The Kakushin Juku Innovative Globalization of Kyoto’s Heritage Industries program
About Innovative Globalization program
Introduction
Historical Assets
Educational System
From the World
Three Strategies
Students
Case Study
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About Innovative Globalization program

Introduction
Yuzo Murayama The Kakushin Juku

Doshisha Business School (DBS) is offering a class titled the Innovative Globalization of Kyoto’s Heritage Industries,”Kakushin Juku”from April 2007. The program offers business education for young managers employed in traditional industries to enable them to create cultural industries from these heritage industries of historic Kyoto, with the objectives of offering hints for new styles of living and making a global impact through overseas expansion. Although Japanese culture is currently enjoying a worldwide boom, particularly in anime and manga, Kyoto’s heritage industries are mired in a slump. Some are even in danger of disappearing completely. One reason for this lies in the fact that heritage industries have lost their horizons for lateral development, particularly their motivation for entering the global marketplace. The only means able of overcoming these difficulties are those of novel innovations and of going global. The concept that holds the key to its success is that of ”cultural businesses.”The Kakushin Juku is leading the way along the path from heritage industries to cultural businesses.

Yuzo Murayama
Doshisha Business School


Historical Assets
Cultural Businesses

New cultural businesses will be born out of a careful dialogue with Kyoto’s history. They will be contemporary in nature, and will also create an impact overseas. The work required in creating such cultural businesses involves researching the history of individual heritage industries in depth and selecting points at which they converge with contemporary society. This process offers a means for the creation of cultural businesses that can simultaneously maintain their core traditions and succeed in the contemporary world.

Kyoto possesses huge intellectual assets in the form of its historical cultural heritage. To use these to best effect requires a conceptual shift away from the preservation of this cultural heritage toward its utilization. Bringing this new concept to the business scene will strengthen the development potential that culture possesses. Kyoto is perhaps the only location appropriate for this type of trials.


Educational System

Diagram outlining the Innovative Globalization of Kyoto’s Heritage Industries program
During the program, business leaders from heritage industries engaged in innovation will collaborate with DBS instructors in a tutorial environment to train participants in the abilities required to develop a cultural businesses. In addition to lecture classes in business education, they will offer guidance tailored to the needs of individual students in areas such as product development and marketing, and disseminate the results to the global marketplace through both real and virtual channels.


From the World
Financial TimesIntense Worldwide Interest

The combination of heritage industries and cutting-edge business education makes this a business school initiative unlike any other worldwide, and as such it has been attracting global attention. The Financial Times, Britain’s best-known financial newspaper, took up this new approach in a feature article that described actual DBS students and gave high marks to the direction we are taking. (”Heirs to Japan’s past break with tradition: To survive in the 21st century, younger owners of heritage industries are learning the lessons of business education.” Financial Times, March 8, 2006.)


Three Strategies

For the development of cultural businesses, DBS is focusing on three business strategies and on the impact of technology on heritage industries. The first strategy is Cultural Combination, which means transcending the boundaries between existing heritage industries to create combinations between different types of industries or with overseas cultures. The second is Lateral Expansion of Culture, which involves extending the culture of Kyoto geographically with a focus on overseas countries. The third is the strategy of Making Culture an Everyday Affair. This is the essence of cultural innovation, and is oriented toward transforming Kyoto’s traditions into forms appropriate for everyday use. In addition to these three strategies, we also consider that integration with the high-level technology for which Kyoto is renowned will open up new horizons for heritage industries.

These orientations for innovation in cultural businesses will be explained in detail in a forthcoming publication scheduled to be brought out by NHK Publishing in 2007, entitled 100-Year Businesses: What is the Secret of Continuing Culture? (working title), edited by Yuzo Murayama and Doshisha Business School. The case studies of innovative businesses described on page 7 and onwards of this pamphlet are actual examples taken up in this book.


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DBS Doshisha Business School
Graduate School of Business, Doshisha University
Office of the Program for Innovative Globalization of Kyoto’s Heritage Industries.
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