**"How to Start an Environmental Business - What is a Successful Cooperative Method" - September 1998**.

**"How to Start an Environmental Business - What is a Successful Cooperative Method" - September 1998**.

In the late 1990s, in the aftermath of the bursting of the bubble economy, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan were beginning to move into "environmental business" as a new way of life. Under these circumstances, the method in which small and medium-sized enterprises from different industries get together to form a cooperative and launch a business attracted much attention. Each company brings its own areas of expertise, and in a face-to-face relationship, market research and product development are shared. By utilizing the cooperative system, the companies were able to commercialize their businesses while compensating for each other's weaknesses in fundraising and sales channel expansion. Several successful cases were created, including import sales, commercialization of research results, and a breakaway from subcontracting. Underlying these efforts was a "strong commitment to the environment" and the "ability to execute through collaboration. This movement, w
hich combined economic rationality and ambition, was pioneering at the time, and was also the germ of a new industrial culture.