Naoko OkawachiFounder & President
Naoko established ideafund Co., Inc. in 2018. Before founding ideafund, she worked as an investment banker.
Belonging to the corporate banking division covering IT industry, she engaged in lending and fund-raising for the biggest client group.
Naoko received her B.A. and M.A. from Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. She specialized in Cultural Anthropology and STS (Science and Technology Studies).
Due to the strong interest in the practical realization of the research methodology of cultural anthropology in Japanese society, she bowed out of the grant to embark on the journey to explore the possibility of applying anthropological methodology and insights to business.
Published “Idea Capitalism” (2021).
Major achievements(japanese only)
Tetsuya OtaAnthropologist
Tetsuya graduated from the School of Culture, Media and Society at Waseda University and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo with a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology.
His research theme during his studies was the process by which knowledge becomes an object in museums. He attempted to depict the intertwined dynamics of people, objects, and knowledge that are mobilized in this process, using the cooperative approach with ethnic groups that is widely seen today in museum activities such as exhibition, conservation, and education.
After joining ideafund, he has been engaged in various research projects based on cultural anthropological approaches. he hopes to provide insights into how people can live better by closely observing scenes that seem ordinary.
Professor Tadamasa KimuraAdvisor
Tadamasa Kimura is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Rikkyo University, a.k.a. St. Paul University in Japan. Before coming to Rikkyo in 2015, he was Professor at Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo and Head of Department of Cultural Anthropology, where he received his B.A. and M.A. He received his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. As a graduate student, he was specialized in cognitive anthropology and cognitive semantics. After he returned to Japan from Buffalo in 1993, he was fascinated with the Internet and its socio-cultural implications to be explored. Since then, he has been engaged in Internet Studies based on anthropological and ethnographic research interests and methodology.
Annamarie SasagawaAdvisor
Annamarie is a consumer and organizational ethnographer.
Originally from Canada, she has over 15 years of experience in the Japan market. She has a degree in Japanese and English literature from the University of Victoria, a master’s degree in human geography from Simon Fraser University, and is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of Tokyo. Annamarie’s expertise is in lifestyle trends among female Japanese consumers, and in supporting the global expansion of Japanese companies.
Daiki AyuhaResearcher
Daiki Ayuha is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in the anthropology of technologies, and the anthropology of risk and uncertainty at Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. He has been exploring the social implication of risk management technologies as a Foreign Researcher at Research Center for Regional Resources, Indonesian Institute of Sciences, or
P2SDR LIPI (2016 – 2019), and as Program-specific Visiting Researcher at National Museum of Ethnology, Japan (2015 – 2019).
Before working together with Ideafund, he was a Research Fellow for Young Scientists at Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2015 – 2017) and lecturer of social statistics at Faculty of Social Information Studies, Otsuma Women’s University (Apr. – Oct. 2014).
His recent publications include:
Ayuha, D. 2016 User Acceptance and Literacy of Closed-captioning Technology.
In K. Shibata et al (eds.) New Era of Captioning and Media: Symbiotic Literacy and Inclusive Welfare Society. pp. 104-117. Seikyusha: Tokyo (In Japanese).
Ayuha, D. 2015 Culture and Information: Local ICT Initiatives in the making:
Analysis of Local SNS Design, Socio-Informatics 3(3): 149-165 (In Japanese).