The German Institute for Japanese Studies invites you cordially to our next DIJ FORUM on

Thursday, 18 October 2012, 18.30 h
Yoshitaka Okada, Sophia University, Faculty of Liberal Arts

Sustainable Development, Frontier of Business, and its Application to Tohoku

Poverty-reducing businesses in developing countries is a new trend. In the past, businesses involving the poor were too risky and costly. Why then, do firms engage in such activities today?

I argue that firms came to successfully develop viable business models to reduce risks and transaction costs.
This transformation involves several changes involving socio-economic values, such as sustainable development, triple bottom line, and human security in the 1980s and 90s, and then the development of new institutions for risk control. “Base of the pyramid” or BOP business models are the natural outcome.

I shall first give some examples of how BOP businesses operate in India and will then consider how similar models can be applied to the recovery and reconstruction of disaster-stricken Tohoku.

Yoshitaka Okada is Professor and Dean at Sophia University, Faculty of Liberal Arts. His main area of specialization is the socio-economics of development and innovation, covering such issues as technology transfer, the national innovation system, and the management system in Japan as well as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and BOP in developing countries.
Among others he was a visiting scholar at University of Wisconsin-Madison (1998), Cambridge and Oxford Universities (2001), and the Max Planck Institute, Cologne (2008).

The lecture will be given in English. It will take place on Thursday, October 18, 2012 at 6.30 p.m. at the DIJ. Admission is free, please register at:
forum[at]dijtokyo.org or
Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien
Jochi Kioizaka Bld. 2F, 7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
102-0094
Tel: 03 - 3222 5198, Fax: 03 3222 5420