On August 25, 2023, our CEO, Tetsuro Kondo, spoke at "Sustaining Regional Management: Reading the Kamiyama Case through Business Model Diagrams," an event held jointly by GREEN×GLOBE Partners (GGP) and Loftwork. On November 22, the event report, "Diagramming Kamiyama's Success Model," was published on GGP's site.
About the event
Kamiyama, a town in Tokushima Prefecture, has built up its community development over about 30 years. The event welcomed two people who have led that work.
- Shinya Ominami (first chair of the certified NPO Green Valley; board member of Kamiyama Marugoto College of Design, Engineering and Entrepreneurship)
- Taichi Manabe (co-representative director of Food Hub Project)
Two ventures, diagrammed live
Kondo joined the second half and, asking the two speakers questions, drew the business models of two ventures on the spot.
- Kamiyama Marugoto College: a boarding technical college that opened in April 2023. It makes tuition effectively free by investing donations and contributed funds
- Food Hub Project: an agricultural company built around "locally grown, locally eaten." It runs farm training, a restaurant, school lunches and food processing
The format used was the business model diagram (Bizgram): users, the business and operators are placed in a 3×3 grid, and arrows show the flows of goods, money and information.
Drawing the diagrams brought out exchanges of value that are hard to put into money. At the same time, the commitment of the people involved and what the town has accumulated over the years cannot be fully shown in a diagram. Copying only the shape of the diagram to another region will not necessarily work the same way, and that point came up in the discussion too.
Event details
- Event: Sustaining Regional Management: Reading the Kamiyama Case through Business Model Diagrams
- Date: August 25, 2023
- Venue: Loftwork
- Organizers: GREEN×GLOBE Partners, Loftwork
- Report published: November 22, 2023