People

sha

A game and IT person, working to increase the total amount of tanoshii in the world.

Tanoshii: a joy that grows from curiosity and passion, not just pleasure.

sha runs Project Regrow alone.

Now: walking alongside companies on AI and information

It often starts with "our company has to start using AI." But once you really start using it, the question becomes how to put information to work in management. Many companies — especially small and mid-sized ones — handle money well but don't yet treat information as a management resource at the same level.

So even when we start with AI, we soon work on IT and the way information is handled itself. Without being bound by old ways of doing IT, and keeping pace with fast-moving AI, we think together about building information into management resources, automating processes, and creating more touchpoints with customers. It's hands-on support, side by side.

Career

A global IT company2000–2006

From developing and maintaining internal systems, to a team handling critical, litigation-level problems, to software and service quality, to sales close to product marketing. Experienced everything from programming to sales.

Betting on board games2006–2012

Took on the challenge of building a "board game business," which barely existed in Japan at the time, while serving as vice representative of Game Market. The dream: 100,000 board game players in Japan. The result: "A business got started — but I wasn't the one who started it." Still, a few years later the number had reached, by my sense, a million, so the dream itself came true. After the 2008 financial crisis drained my funds, I stayed in the game world by working as a test player for trading card games.

A UX consulting company2012–2019

Head of internal IT and security, including rollout to offices in Shanghai and Taiwan. Took on self-managing organizational operations: putting the ideal state of internal IT into words management could understand, and making priorities explicit and visible. Worked closely with general affairs, HR and recruiting, and finally joined a team rethinking the whole back office, including legal, labor and accounting.

A digital consulting company2019–2021?

Single-handedly set up IT, back-office and security in the company's founding phase.

An exploration that began with questionsaround 2020–

"What is happiness, really?" "What was holacracy, anyway?" Two questions put to me during my company years started an exploration of self-managing organizations. That led to deep involvement in Junkan Batake, a practice led by Shiro Yoshihara and Yuko Miyake, and to a special essay in the book Netsuryo Afureru Soshiki no Tsukurikata.