We have been covering the Cool Japan project over the last few weeks and have been rather critical of the way the government have handled the whole campaign. The latest idea from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry however actually looks like a unique and really interesting move in exactly the right direction. A new service called Mazer has been set up that hopes to generate crowd sourced ideas through social media which can then be auctioned to interested companies, all in the name of enhancing Brand Japan.
The name itself comes from the Japanese word Mazeru meaning to mix, and is a tremendously interesting move from the government that looks to use social media in a unique and potentially extremely effective way. Mazer works through three main stages; firstly an appointed “creative director” poses a particular problem or question, secondly open crowd sourced answers to the problem or question are submitted through social media (i.e Twitter), then finally an “idea auction” of the winning idea to companies interested in taking it further and actuallyimplementing it.
The open source style of the system is particularly forward thinking from the government who comment, “Mazer is a platform that harnesses the power of social media to tap into collective intelligence. Put simply, it’s structured to generate better quality idea creations by sharing them with all”. Rather than a small team of government bureaucrats addressing the issues, this new set up has the potential to not only draw in interested parties who are specialists in the particular area but also generate new start ups openly pitching for projects. The site dismisses the idea that making ideas openly available may lead to them being copied by the very fact that it is open in the public from conception onwards, in that the public themselves act as the watchdogs and “this self-cleansing function is a part of social media”.
The platform has also been well thought as to how the submitted ideas are judged, recognizing that as important as original idea creation is, idea curation is equally as important. This is where the “Creative Directors” step in and the site explains, “while the base of Mazer is for everyone to generate idea creations, the role of the creative director is also crucial”. How effective this project will be as well as hanging on how well publicised it is, also depends on who is selected in the curator role of “Creative Director”. Glancing at the list of names selected for the panel however shows that they seem to have gone in completely the right direction with it currently including some great names including the likes of Naoki Ito the Creative Director and founder of Party, Masamichi Toyama (pictured) the CEO of Soup Stock Tokyo and man behind Pass The Baton, Yoshiko Ikoma (pictured), fashion editor and even our friends at Klein Dytham.
Once selected the ideas are open to companies to bid on and buy and “by buying an idea creation from someone, that company/group will gain exclusive negotiation rights to materialize the idea creation into a product or service. Good idea creations are properly paid for and take shape”. There are of course a number of teething problems with the new concept, such as language. The site as well as in Japanese is also in English but with the ideas translated in real time through a web based translation tool the wording and English used is almost always wrong. However the problems or questions posed by the Creative Directors are in native level English and so should still encourage those outside of Japan or foreigners within Japan to pitch their own ideas.
This new open approach of trying to harness a real contribution from the public in a modern and engaging way is a real breath of fresh air for Cool Japan. Moreover this is a great use of social media now widely used in Japan where Twitter is now more popular than Facebook, and harnesses the potential of how a collective intelligence can be leveraged. While still in very early days I really hope that this project gets off the ground and not just fades away, I would love to see it gain a lot more attention and develop into a real think tank type platform that could actually help promote new business as much as it does Japan with some ideas actually being implemented in successful ways.
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Darrell is a native of the U.K. and has been in Japan since 2002. He consults on innovation and strategy at the 
