Today, we held discussions based on our recent fieldwork in Kameoka, a little city near Kyoto known for its community-led revitalization tasks. Twenty MBA students were divided into 4 groups, each tasked with making propositions for various local campaigns: HOZUBAG (an upcycled bag brand made from thrown out paragliders), Kiribue (a regional association servicing area design and cultural sustainability), and the Mizunoki Gallery of Art (a museum that collaborates carefully with individuals with specials needs).
We welcomed responses from regional leaders: Professor Toshio Matsui, a leading number in community-based art education; Ms. Takeda, involved in civic jobs; and Ms. Riko Okuyama, standing for neighborhood stakeholders. Their comments were honest– and in some cases, ruining. One speaker was told straight: “This is not what we were requesting for. If you had conducted much deeper interviews, you can have made a better proposal.” By standard requirements, the session was a failure.
And yet, within the bigger design of this training course, that failure was a success.
Real objective of this field-based class is not simply to produce polished organization propositions. Rather, it is to press MBA students to doubt the frameworks, presumptions, and “sound judgment” they generally depend on in company contexts. The sharp objection, much from being a trouble, became a turning factor for understanding.
Regional Resurgence vs. Corporate Logic
The gap in between community revitalization and corporate monitoring can be summarized in 3 main distinctions:
- No solitary “customer.” In service, the goal is to optimize consumer value. In a community, nonetheless, there is no single customer. Citizens, city government, tourists, and small businesses all converge with different, often clashing, passions. Choosing “whose worth to prioritize” can not be done unilaterally.
- Various time horizons. ROI in business is often determined quarterly or each year. Area end results, by comparison, may take a years or more to emerge. What counts as “success” may not be immediate earnings yet the capability to receive relationships gradually.
- Various contexts of propositions. Business propositions assume a standard of shared understanding, so consistency and feasibility are key. In an area, however, one need to engage with tacit understanding– regional culture, practices, daily practices. Without that sensitivity, propositions risk “addressing inquiries no one asked.”
Therefore, what appeared as “failure” was in fact a personified lesson: business-school logic can not simply be hair transplanted into neighborhood settings. The feedback itself enacted the training course’s much deeper objective– requiring pupils to question their frameworks and look for brand-new mind-sets.
End results and Effects
In assessing the session, we utilized the terms result and effect , now extensively used in Japan not only in regional revitalization yet also in evaluating openly financed projects.
- Outcomes are the immediate, quantifiable results: the variety of participants in a program, earnings created, workshops performed. They are temporary and quantifiable.
- Impacts are the broader, longer-term changes that result: enhanced quality of life, stronger neighborhood connections, a consistent inflow of brand-new locals. These are qualitative and frequently visible just over years.
If one focuses only on results, propositions run the risk of coming to be checklists of numbers without vision. If one emphasizes just influences, propositions become lofty yet impractical. True revitalization calls for returning and forth in between the two.
The feedback highlighted this equilibrium. Neighborhoods are not pleased with grand ideals alone, nor with small activities lacking vision. Propositions have to weave with each other both immediate end results and long-lasting influences. Pupils confronted not simply terms however a different rhythm of time and value than what they were accustomed to in corporate setups.
Professor Matsui’s “Playful” Review
Below, Teacher Matsui’s unique design of feedback– what citizens call “Matsui-bushi” — ended up being an unexpected lesson in itself. His remarks commonly started as sharp critiques, sometimes also verging on mockery. Yet since they were supplied with wit, trainees did not really feel assaulted. Equally as they believed they realized his conclusion, he would overturn it with a last spin, leaving everyone both uncertain and enlightened.
This was not mere contrarianism. It was a demonstration of worth inversion: turning approved assumptions inverted. Done with a frown, it could be “rebellion.” Performed with a smile, it becomes “mischievousness.” Done with happiness, it comes to be “play.” Matsui’s lively seriousness mirrored the very principles of Kiribue , the neighborhood community team, where social change is approached not as rigid reform however as innovative improvisation.
Learning to Reassess Success and Failing
In this light, also small or “fell short” end results might later be seen as seeds of larger influences. On the other hand, what resembles a positive metric today might confirm hollow or burdensome over the long-term. Results and impacts are not direct– they oscillate, invert, and sometimes stun us.
Matsui’s playful critiques were enactments of this logic. By transforming failure right into an additional type of success, he showed how worth can be reframed. Students thus experienced firsthand how failure, wit, and long-term vision converge in area technique.
This fieldwork was not simply an exercise in creating proposals. It was a core lesson in how to interpret results, how to reframe failing, and just how to assume past corporate logic. To comprehend success not just as a number but as a web of connections and time.
That, inevitably, is why business institutions need to involve with neighborhoods– and why communities, consequently, can educate service colleges their most vital lessons.