Executive summary: SIIF’s Vision Paper (VP)
SIIF Impact Economy Lab

2023.9.20

Foreword and table of contents

The Vision Paper (VP) illustrates SIIF’s critical strategy tocatalyse systems change in three themes of social issues
which SIIF identiﬁed in 2022.
This document, the international edition of SIIF’s VP
is an executive summary for the global stakeholders andfuture collaborators of SIIF to grasp SIIF’s analysis ofsystemic problems and Theory of Change, the key
interventions. The objective of this document is not only
to explain our key strategy and actions, but also to seek
for the international collaborations to develop anddisseminate the critical knowledge and practice with thethought-leaders to generate positive social impacts.
For any questions and comments, please contact us.
lab@siif.or.jp

Table of contents
1.

SIIF’s New Strategies...P3

2.

Systems change as the heart of SIIF’s strategy...P4

3.

SIIF’s strategic focus: Three themes of social
issues...P5

4.

The development process of SIIF’s Vision Paper(VP)...P6

5.

Inequality of Opportunity...P7-10

6.

Regional Revitalization...P11-14

7.

Healthcare...P15-18- Analysis of issue structures, issue summaries, Issue Design
Map, Theory of Change (ToC)- Analysis of issue structures, issue summaries, Issue Design
Map, Theory of Change (ToC)- Analysis of issue structures, issue summaries, Issue Design
Map, Theory of Change (ToC)

Impact Economy Lab, SIIF
*For the full versions of SIIF’s VPs in Japanse, please visit here: https://www.siif.or.jp/press_release/2307_visionpaper/

Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

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1. SIIF’s New Strategies
SIIF’s new strategies

Enabling Systems Change: beyond the isolated social outcomes

Pillar 1: Creating symbolic
examplesCreate symbolic examples that
represent the emergence of“impact economy” in the realmsof SIIF’s three strategic themes.

Pillar 2: Creating knowledge
Develop and disseminate the criticalknowledge to envision “impact
economy” to facilitate social changes
in practice.

Pillar 3: Creating opportunities
Facilitating interactions andnetworking of diverse
practitioners aim to develop the
impact economy.

Trajectory: SIIF’s strategy development process
The ﬁrst ﬁve years: SIIF’s foundation in 2017 to 2022
Over the ﬁve years since its founding in 2017, SIIF has worked to build an ecosystem for impact investing to pursue its
organisational mission of building an ecosystem for social and economic resources and environments that transcend the frameworkof self-help, public help and mutual help. However, SIIF experienced a massive participation of diverse stakeholders into the sphereof social impact investing in ﬁve years.
Thus, SIIF takes a critical opportunity to inquires how those diverse players, including investors, can work on promoting “Systems
change” to internalise social impact investment more essential level in the whole economic systems.
Reﬁning strategy: 2022 and beyond
Thus, SIIF reﬁned its core strategy to target “Impact Economy” rather than “Impact Investment” to enable “Transformation to
Impact Economy” where all economic activities such as labor, production and consumption serve to generate signiﬁcant social
impact. In that context, the Vision Papers(VPs) and the Vision Paper Log (VP Log) play pivotal role to articulate the ﬁrst pillar of our
new strategy.
Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

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2. Systems change as the heart of SIIF’s strategy
SIIF identiﬁes “systems change” as its strategic approach to collaborate with the diverse and criticalstakeholders to facilitate the transition to the impact economy.

Systems change and SIIF’s strategic activities

Direct service- Serving to the populations needing
direct beneﬁts to their wellbeing.

Scaled direct service

Addressing
visibleissues- Direct services for a large numbers ofindividuals with improved eﬃciency for
impact•The system change is a critical approach toaddress the underlying conditions of social
problems to give an essential solution at aroot-cause level.

•

In 2022, SIIF founded the SIIF Impact Economy
Lab (IEL) as the inhouse specialist team ofresearch and development to catalyse systems
change.

•In 2023, SIIF launches two social impact
investing initiatives focusing on catalysing
systems change: SIIFIC Wellness fund andsystems change focused grants in “regional
revitalization” and “inequality of opportunity”
themes.

Systems change- Addressing the root cause of a social
problem by leading a new behaviours
within existing ecosystems.

Framework change- Leading a whole social changes by
aﬀecting individual mindsets at a large
scale

Addressing
underlying
issuesReference: This chart is created based on Ashoka’s four levels of impact;
https://www.ashoka.org/ja-jp/story/4-levels-impact
Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

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3. SIIF’s strategic focus: Three themes of social issues
SIIF works with diverse partners to create symbolic practices that will likely lead systems change. To achieve this goal, SIIF has
decided on three strategic themes to deploy our projects for the ﬁrst time since our founding: inequality of opportunity, andregional revitalization which means preventing the decline of local economies and communities, healthcare.

