AMITA designs the future

Prelude to a chaotic great divide

Signs are becoming increasingly prevalent around us of international, interethnic, and interreligious divides of global significance and implication. When you look back on major iconic events that have shaped the world in the 21st century thus far, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 stand out as having triggered an emergence of the “Shock Doctrine,” a theory advanced by Canadian journalist Naomi Klein that describes “the brute tactic of systematically using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock—wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes, natural disasters—to push through radical…measures, often called shock therapy.”

Equally significant, the global financial meltdown of 2008 and the invention of Bitcoin in 2009 might have been a prelude to the great divide that followed. The Paris Climate Accord was signed in 2015, and Donald Trump, who had had no experience in public office, was elected President of the United States in 2016. In the same year, the British voted to leave the EU. On a lighter note, Pokémon GO, a mobile game based on augmented reality technology, became a social phenomenon around this time.

• The advent of internationally traded cryptocurrencies backed not by central authorities, such as national governments and banks, but by a collective free flow of information
• Anti-globalism movement gaining momentum
• The border between virtual and real becoming increasingly blurry in society

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 turned out to be a catalyst for expanding a virtual society, with social distancing and isolation becoming the norm. Shock waves were felt around the world in 2022, when Russian military forces invaded Ukraine, and again in 2023, when Israel and Hamas got drawn into a bloody conflict. And this year, with Trump back in the White House and Republicans gaining control of both chambers of Congress in the United States, the populist America First policy is likely to be pursued with vigor, prompting a resurgence of the isolationist Monroe Doctrine.

In a “post-truth” society, people’s collective emotions and sentiments take precedence over hard facts, with unfounded rumors often gaining surprisingly wide currency. In a divided society, people give up an objective understanding of the world around them, choosing to see only what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.

Back in 1979, when the AMITA Group became operational, some economists and business leaders were saying that socially responsible companies single-mindedly maximize revenue and profit, out of which to pay more taxes and hire more people. We strongly disagree. Society is hardly healthy if people’s vulnerabilities are exploited to fuel their material needs and their insecurities are taken advantage of to push political and economic agendas. In such a society, businesses operate to pay their dues and create more jobs while polluting air, water, and soil and creating an epidemic of loneliness, suffered by thousands of people, as a result. People’s collective anxiety is no longer a valid social driver. Then, what is?

Driver for carving out a brighter future

“Rebuilding Trust” was the main theme of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024 in Davos. Trust is intangible and abstract. You cannot touch it, but perceive it only through your heart, just like courage and thoughtfulness.

In a society in which people are insecure and distrustful of others and economic motivation serves as the only means of gauging personal gains and losses, they tend to rely on material success to achieve their personal fulfillment. People often place the pursuit of their own interests ahead of the pursuit of social welfare, feeling disillusioned about what the future may hold for them.

When people are thrown into a total social chaos, their deep-rooted anxiety will not go away if they simply receive token reassurance from others. The more you worry about something, the more profound a peace of mind you seek to alleviate it.

Peace comes with a sustainable society that ensures a brighter future for all of us, in which no dispute, division, or isolation bothers us. The driving force behind building such a society is deeper engagement among people who actively seek peace of mind.

Establishing a new social and economic order

Establishing a new order for a sustainable society requires the achievement of environmental, social, and economic sustainability, all at the same time. We must renounce our traditional belief that society is healthy if it sustains economic prosperity, and embrace the belief that an economy is healthy if it sustains social prosperity.

The economic model of make-to-stock mass production that prevailed in the last century relied, to keep going, on an uninterrupted supply of abundant raw materials and ever-expanding demand, resulting from an extended period of growth of working-age population. Today, those prerequisites are no longer in play. In times of depleted natural resources and shrinking population, disrupted supply chains and contracting markets are becoming the norm. The once-hailed model of expansive reproduction is losing its relevance, because the larger the market that businesses continue to pursue, the harder it becomes to get raw materials.

In a time of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), a new market dynamic emerges that facilitates more sustainable procurement of materials. In this model, values play a greater role than material prosperity.

When the market is driven by mass production that satisfies people’s insatiable appetite for consumption and ownership, consumers are motivated by the “keep up with the Joneses” mentality. However, even if the procurement of raw materials is as constrained as it is these days, manufacturers can still satisfy consumer demand by providing goods that may look slightly different but embody their shared values in life. For instance, when people believe in environmentally and socially responsible goods, they may place much higher value on goods made from predictable materials sourced locally than on those made from unpredictable imported first-use materials, even if there is a small difference in quality.

The society you reside in and the life you live are inseparable from the prevailing political and economic systems around you. When the latter changes, so does the former.
Out of society and people’s everyday lives is created industry, which is at the heart of a value-creation model.

Today’s responsible businesses must protect and preserve nature to achieve greater environmental sustainability and foster deeper engagement among people to achieve greater social sustainability; they continually procure natural and relational capital and use it to create greater economic value. This is how economic sustainability facilitates deeper engagement.

To make this whole process work, society must have a built-in mechanism for enhancing people’s peace of mind and trust of others based on deeper engagement. Key to this mechanism are circulation and inclusion.

The AMITA Group strives to achieve an ecosystem society, characterized by circulation and inclusion that enable human activities to maintain harmonious interplay with nature and that allow all life forms on Earth to coexist and thrive.

To fulfill this objective, we will step up our efforts to assist businesses and municipalities in Japan in achieving greater corporate and community sustainability as part of bolstering domestic demand for goods and services in a transition from a growth phase to a maturity phase. Instead of taking a pie-in-the-sky approach, we play the role of a “Do Tank” for our corporate and municipal clients, working closely with them in conducting proof-of-concept field tests of their proposed initiatives and finding the right partners to get their projects across the finish line. We believe this approach helps them overcome the innovator’s dilemma in their ambitious ventures.

In our operations outside Japan, we leverage our extensive professional experience and expertise, accumulated through our 47 years of operations in Japan, to expand our business in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, including India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The AMITA Group intends to assist businesses and local authorities in this region in developing a platform for a circular society and creating greater value to thrive in a sustainable future.

In an increasingly unstable and unpredictable society, the primary driving force for establishing a new social and economic order is people’s collective passion to build a better society and aspiration to carve out a brighter future. The AMITA Group is deeply committed to achieving an ecosystem society in which its every member plays both a leading role and a supporting role in fulfilling that aspiration.

I would much appreciate it if you would continue to extend your support to us in this challenging but inspiring endeavor.

January 2025
KUMANO Eisuke
Chairman and Chief Visionary Officer AMITA HOLDINGS CO., LTD.

Representatives from our six group companies have come together to reflect on the past year and share their aspirations for 2025. We invite you to also enjoy a glimpse of our spirited team gathering filled with "smiles" and "energy."

*Please watch the video using auto-generating of English subtitles function on YouTube.