Patterns of Creativity in Japan Lessons from Successful Japanese Companies – A Resource

Become a ‘Creative Consumer’

View your motivation to run the business from a user perspective – don’t focus on hit-products or those that are likely to be profitable, but those that you would want to buy.

Have a sense of opposition against the supply side.

Example: Mitsue Masunaga, founder of F.O.B. COOP, started the company so that she could stock products which she loved but no established businesses were willing to import.

Example: Afternoon Tea (Sazaby Group) -  “…a shop suggesting enjoyable lifestyles based on the ideas of ordinary citizens…..the antithesis of the inflexible ideas of professionals”

Source: Satoh, K. (??). Creative lifestyles and the public sphere: a case study of Tokyo.