Inequality ofOpportunity

Regional
Revitalization

Healthcare

SIIF identiﬁes “Inequality of Opportunity” that arises from the burden of caregiving (e.g.,child raising, nursing care), gender inequality, nationalities, and poverty passed from parents,
among others. SIIF is committed to supporting innovations geared to narrowing and closing thegaps as the economic activities can be the cause of and solution to this issue. Also, SIIF plans to
explore the potential approaches to achieve the social inclusion and empowerment by facilitatingcompanies to invest in human capital and engaging governments in their decision-making
processes.
In Japan, the rural population continues to move into Tokyo and other large cities withseveral reasons: the decline of local industries and decent, attracting employment
opportunities, and people with vested interests resist change. This situation leads regional
economies to keep shrinking. Given the fact that the regional revitalization is a critical issue andyounger people started to take actions in rural areas increasingly, SIIF plan to develop the eﬀective
approaches to address structural issues systemically, rather than just supporting individual
initiatives.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a wide range of problems that were underlying theJapanese society at once, not only the decline in birthrates and aging population, including
health disparities between social classes and regions. To address healthcare issues, SIIF explores
the interventions to change the structures of the healthcare and nursing care systems and industries,
and to facilitate the transformation of individuals’ awareness and people’s mutual help
simultaneously. Ultimately, no one will be left behind in eﬀorts toward physical, emotional, andsocial health.

Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

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4. The development process of SIIF’s Vision Paper (VP)The SIIF’s Vision Papers (VPs) includes the key elements of the issue structure analysis, Theory of Change andassociated actions in the three strategic themes, based on the research processes referring both domestic andinternational data and cases. Although each VP in three issue themes shares common research objectives, the research
processes were conducted independently to delve into the issue speciﬁc topics.

Research
objectives

1.
2.
3.

Visualise the future vision of the three strategic themes.
Hypothesise the Theory of Change (ToC) to achieve the visions.
Identify the potential interventisons of SIIF based on the ToCs.

1. Issue analysis
Research
process-

Spotting the root-causes
and structures thatgenerate social problems
by understanding thewhole picture in the threestrategic themes.

2. Theory of Change-

Identifying the leverage
points which can drive apositive impact in thethemes, then to engage
the key stakeholders toparticipate the problem
solving processes.

3. Action plans-

Deﬁning SIIF’scompetitive values andactions by analysing thefuture visions and leverage
points..

*The actual development process was conducted the three processes by going back and forth to improve the accuracy of the research.
*For the full versions of SIIF’s VPs in Japanse, please visit here: https://www.siif.or.jp/press_release/2307_visionpaper/

Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

65. Inequality of Opportunity: Analysis of issue structures

Identiﬁcation of Inequality of Opportunity•

SIIF deﬁnes “inequality of opportunity” as disparities in opportunity between individuals to choose the life they
hope to live, and this disparities essentially come from inherent diﬀerences in resources individuals already have or
they have access to. In this context, the term “resource” refers not only economic but also human, social capital, in otherwords, cultural capital. SIIF considers that the structural inequality can be the the major cause of the growing disparities in
economic prosperity across society and of poverty and inequality passed down from generation to generation.

•

In Japan, the people’s resignation to obtain social mobility is becoming prevalent as there are several sayings; “theceiling of glass” means the situation women workers cannot get equal opportunities as men workers do, “employment
ice age” means a disadvantaged generation due to the collapse of economic bubble. Notably, a young people’s slang of“Parent Gacha-game” indicates that children are no choice of their parents and prosperity and cultural capital, with animplication of low social mobility in Japan. Not only the young generation’s challenges, many patterns of inequality ofopportunity are argued such as working parents giving up careers due to care work to their children or family, dropping oﬀ
from giving quality of education to children due to economic hardships.

•

However, the whole structure of social issues in the realm of inequality of opportunity in Japan is not speciﬁed yet.
Therefore, this paper articulated the Issue Design map based on the study with the statistical data and interviews withexperts to collect information (1) what is really happening, (2) what issues and adverse eﬀects have been caused by (1), (3)what the structures that have created those problems look like, and (4) what are bottlenecks of the problems.

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5. Inequality of Opportunity: Issue summaries

Preconditions of the issue:•

This paper identiﬁed the following macro environments and trends as the preconditions of the inequality of opportunity
issue: declining and aging of population, the national economic downturn, nuclear family model that became
common after World War II, and increased double-income households.

