Creating New Local Industry Through Inter-Organizational Collaboration: A Japanese Case

This paper looks at entrepreneurs' attempts to create a new local industry for regional regeneration in Japan, collaborating together beyond their own organizations. The case study suggests that successful collaboration requires a certain type of inter-organizational coordination ('collaboration mode'). The necessity of coordinating inter-organizational relations under the collaboration mode can be analyzed using the concept of 'technical core'. Inter-organizational collaboration can be described as the process of designing and operating a technical core jointly. Designing the technical core, creating and maintaining the fields of collaboration which encompass the technical core, and managing the collaboration mode are major tasks for the core organization of the collaboration.