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TOKYO, Japan /
The Asahi Shimbun / Editorial / May 12, 2009
Social entrepreneurs
Our society is riddled with problems that surfaced after decades of single-mindedly pursuing monetary profits and economic growth. But the government is not addressing these problems as effectively as it should because it is plagued by bureaucratic inefficiency and inflexibility. It simply is unable to make carefully worked-out responses to such policy challenges.
There are, however, new breeds of businesspeople and companies trying to offer solutions to these problems. They are known as "social entrepreneurs" and "social enterprises."
They started drawing public attention in the United States and Europe in the 1980s and have been tackling a wide range of social problems across the world, including poverty and war damage.
The roles played by social entrepreneurs obtained wide recognition when the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Grameen Bank, a microfinance organization in Bangladesh that makes small loans to poor women to help them become financially independent, and its founder. Social entrepreneurship is also spreading in Japan.
All but 600 or so of about 29,000 day-care nurseries nationwide refuse to take care of children when they get ill. So working parents are often forced to take time off from work when their children become sick.
Florence, a Tokyo-based nonprofit organization set up by Hiroki Komazaki, 29, is focusing on providing relief for this common headache among working parents.
In a membership service offered in Tokyo's 23 wards, Florence dispatches employees to homes to take care of sick children so that their parents can go to work. Florence has devised a business model that allows it to operate the service without depending on a government subsidy.
A group in Osaka will soon start a similar service by using Florence's formula.
Commercially viable welfare services
Social entrepreneurs are unique in that they provide welfare and other social services in commercially viable ways by using innovative business ideas and improving efficiency. Since their businesses are commercially viable, it is easy to expand the operations for a greater number of people.
There are also companies that are aggressively pursuing both social contribution and profitability. One example is
Wingle Co., a Sendai-based company managed by Takahiro Sato, 29.
Companies are legally obliged to hire disabled workers so that they account for a certain ratio of the total work force. But many large companies are struggling to fulfill this obligation.
Wingle offers a solution. It helps large companies hire disabled people in regional areas by setting up local offices connected to the head offices of these companies with communication lines.
While increasing the number of such local offices, Wingle is trying to provide jobs for seriously disabled people. The company earns profits by bridging the gap between urban and rural areas and the divide between the disabled and people without disabilities.
Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931), an entrepreneur and business leader in early modern Japan known as "the father of Japanese capitalism," often talked about "the Analects of Confucius and abacus," stressing the importance of learning both Confucian teachings and business management. Japan is not new to the idea of profitable social contribution.
There are also ordinary companies committed to social causes.
Yamanashi Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., which sells and repairs bulldozers as its core business, developed a vehicle for land-mine removal and started exporting the equipment about 10 years ago.
Kiyoshi Amemiya
The project was initiated by the company's president, Kiyoshi Amemiya, 62, after an elderly woman in Cambodia begged him on a business trip to help save her country from the plague of land mines. It took the company five years to develop the demining machines. The business generated a profit for the first time in fiscal 2008.
It is, however, not easy for ordinary people to immediately become social entrepreneurs.
Visions, goodwill and perseverance are not enough to start up and successfully run a business committed to a social cause. Only a very few of more than 36,000 NPOs nationwide are operating in the black.
But aren't there ways for ordinary corporate employees to contribute to society while they continue their jobs?
Moves among corporate employees
One answer to the question comes from
Living in Peace, an organization launched by Taejun Shin, a 27-year-old employee at a foreign-affiliated brokerage, under the slogan, "You can change the world even while wearing a suit."
Living in Peace is a group of more than 100 young employees at financial institutions and other companies trying to take advantage of their professional expertise to create Japan's first fund devoted to lending to an organization like Grameen Bank in Cambodia. The group acquired legal status as an NPO this spring, but it has no formal organization or a fixed office.
It is a group of part-time social entrepreneurs, so to speak, who gather at weekends to operate the service.
In many cases, the business operations of ordinary companies also have some elements of social contribution. A growing number of corporate employees may find professional fulfillment from such aspects of their companies' businesses.
The ability to find problems and solve them is crucial for identifying social causes in and around a company's operations and incorporating them into its businesses.
This ability is required at every workplace. Company employees can start up social businesses after developing professional skills and a network of contacts while working for their companies.
Some young people apparently have a strong desire to leave the rat race. We would like to believe that the emergence of social entrepreneurs is a sign of Japanese society's self-healing power. These people are products of the wealthy society this nation has built up since the end of World War II.
The nation's postwar economic development was supported by "corporate warriors" immersed in Japanese corporate culture. But those days are long gone. We should provide support to people searching for a new way of living and working.
Path to true affluence
Almost all social entrepreneurs experience trouble in dealing with administrations that show little sympathy to what they are doing. This can probably be explained partly by the proliferation of unscrupulous businesses that prey on poor people. It is often difficult to distinguish dubious businesses from conscientious companies committed to social causes.
But the problem can also be traced to the widespread tendency among bureaucrats to regard social entrepreneurs and similar people as unwelcome "intruders" who invade the government's turf. Rather, bureaucrats should accept them as partners who offer efficient solutions to problems the government can't deal with effectively. Officials should make good use of these partners' ability to identify problems with existing systems and regulations and reform them.
