Japan Growth Hacker Awards 2016 and Kaizen Platform's "Growth Hacking Ecosystem"

Hello everyone. This time, I'd like to change the tone a bit from previous installments and share details about a specific event.

As the primary sales partner for the solutions provided by the company that hosted this event, I was involved in its organization. I'll review it from that perspective and conclude with my personal observations and future outlook.

On February 23rd, the "Japan Growth Hacker Awards 2016" was held at dots. in Shibuya to honor growth hackers (see: previous article ). Now in its second year, the event aims to create opportunities for growth hackers by recognizing outstanding achievements and showcasing the latest industry case studies and initiatives.

About Kaizen Platform

First, for readers unfamiliar with the organizer, Kaizen Platform Inc., here's an introduction. The company provides and operates the "Kaizen Platform" globally, a platform for improving website UI/UX.

With this service, adding just one line of the company's code to a site or page enables simultaneous deployment and effectiveness verification (A/B testing) of multiple page design patterns. This allows for optimization and improvement by identifying pages that achieve higher and more effective metrics, such as sales or sign-ups.

Furthermore, businesses can gather design proposals from registered growth hackers worldwide (web designers skilled in UI/UX improvement) without needing to create alternative designs themselves. Kaizen Platform not only operates the platform but also provides support for designing test schemes and technical assistance.
Kaizen Platform: https://kaizenplatform.com/ja/

This award ceremony primarily recognized the results of improvement measures for this offer.

At the event's opening, Kaizen Platform CEO Kenji Sudo provided an overview of the improvements made by 3,000 engineers and designers on the company's digital platform, covering 5,000 pages of UI improvements across 190 companies.

Over 30,000 improvement proposals have been submitted to date, with one improvement increasing sales by up to approximately ¥860 million. Additionally, 23 improvements each increased sales by ¥100 million, demonstrating the high potential of growth hacking as an industry.

For services with e-commerce functionality or landing pages (pages that introduce products and directly prompt sign-ups), UI/UX improvements directly impact KPI improvements. Mr. Sudo also discussed how digital service improvement activities significantly influence business metrics.

He also highlighted two crucial points for achieving results through improvements: consistently executing improvement activities and possessing insights from case studies. He introduced Kaizen Platform as a resource that provides both of these.

The Birth of Star Growth Hackers

At the awards ceremony, Growth Hackers were selected and honored based on a comprehensive evaluation. Criteria included the number of improvement proposals adopted by clients, win rates during A/B testing, and outstanding contributions to KPI improvements. Category awards were established by sponsoring client, industry, device, and site type (e.g., e-commerce, media). Wataru Fukui was selected as the overall Grand Prix winner, the Growth Hacker of the Year.

Next, the presenters introduced key improvement points, actual improvement proposals, and their outcomes. Outstanding examples were presented, focusing on the user perspective, business perspective, UI visibility, and information exchange.

Growth Hacking as a New Way of Working

Next, Recruit Jobs introduced the activities of their female-focused growth hacking team within the "Iku-shon" project.

Iku-shon is an initiative focused on "creating a society where it's easier to work while raising children," supporting the realization of diverse work styles by fostering environments where people can thrive anytime, anywhere. Since only a computer is needed to work, it provides an environment where individuals can work as growth hackers even while telecommuting. They conduct growth hacker training programs not only for freelancers with prior web industry experience but also for inexperienced or less experienced individuals raising children.

Skills honed through caregiving and childcare—such as analytical ability, empathy, processing skills, and multitasking—are effectively leveraged, leading to tangible service improvement results.

Next, Pasona Tech introduced their growth hacker training system within Job-Hub, an agent-based crowdsourcing platform. Beyond providing content and projects for working professionals to learn web marketing, they also offer growth hacking programs for students in regional areas, creating opportunities for learning and work experience. While expanding to multiple universities, Saga University has even implemented a system for granting academic credits.

Kaizen Platform Updates

Finally, Mr. Sudo announced two updates regarding Kaizen Platform. The first is a functional update. This includes features enabling targeted or direct project offers, as well as a system allowing individual growth hackers to update their profiles, such as selecting their areas of expertise. This functionality was added to focus on individual talents and capabilities.

The second update was the announcement of a Partner Program. Partners are being recruited across sales, direction, creative, and tools domains, with 19 companies, including ours, announced as members.

Mr. Sudo's use of the term "marketing orchestration" to express the importance of overall harmony across the various marketing value chains was particularly memorable. The aim is to expand the service line and grow the entire ecosystem by incorporating strengths that Kaizen Platform lacks—such as advertising, talent, DMP, access analytics, BI tools—provided by other companies as solutions.

The event concluded successfully with a networking reception.
Thank you to the organizers for your hard work.

Building a Business Ecosystem

As mentioned earlier, Dentsu Inc. has decided to participate in Kaizen Platform's partner program (see: Kaizen Platform Press Release ).

We believe it is meaningful for Dentsu Inc. to cover this event in Dentsu News and, as the partner alliance manager, to join Kaizen Platform's partner program and be among the first to offer their website improvement solution service.

Furthermore (though this is my personal opinion as the driving force behind this initiative), I believe we can leverage Dentsu Inc.'s expertise in advertising, marketing strategies, and data analysis to elevate this into a solution with greater originality and comprehensive coverage of communication challenges.

Above all, what I found truly impressive about this initiative is that Kaizen Platform is also directing its efforts toward building a growth hacking ecosystem.

While pursuing revenue is naturally important for any company, I see great potential in their approach of simultaneously investing resources in initiatives that expand the market and business as a whole.

This is evident in their compensation design, which leverages the nature of growth hacking to visualize results as changes in KPIs and KGIs. Furthermore, UI improvement proposals can be made with just one computer equipped with design applications. This facilitates remote work, lowers barriers to balancing work and childcare, creates a more comfortable working environment, and contributes to regional revitalization by invigorating local IT companies. It is also effective in terms of creating a supportive environment for growth hackers.

I am watching closely to see if growth hacking (and growth hackers) can become established not just as a buzzword, but as a distinct industry and methodology. While it is challenging to manage startups and structure businesses with a long-term perspective that considers the broader market and society, I was reminded that this viewpoint is also a crucial mindset for anyone involved in business development.