Regional Development Through Ecological Business—Unique Cases in Japanese Rural Regions

Regional disparity is one of the current pressing social issues. Many countries lack basic infrastructures of establishing a new business or industrial cluster. The book argues that existing arguments which have mostly focused on macroscopic view of economy of society or industries may be misguided. The book delivers a refreshing insight from microscopic view of enterprise/business management and how businesses can achieve sustainable development at enterprise level.

The book includes case studies of concrete examples to illustrate how a successful model can be put in place to effect sustainable development at enterprise level. The implementation of sustainable development is also a closely connected knowledge management. This knowledge management looks at intangible assets such as tacit knowledge, social capital, ecological resources, art and so forth. It is also tightly related to regional issues. This book bridges the relationship between knowledge management and regional issues from the standpoint of sustainable development and illustrates how they can be integrated to overcome the constraints to grow.

The clarity and well-founded research of the book makes it a useful reference for students, researchers and businesses.

Makoto Hirano has received an MBA degree from Temple University in US and a PhD in International Business from Waseda University in Japan. For the past seven years he has been involved in research around regional development issues. He has visited more than two hundred enterprises and organizations in different regions of the world in order to study new management models for contemporary business related to the design of sustainable regional communities and the creation of intangible assets through art.