JYD was established to transform JFA’s revenue structure
The marketing department at JFA works on improving the value of the association’s main sources of revenue, such as partnerships, broadcasting rights, and our merchandise and licensing business. Currently, however, JFA is completely dependent on revenues relating to the national team, which account for 90% the total. Changing this situation is of imperative importance. In 2014, therefore, we began planning a marketing effort called JYD. The JYD program encompasses the marketing of a wide range of soccer events, such as university soccer, senior soccer, girl soccer, futsal, and beach soccer events. JYD thus includes the commercial rights to these events, and to the various efforts launched to popularize soccer in Japan and to foster new talent.
Stimulating a vertically structured organization
Since the JYD program was launched to create new revenue streams for JFA, it was mainly led by the marketing department, which centrally coordinated the operations of the other departments. While there is great commercial demand for soccer, our vertical structure was not conducive for new value creation. The program didn’t work well. This is when I heard about Saso and design thinking, which intrigued me. I thought BIOTOPE’s methods might be effective at stimulating our vertical mindset to change. After listening to a presentation by Saso and Kobayashi, I decided to launch the JYD Future Design Lab, a co-creation workshop that crosses organizational divisions.
Let everyone express and share their thoughts freely Many people choose to work at JFA because its philosophy, vision or values resonate with them, so I think there is a relatively strong sense of loyalty towards the organization. On the other hand, passion and conviction of individual has also led to a certain lack of flexibility. Despite this, we managed to unite and work as a team at the JYD Future Design Lab under Kobayashi’s direction. Starting with the topic “Societal challenges and soccer”, we jointly discovered several opportunity spaces and translated them into specific business models. This eventually became a future vision, The Future that JYD Wants to Create. In the search for new value, I believe that an organization’s structure or culture counts for little without the individual’s passion and drive. The workshop successfully involved such passionate people in the co-creation process. I was surprised to see how many people in our organization are passionate about solving the challenges our sport faces; not because of their official position in the organization, but as individual fans of sports and soccer.
Revitalizing the organization and bringing out its latent potential Through the JYD Future Design Lab we discovered a new way to accomplish JYD’s goal — promoting the popularization of soccer and training new talent — by using JFA’s resources to contribute in solving society’s problems. In total we held three co-creative and cross-departmental workshops. Our core team then analyzed and integrated the resulting ideas together with BIOTOPE and discussed an action plan. But I think these workshops had a deeper influence on us as well. More people took an interest in JYD, and I felt a change in not just each individual’s mindset, but in the organization as a whole. We have, however, not yet figured out how to connect these ideas to a strategy for growth. Thoroughly examine and develop ideas to discover new value The discussions in the JYD Future Design Lab covered a variety of ideas, such as expanding support for professional players, promoting soccer among the elderly and other groups for whom playing soccer is not a common activity, and capitalizing on these new efforts to acquire new sponsors. If we continue to develop these ideas, I believe that we can discover even more value in them. BIOTOPE summarized our vision for the future as a drawing. Everyone agrees with this vision; the rest depends on how far we are willing to go. Implementing it requires a budget and putting together a team, but our daily activities are also important. This balancing game is a dilemma. The importance of getting outside support Some companies have started to show an interest in JFA’s approach to solving societal challenges. The problems concerning club activities at Japanese schools have received much attention recently. The teachers that lead these activities are overburdened with work, and this can negatively affect their students. JYD might be able to use the resources of other organizations to provide solutions to such challenges. If the world of soccer takes the lead in offering solutions to the current problems facing school club activities, the approach might spread to other sports. If we can involve other companies in supporting club activities, I think these companies can gain new opportunities from interacting with high school students in new ways.