Focus Systems Co.
Secure Services Office, Business Creation Department, IT Innovation Division 2
Ms. Ikuyoshi Inori

Ms. Inori, who works for Focus Systems, is mainly in charge of merchandising. One such product is a beacon device that can track the whereabouts of children and the elderly. Using this product and technology, Ms. Inori is working hard to solve educational issues in the Philippines. The moment she found a connection between the issues she needed to solve and what her company could do, Ms. Inori's activities gained a great impetus and she found a new business seed. 

Join us to break out of your shell

Ms. Inori joined the Bridge Communication Course at LIVERNESS UNIVERSITY because her boss told her to come out of her shell and show more of herself. At that time, he was also in charge of new business creation as well as product sales, and was asked to start up new projects that had never been done before. The mission of the course was to "decide on a theme that would allow me to continue working on my own and to execute the first mechanism. Thinking that she needed to have the ability to do such a thing, she joined the course with the intention of giving it a try first. In the course, Ms. Inori, together with participants from other companies, devised an application that allows users to easily grasp their health status with images, with the mission of "realizing a healthy diet that no one has to work hard for. Through this experience, Ms. Inori realized that in order to create something new, it is important to keep one's own passion for solving problems and to involve others in the process, regardless of the content of one's current work.

Our core business lives on in solving problems in the Philippines

Ms. Inori had a shocking experience in the Philippines, which she visited during the course. She had never traveled abroad before and had no strong interest in the Philippines, but the course professor told her that it was important to get first-hand information in the field, and she thought it might be an opportunity to break out of her shell, which turned out to be true. In the Philippines, in contrast to the convenient urban centers where development is progressing, if you go down an alleyway, you will find children without homes studying on the streets. It is not that I had never heard of such a situation before, but it was the first time I was shocked to see it with my own eyes. When we spoke to local school teachers, they told us that children are still exposed to danger every day. Some children are taken away from school on their way to and from school, and others slip out of school. In the Philippines, where the population is exploding, the number of children per teacher is so large that teachers are extremely busy and cannot even keep track of where the children are. This is where Ms. Inori's current work in Japan comes in handy. She developed a system in which children are given beacons, a product of the company, to record their whereabouts and teachers can keep track of them at school, and proposed the system to schools in the Philippines. In just a few months, the company had created a product that would lead to solutions to local problems.

If I don't do it, who will?

The fact that IT technology that is commonplace in Japan was not available in the Philippines and that Japanese technology was actually effective in solving deep problems in the Philippines. From this experience, Ms. Inori developed a strong passion to bridge the gap in education between Japan and the Philippines, and visited Philippine schools and had discussions with teachers on the spot. He also had discussions with a local educational venture, Wela Online, and an idea was born for teachers to easily check the safety of their children using a hand-held smartphone. We also found that nursery schools and kindergartens in Japan also have issues related to child safety, so we created a new solution for smartphones to watch over children. The solution was first introduced to nursery schools in Japan and has already begun to spread. Ms. Inori's next goal is to gather colleagues within the company who can work together to solve problems in the Philippines. Although they all have their own day jobs, they are all passionate about this project and want to try it out. She is also planning to create a place where she can pick up the voices of those who are interested and want to try it, and to involve her colleagues in the process.

(Text by Tomoko Tachibana)

For more information about the Liberace University Bridge Communication Coursethis way (direction close to the speaker or towards the speaker)for more information.