Innovation Practice 2018 – The 4th Workshop　

The 4th workshop of the “Innovation Practice 2018” was held on Wednesday, November 14, 2018 at VBL Office, Hiroshima University.

To begin with, everyone shared the respective future scenarios designed as an assignment from the previous workshop. They have integrated the key points of each member’s scenario and refined one. Based on the refined scenario, they reconsidered the real needs underlying there and identified the details of “whose” “what” they want to resolve as well as the value they want to carry over, which helped them clarify the framework of their proposals.

The group #1 created an interesting scenario with quite unique characters, based on the future analysis done so far. They have further stretched the scenario to come up with variety of needs behind, which seemed to have given them some clues to think about future roles of rooftops in 10 years.




The group #2 focused on the changes in population demographics in Shitami area in 2028. They made two opposite scenarios, one of which anticipates drastic growth in international students or population while the other of which anticipates downsize of the international population. For the former scenario, they are proposing to use an open event space “Ripple” to resolve troubles/issues international students face at first place. For the latter scenario, they are proposing to organize events to engage kids in the region.

The group #3 developed a new business model to correspond to two layers of customers, the elderly and the younger generation. To face the former, they are proposing to keep on delivering hard copies of newspapers and at the same time to deliver substitute products using the existing channel. On the other hand, to face the latter, they are proposing to introduce smart-technology as well as to create an open platform to accept online posting from readers, which will eventually realize the two-way communication the proposing company is wishing to achieve.

At the next 5th workshop, they will further refine these draft proposals, based on the stakeholder analysis.