Hello everyone, it's your friendly teacher Hayato Ogawa unrelated to the Japanese drama, Extremely Inappropriate! It’s been a gray and dark winter here in Hakusanroku campus but the light at the end of the school year is upon us and it’s filled with new adventures and goals for the next school year! My background is in electrical engineering with programming and telecommunications. I enjoy designing, creating, fixing and tinkering.

 On Thursday, January 23rd, 2025, Tossa Mebusaya sensei and I held the final class in the Fundamentals of Business Management course. In the class students made their final business proposals. The proposals were a 3 to 5 minute pitch of an idea that would help develop a new awareness and help others have a better student life. The students have been working in teams from week 5 to bring awareness and resolve issues they have faced around and in school life.


The first group wanted to revise the process for requesting, acquiring and using the student discount for Japan Rail (JR) ticketing system. The target would help JR, students and the academic office staff who prepare the paperwork for this process. The current process is to acquire a student travel discount which is time consuming and frustrating. The students proposed a more direct and app-based solution and check system, all maintained in the JR ticket system. The app and check system has good security and user id confirmation checks to assure correct use by both student user and JR. This solution adds a new feature to the existing ticketing system and gates at JR by updating the check in check out system and creating a web application in conjunction with schools for ID checks and clearance for discount acquisitions. The students also proposed a strong revenue model and sustainable life cycle for the solution.

 

 

The second group brought awareness to the large amount of stink bugs in the area and on campus. This group’s proposed solution was a small robot that would incinerate the specific bug identified as a stink bug with a laser light source. With an interesting payment method where every time a stink bug is removed the user must pay per bug. With this revenue model it allows the homeowner or users to rent the robot from the company to in order to maintain a peaceful and stink free living space without the worry of stink bugs. 

 

 

The third group wanted to have more interaction with the cafeteria staff and the food preparation and consumption process. This group wanted to use the Gordon Ramsay tv show called Kitchen Nightmares show concept and have a culinary coach to come in to shake up the school menu. The students wanted to see how they could be involved in communicating interest, curiosity and familiar tastes to cafeteria staff and share ideas through food. What kind of new creations would be made. The students offered a workshop like experience to update and collaborate with the current kitchen staff of different offerings and themes. The revenue model is a onetime fee dependent on catering size of the school/company facility and cafeteria.

 

 

The fourth group wanted to tackle the issue of noise in the living areas or dormitories to alert and give friendly reminders to other tenants, of loud behavior or disruptive noises being generated accidentally. They came up with a small device to keep track of peak noise levels in individual rooms and let a central system know of issues and patterns while alerting the noise maker. The system and dataset are sold to the facility management company as a subscription service and as a rental for the sensor and monitoring system.

 

 

The fifth group wanted to resolve the issues on difficulty of reading blackboard notes, how to digitize them and, with the help of AI, decipher hard to read handwritten notes. Target users were the students and people who may have a disadvantage of seeing the blackboard due to seat position or eye condition. This business would sell a subscription to the academic facility and would be included in the digital media cost to students to aid everyone and have ease of access to tools to help with studying.

 

 

 

 

This type of business proposal is similar to the American tv show Shark Tank where contestants have a very limited time to concisely hit attractive and informative points to stakeholders and investors so they gain interest and confidence in investing in a product or service. It is important to hit key points and have an open area for investors to come back to schedule another meeting to discuss more details. 

Hayato Ogawa