Analysis of Key Success Factors for Eco-Business Through Case Studies in Japan

In order to solve environmental problems, a transition from conventional business to environmentally conscious business (eco-business) is urgently needed. Support for finding eco-business ideas will help to promote this transition. As a step in this direction, this paper takes an approach that provides a business designer with general rules and prerequisites extracted from existing eco-businesses. This paper collects 130 examples of eco-businesses in Japan and then investigates and classifies them to develop general guidelines and checklists for success. As a result, four kinds of customer value provided by eco-businesses, eight rules that couple the the reduction of environmental load of society with the four customer values, and eight rules for cutting business costs are derived. A tool for planning a new eco-businesses is also proposed.