Uniqueness of interdependency in Kyoto One of the standing points of Kyoto business style is the uniqueness in relations among government, industries and educational institutions. This kind of partnership is well-used in Japan and it is called San-gaku-kan (産学官). San-gaku-kan defines a partnership among those three above-mentioned sectors. In each section of partnership, Kyoto’s San-gaku-kan is different from that of other cities in Japan. For example, academia part of San-gaku-kan is so strong, because there are good opportunities to study and execute a research in Kyoto. If you compare the number of colleges and universities in Kyoto as a percentage of population to the number of those in other parts of Japan, Kyoto will be at the top of the list. It boasts the largest concentration of higher education institutions in Japan. That shows how big Kyoto’s academia part of San-gaku-kan in terms of quantity. Moreover, in terms of quality, six of 12 Japan’s Nobel Prize laureates were from Kyoto University and this fact proves the originality of Kyoto.

Another example for the uniqueness of Kyoto business practices in San-gaku-kan is the industry part of the partnership. An employee from Shimadzu Corporation, Koichi Takeda, won Nobel Prize in 2002, without being affiliated to any higher education or research center. This also shows the Kyoto business style is full of passionate people who pursuits whatever they do.

One of the reasons for why San-gaku-kan relationship in Kyoto is developed so well is the motivators, particularly Masao Horiba, the founder of Horiba Corp. According to him, the trust between the university and industry should be strong, and he believes that universities should produce a type of graduate who is ready to tap into “the Kyoto spirit”. The Kyoto spirit is common sense for Kyoto style of business. All internationally well-known Kyoto companies has the Kyoto spirit. For all of them, making profit is not the ultimate goal. Meanwhile predominant existence for them is to serve the society, fulfill the needs of the society. That’s why every employee in those companies finds themselves as a happy person, because they are serving people, societies. Related to this, one of the peculiarities of Kyoto companies is that companies try to provide to its all employees the best as much as they can for making them happy. They treat every employee as a family member. We can state that Kyoto companies might be compared to families, you can feel it observing how employees treat one another within the company as well as outside it. Probably it might be related to the fact that most of Kyoto companies originated from family style of business. And even now, Ishida Co.Ltd is a family owned business.

Kyoto companies have long history, and most of them operates more than a century. The most interesting part lies down what during their existence, they run the business with the profit annually, they have barely had annual loss. That is probably related to not running after profits as western world companies emphasizes it at the top whatever they do. That is because every employee has passion to work for the growths of its company. By working its company they will be engaged in for the benefits of societies.

The Kyoto companies strengthen spirits of its employees through their corporate philosophy and values that have been kept being formulated since its foundation. For example, Kyocera`s corporate motto – Respect the Divine and Love People (Kei-ten-ai-jin) – is admired by any person that works for it. Meanwhile, philosophical basis of the corporation is devoted to make its employees understand that commercial success and the material and spiritual fulfillment of its employees are completely related to acting as a responsible corporate citizen within society. Or corporate philosophy of WACOAL inspires its employees to work for women’s happiness. Another example would be the practice of Omron that there are several factories not only in its Japanese market but also in its overseas operations, where they hired only physically handicapped or challenged people. In Horiba, the equality is viewed as a treasure for their success. They try to avoid any hierarchical barriers among their CEOs, senior managers, middle managers and employees. We can see it in the parties that Horiba organizes and some of those parties require participation of bottom level employees and senior executives in order to make bottom level employees freely talk to senior executives. Another example of the importance of philosophy in formulation corporate culture would be the case of Nippon Shinyaku, where 14 selected herbs (Yaku-so-juyon-sen) are painted in a tablecloth and if you enter any building under Nippon Shinyaku you can see that tablecloth hanging on the wall. These herbs were selected as representative herbs on the 80th foundation anniversary of Nippon Shinyaku. The company declared that they have grown and developed because of the benefits offered by plants. When employees enter the building and see the tablecloth, they would be motivated and start their work with the full of energy. These kinds of activities in Kyoto’s companies inspire every person, who are working for those companies of Kyoto, to be more responsible for the growth of societies and make their best efforts to add value to the development of the human being.

Kyoto style of business has a lot of reflections from the character of people that live in Kyoto. In other words, we can state it as the impact of Kyoto’s society on the business organizations of Kyoto. Generally, all well known Kyoto companies operates in niche market, and there has never had an economy dominated by keiretsu affiliations and other type of top-down business structure. Moreover Kyoto is not a home to any big banks or financial institutions, but in fact it is a home for strong local banks like Kyoto Bank, Kyoto Chuo Shinkin Bank. These are because of the reflection of the society that does not like to cede control to larger entities. In short, the society had effect on companies that they would rather go their own way and survive in a niche than grow in every direction, nurtured by government, big business links, and special banking relationships.

One of the peculiarities of Kyoto spirit is educating young generation to take risk and try as a start up. It is clear that Japanese is considered as uncertainty avoidance nation. There are a lot of advantages in it, but there is some disadvantages as well. For example, to find out all uncertainty takes a lot of time. Sometimes one needs to make a swift decision and act as much as it can. And Kyoto has its peculiarity in terms of providing and educating risk-takers. There is a freer business climate for entrepreneurs in Kyoto, which most of the cases we can see government involvement in these actions. Kyoto Research Park is an example of successful collaboration among a private sector, the government and the academic sector. Also, Kyoto Research Park is 100 percent owned by Osaka Gas, but a main part of the site is effectively under the control of the local government. The most important relationships of Kyoto Research Park is with government bodies through ASTEM. ASTEM stands for Advanced Software Technology and Mechatronics Institute, and belongs to the Kyoto city governments. ASTEM offers subsidized incubator services to entrepreneurs to launch up their business.

The older generations of Kyoto Business play main roles in promoting the Kyoto spirit and hanging it over to younger generation. The founder of Horiba Corp, Masao Horiba is one of several well known businessmen who enjoys the more refined side of Japanese culture while helping Kyoto develop its venture economy in a different and more accelerated direction than the rest of Japan. Other entrepreneurs in this group include Kyocera founder Kazuo Inamori and Yoshio Tateishi of the founding family of Omron. Horiba describes them as the generation that carried heritages to younger generation creating more opportunities, promoting them to improve the spirit to serve the needs of the society.

Besides the Kyoto spirit, there is a concept related to the formulation of “Kyoto Brand” which shows the interdependence of the business in Kyoto to the society. Kyoto by itself became “The Power brand”, with its appeal to high tech industry groups, its status as an academic city, meanwhile combining all those to the cultural heritages that came to it through becoming ancient capital and maintaining its status as a cultural center of Japan. In the formulation of the Kyoto brand, industries, higher education centers and the government unified with their actions and powers. The Kyoto brand is an example for what the initiatives and guidance of universities and government agencies are indispensable, e.g. original technologies generated through the fusion of advanced and traditional technology; eco-design appropriate to the birth place of the Kyoto Protocol; and the introduction of universal design to towns and public facilities to welcome large numbers of people.

1. Bibliography:

Kyoto: A Blueprint For Japan? by Alex Stewart, December 2001

KUBO Masayoshi, Concentrate all will to Kyoto Brand, Journal of Kyoto Seika University, No. 29 2005, pages 21-28

Web pages of companies

http://www.wacoal.com/

http://global.kyocera.com/

http://www.horiba.com/jp/

http://www.omron.com/

http://www.nippon-shinyaku.co.jp/english/

http://www.ishida.co.jp