The various sporting events are now well into their buildup for next year's Olympics and Paralympics. Like everyone else, I can hardly wait to see the world's top athletes perform in Rio de Janeiro. And after Rio will be Tokyo. While some people see that as a whole four years further on, personally I'm already starting to feel the pressure: Only four years to go.

The Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics offer a chance in a million to showcase Japan to the world, on top of which all of Japan—the government, the private sector, and beyond—will be coming together on a range of initiatives preparing the country for 2020. This represents a golden opportunity to develop a Japanese business model.

What would a Japanese business model look like? This is something I constantly debate with myself, but I believe that the catchphrase will be "coexistence and co-prosperity".

As an example, let's assume at big data utilization built around municipal authority hubs. Municipal authorities could gather and anonymize their own statistical data on population, etc., along with people flow data provided by companies, and then disclose this as open data. Ventures and other companies and associations would then share and utilize this region-specific big data to create new business and services. Having municipal authorities act as data collection hubs would create far more valuable data in terms of both quantity and quality than would be possible if individual companies collected their own data. Individuals providing data would also feel far more confident about personal data protection and security.

While the advance of ICT has removed barriers between business types and modes, it has also become difficult for one company to handle all services. Wide-ranging collaboration that includes municipal authorities and universities, for example, will be vital in the years ahead, opening the way for more rapid service development as well as expansion into world markets.

My aim is to ensure that in 2020, we can show the world not only a sterling performance from Japanese athletes but also the strength of Japanese firms.