Where did Sapporo Valley come from and where will it go ?
July 17,2001
Sapporo, a city with a population of 1.8 million and a vivid image of the frontier, is also blessed with a rich, comfortable urban environment, and is well known nationwide for its accumulation of IT companies, which are currently referred to as “Sapporo Valley.” There IT companies constitute a group of approximately 300 companies, with sales on the scale of 200 billion yen per year. Their fortes are diverse: companies that excel in commissioned development, those which development, Those attracting attention for their advanced technological development of needs, such as encryption technology and VoIP. To name a few, there are B.U.G., Inc., which development ”MN128,” an ISDN router; HUDSON SOFT Co., Ltd., a game manufacturer representative of Japan; AGENDA Co., Ltd., Known for its “Atena Shokunin”; Datacraft Co., Ltd., Known for its “Sozaijiten”; Softfront Inc., which serves as Japan’s driving force with its VoIP technology; and Open Loop Inc., highly valued for its cryptographic and security technologies. These companies, whose brands are no longer local, continue their business, with Sapporo as their base. In pursuit of the high level of technology and competent talent, numerous leading manufactures have established their offices and call centers have been established in Sapporo. The accumulation befitting the name of Sapporo Valley is still under way.

The salient feature of Sapporo Valley is the open-minded corporate culture with which IT companies in Sapporo from corporate alliances. It vividly reflects how Sapporo was developed by settlers as the frontier. In 2002, “Sapporo Bizcafe” opened in front of the North Exit of JR Sapporo Station, as the open-minded network base of companies in Sapporo Valley, to hold their events and corporate presentation. The Bottom-up collaboration among IT companies was highly praised by Steven Levy, an IT columnist of the U.S. ”Newsweek” magazine, and other journalist. Inside Bizcafe is a frame with the words “New Business from New Style.” With the slogan of reforming business style, companies with a venture spirit have formed a community This business culture that is rare in Japan, has been propagating, with solid technical capability as its background.

Why is it that the aforementioned accumulation of IT companies and its propagation have been taking place in Sapporo, a regional city?
At its backdrop is a group of information ventures based on microcomputers that hatched in the 1970s.
There are numerous anecdotes about Sapporo as the place where information venture were born ahead of the rest of the country. For example, B.U.G. provided BASIC to the first personal computer that Sony made. AGENDA Co., Ltd., Datacraft Co., Ltd., and many other companies hatched from dB-SOFT Co., Ltd., which is renowned for its products, including the word processor application “P1.EXE,” which vied for supremacy with “Ichitaro.” DATT Japan Inc., which established Japan’s first commercial personal computer communication, has demonstrated its strength, centering on its database technology. HUDSON SOFT, a leading game manufacturer, is Japan’s first vendor that sold game software nationwide and contributed greatly to the startup of Masayoshi Son’s SOFTBANK CORP. At its basics was the presence of Professor Yoshinao Aoki of the Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, which started the Hokkaido Micro-computer Workshop, where he conducted research in microcomputers in an open-minded manner for the first time in Japan. (Professor Aoki published “ Research on Microcomputer” in 1976.) It is an IT company that enjoys management and technological expertise accumulated over more than two decades . Companies that have become independent of the mother company collaborate with each other on an equal footing while creating a relationship of competition and partnership, forming free, open-minded, new business style. This trend is spreading throughout Asia and the world, transcending national boundaries. It also affects solution business companies, contents companies and SOHO companies, repeating innovation and bringing about an urban model that can be referred to as the Sapporo style, which dynamically create value.