We hope people protected by existing frameworks will turn the advent of this new type of entrepreneurs into an opportunity to change themselves, instead of rejecting such newcomers.
Japan has achieved a level of material wealth that is higher than in most other countries. But various systems of the country are showing troubling signs that they can no longer work in their current forms.
Sorting out these system problems to set the stage for further evolution of the economy will lead to true affluence in this society.
Copyright The Asahi Shimbun Company
With photos and links added by
Seniors World Chronicle
Florence, a Tokyo-based nonprofit organization set up by Hiroki Komazaki, 29, is focusing on providing relief for this common headache among working parents.
In a membership service offered in Tokyo's 23 wards, Florence dispatches employees to homes to take care of sick children so that their parents can go to work. Florence has devised a business model that allows it to operate the service without depending on a government subsidy.
A group in Osaka will soon start a similar service by using Florence's formula.
Commercially viable welfare services
Social entrepreneurs are unique in that they provide welfare and other social services in commercially viable ways by using innovative business ideas and improving efficiency. Since their businesses are commercially viable, it is easy to expand the operations for a greater number of people.
There are also companies that are aggressively pursuing both social contribution and profitability. One example is Wingle Co., a Sendai-based company managed by Takahiro Sato, 29.
Companies are legally obliged to hire disabled workers so that they account for a certain ratio of the total work force. But many large companies are struggling to fulfill this obligation.
Wingle offers a solution. It helps large companies hire disabled people in regional areas by setting up local offices connected to the head offices of these companies with communication lines.
While increasing the number of such local offices, Wingle is trying to provide jobs for seriously disabled people. The company earns profits by bridging the gap between urban and rural areas and the divide between the disabled and people without disabilities.
Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931), an entrepreneur and business leader in early modern Japan known as "the father of Japanese capitalism," often talked about "the Analects of Confucius and abacus," stressing the importance of learning both Confucian teachings and business management. Japan is not new to the idea of profitable social contribution.
There are also ordinary companies committed to social causes. Yamanashi Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., which sells and repairs bulldozers as its core business, developed a vehicle for land-mine removal and started exporting the equipment about 10 years ago.
Kiyoshi Amemiya
The project was initiated by the company's president, Kiyoshi Amemiya, 62, after an elderly woman in Cambodia begged him on a business trip to help save her country from the plague of land mines. It took the company five years to develop the demining machines. The business generated a profit for the first time in fiscal 2008.
It is, however, not easy for ordinary people to immediately become social entrepreneurs.
Visions, goodwill and perseverance are not enough to start up and successfully run a business committed to a social cause. Only a very few of more than 36,000 NPOs nationwide are operating in the black.
But aren't there ways for ordinary corporate employees to contribute to society while they continue their jobs?
Moves among corporate employees
One answer to the question comes from Living in Peace, an organization launched by Taejun Shin, a 27-year-old employee at a foreign-affiliated brokerage, under the slogan, "You can change the world even while wearing a suit."
Living in Peace is a group of more than 100 young employees at financial institutions and other companies trying to take advantage of their professional expertise to create Japan's first fund devoted to lending to an organization like Grameen Bank in Cambodia. The group acquired legal status as an NPO this spring, but it has no formal organization or a fixed office.
It is a group of part-time social entrepreneurs, so to speak, who gather at weekends to operate the service.
In many cases, the business operations of ordinary companies also have some elements of social contribution. A growing number of corporate employees may find professional fulfillment from such aspects of their companies' businesses.
The ability to find problems and solve them is crucial for identifying social causes in and around a company's operations and incorporating them into its businesses.
This ability is required at every workplace. Company employees can start up social businesses after developing professional skills and a network of contacts while working for their companies.
Some young people apparently have a strong desire to leave the rat race. We would like to believe that the emergence of social entrepreneurs is a sign of Japanese society's self-healing power. These people are products of the wealthy society this nation has built up since the end of World War II.
The nation's postwar economic development was supported by "corporate warriors" immersed in Japanese corporate culture. But those days are long gone. We should provide support to people searching for a new way of living and working.
Path to true affluence
Almost all social entrepreneurs experience trouble in dealing with administrations that show little sympathy to what they are doing. This can probably be explained partly by the proliferation of unscrupulous businesses that prey on poor people. It is often difficult to distinguish dubious businesses from conscientious companies committed to social causes.
But the problem can also be traced to the widespread tendency among bureaucrats to regard social entrepreneurs and similar people as unwelcome "intruders" who invade the government's turf. Rather, bureaucrats should accept them as partners who offer efficient solutions to problems the government can't deal with effectively. Officials should make good use of these partners' ability to identify problems with existing systems and regulations and reform them.
We hope people protected by existing frameworks will turn the advent of this new type of entrepreneurs into an opportunity to change themselves, instead of rejecting such newcomers.
Japan has achieved a level of material wealth that is higher than in most other countries. But various systems of the country are showing troubling signs that they can no longer work in their current forms.
Sorting out these system problems to set the stage for further evolution of the economy will lead to true affluence in this society.
Copyright The Asahi Shimbun Company
With photos and links added by
Seniors World Chronicle
