements of fertilizer, N:nitrogen is unlimited in the air, but P:phosphorus and K:kalium are limited natural resources. We need to study sustainable agricultural chemical industry enable to economize use of natural resources. Fortunately, one of my friends is a private researcher of “Efficient Micro creatures”, who have studied soil amelioration applying micro eco system controlled by lactic acid bacteria for more than 20 years and also he has got some achievements. The hypothetic mechanism he insists on is that micro ecosystem conducted by lactic acid bacteria rules and controls micro creatures in soil and changes essential minerals into fine particle for plant to absorb effectively even amount of mineral is small. But it is just a theoretical hypothesis and no objective and scientific evidence. Therefore, first of all, we had better define assessment method to check that mechanism and standardize the product, prepare related rules and establish assessment organization. If the efficiency of lactic acid bacteria is admitted officially, agricultural chemical industry where their current main business is chemical fertilizer will change into effective industry for recovery of ecosystem.
The last theme of recovery of ecosystem is rehabilitation of domestic agriculture. We are now discussing whether we should protect domestic agriculture or promote free trade of food. I myself think we had better divide issues into how to rehabilitate agriculture and how to protect and keep ecosystem in Japan islands. Protection of forests and rice fields and recovery of naturalness of rivers are not a business in private economy, should be a sacred field for existence of human being. This must be the same as protection of ecosystem in the domain of other sovereign states and I want this opinion as a general one among human beings.

The third business field is “Creating New Socio-Economic Framework”. Here, we are proposing drastic reformation of public services. I want to show you my original idea to classify industries starting from “Public Service”. (Refer “3. Position of New Business Ideas on Industrial Classification” of “New Business Development Ideas” in our web site. ) I think “Public Service” by governments should be limited in original “right watchman state” services like security, defense and diplomacy and governments need to concentrate on policy making, implementation and auditing which private business cannot alternate. I designed industry classification model stating from this “Public Service”, making “Financial Service” and “Infrastructure and Environment” (including keeping ecosystem) follow, and making these 3 public industries support next 4 private industries, “Food and Biological Production”, “Mining, Manufacturing, Recycling”, “Supply Chain and Sales” and “Private Service”. I arranged these 7 industries in one value chain.
The ideal governments will concentrate on their original fields and promote stability of ecosystem and society and evolution of industry. However, real governments have increased public debt to more than 2 times of GDP by enlarging size of budget for depression and welfare as results of populist policies balancing related interest groups. As public bonds are mainly bought by domestic people and quality of private business is very high, reduction risk of currency is lowest in the world. And this fact unexpectedly proves we can continue to implement budget of governments by issuing bonds and not depending on taxation, if the budget is supported by substantial economy and resources.
If this is true, we can study the possibility to design the new way of credit creation replacing public debts which governments need to cash back to people using future tax from people. I think if governments can issue “Policy Currency” directly by themselves replacing tax and bonds and implement budged using that, private economy can be free from burden to public economy and people can invest again to private economy more freely. Budget of governments need to be planned under the strict financial discipline and “Policy Currency” should be limited to use just for meaningful public services and invest for innovation to develop meaningful new industry. People and representatives should check items of budget and audit the settlement very strictly. Also financial sector should hold exchange market between “Policy Currency” and general currency and criticize no good budget of governments from the aspect of finance. The value of “Policy Currency” of the governments who are practicing good quality of public services and investment to innovation will rise up and those governments can get advantage to do substantial financing and also earn surplus. Thanks to good public service, we can expect innovation and development of private economy in domestic area and foreign investment and technology will start targeting here and Japan can enjoy prosperity again and GDP per capita is becoming NO1 in the world.

Q6: All right then, you can challenge to get a Nobel Prize in Economics in the future. But you need to get profit making projects and increase your revenue now. How can you make difference from your competitors?
A6: You can also read about that in our site and PDF files. In the case our clients are companies and other type of organizations, first of all, we will make clear trends and potential issues of market and industrial structure, organization, governments’ policies and technologies by modeling them strategically. Then, we create strategy system to resolve issues. Finally, we start to develop new business or reform existing business process by converting these issues to concrete ones for mainly related active workers and businessmen. Making a long story to short, our approach is the iterative trinity by “Research” --> “Strategy” --> “Practice”. Various management scientists and strategic management consulting firms including one I had worked for are advocating this kind of spiral model and it is easy to say but difficult to practice. Many people are suffering from diseases on separation of these 3. We also discuss especially on how to break down “Strategy” to “Practice” and how to make related people active also making them understand issues of the company as ones of themselves.

Q7: How can you propose especially public policies to authorities? They will ignore opinions from a tiny inexperienced LLC on the point of starting like you.
A7: Well, well. Don’t make light of us. There appear new statesmen who have advanced mind and many active public servants must feel necessity of change. We never insist on stop and change current framework of governments at once. We will propose social experiments limited in some functions and targeting on some regions collaborating with advanced statesmen or heads of local governments or ministries. We can spread new policies step by step to national wide and worldwide after we prove the efficiency of those policies. We already have some precedents such as local currencies in Europe and special economic zones in China.

Q8: I hear that strategic management consultants do not have more knowledge than any matured professionals in the special fields. Nevertheless, they are arrogant and request consulting fees before starting the project. I also hear that one of Japanese electronics maker ordered a management reformation consultation to an international consulting firm some years ago. But that consulting firm could achieve nothing effective and they cannot still have any prospect to rise up again.
A8: I think the real reason must be company managers have no serious will to reform them and they are lack of governance to compel them to change. I think they had fallen into a socialist company internally, have never tried to evolve themselves, depending on their brand name value. If we are that consulting firm, we will start from a small project which we can expect full performance. Then, enlarge our consultation step by step and we will change the mind of the executives and managers and encourage them to reform themselves.

Q9: But you are still a small company and what can you do anything fruitful?
A9: We study true nature of a problem and execute reformation focusing on any effective measures.
We promote people of our client to participate in the project as active players and also collaborate with our partners to resolve issues. You don’t need to mind we are a big company or not.