Disparities in economic and human capital (self-help)•

A heavy burden of caregiving (e.g., child raising, nursing care); unequal opportunity to develop a career of one’s
choice; diﬃculty in investing in education and/or experience for oneself or the next generation; impossibility tosecure one’s livelihood at present and in the future

Disparities in social capital (mutual help)•

Having no one to turn to/conﬁde in; unable to develop relationships for mutual support in the second half of life; noopportunities given to the next generation to develop enriching social capitals

Disparities in institutional capital (public help)•

Slow or no promotion of diversity and inclusion and investments in human capital in corporate management;
government policies not adaptive enough to address issues for those who are involved in the issue of inequality ofopportunity
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5. Inequality of Opportunity: Issue Design Map

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95. Inequality of Opportunity: Theory of Change (ToC)
Theory of Change
Issue structure
Reliance on
the economic
growth andpast successmodels in the20th century

Population
declining,
shrinkingeconomies

Demising
lifetime
employment,
blood/
territorial
relationship

Limited career
opportunities
due tonon-regular
employment

Diﬃculties ofself-investment andmaintaining
wellbeing due
to careresponsibility

Diﬃculties ofinvesting inself andchildren due
to low
disposable
incomeNo
connections toreliablefamily,friends
in thecommu
nitiesSocialnorm
that
avoidsrequesting help

Reproducing
inequality andrelativepoverty

Government cannot
outreach due toresource constraints
and reliance on
applications

Businesses
cannotimplement
inclusion attheworkplacesSlowdevelopmentof policy due
to weakfeedback ofneeds

Governments’verticaladministration, weak focus
on outcome

Lack ofcollaborations
among change
makingplayers

Change agentscannotrequiredresources

Diﬃculties ofmonetisationin problem
solving due tohigh cost/low
proﬁt

Issue

Outcome: short-term
Generating the social
impact models
Better access tocareer development
opportunities
Betteraccessibility
to thesupport toacquireresilience

Better access to easecaregiving burden
Better access to ﬁnance toinvest selves and next
generations

Better access to reduce theﬁxed costs such asaﬀordable housing

Functioning the bridging
social capitals among the
key services

Implementing aschemeto enrichsocialcapitals

Enabling inclusive
workplaces as the
success models
Visualising the
beneﬁciary needs forthe governments

Increasing the players for
systems change

Outcome: mid-term

Outcome: long-term

Sustained social impacts
and positive inﬂuences

Transformation of “self,
public and mutual help”

Better control oftime and money

Transforming self-help: ﬁnancial andhuman capital
The workers eﬀorts transform from themere values in use for employers to
the source of resilience to themselvesand next generations.

Access to thediversecommunities, social
capitalsSustained
resilienceof
beneﬁciariesPositive
experiences ofbeing helped,
supported

Transforming public help: social capital
Equiping a variety of “gifting” into theenvironments of the single parents, as a key
beneﬁciary group, such as communities,
workplaces, governments, to redesign thefunctions of human relationship, market andredistribution.

The beneﬁciaries
start to support
othersInclusiveness ofvulnerability
becomes thecorporate value
Public-private
partnerships as
normalised options for thegovernments

Positiveinﬂuenceandspillovers
tobeneﬁciaries’communit
ies

Increased diversity, scale,transferability of change agents

Change making players
1.Emergence of role models
2.Increased businesses identify inclusion as their
key strategies
3.Development of the impact data and scientiﬁc
evidence

Change making players
1.Increased market participations due to theinitial success models
2.Academic knowledge development anddessemination
3.Developed advocacy methods for thegovernments

Funders and intermediaries
1.Emergence of investor/intermediary rolemodels
2.Success models of ﬁnancing social
enterprises/non-proﬁts(both market rate andbelow market rate)

Funders and intermediaries
1.Increased socially conscious funders target thethree themes of problems of SIIF

1. Strategic support for the key stakeholders(change agents and funders) implementing the practical solutions for the problems,
and the involvement of SIIF
2. Visualising the change making processes of beneﬁciaries/users and their environment

Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

Transforming mutual help:
institutional capital
Overcoming the obstacles toimplement the personalised
redistribution

SIIF’sActionSolution

OutcomeVisionSociety where
people can live
the life theywish, by thecirculation of
benevolent
gifting

Enabling multi-stakeholder
learning processes

Change making players, funders andintermediaries
1.Increased peer-learning andcollaborations
2.Shared knowledge of social impact
generations

Facilitating the peer learnings among
key stakeholders

106. Regional Revitalization: Analysis of issue structures

Classiﬁcation of “Region”

The deﬁnition of “Region”•

SIIF deﬁnes the term “region” as a municipality
with a population of 500,000 or less (outside a
metropolitan area) that falls into any of the groups
shown in the right box. Although the severity ofeach issue also signiﬁcantly varies according to thesizes of regions, SIIF’s issue design map intends toillustrate the common issues.

Precondition of analysis•

To start the analysis, SIIF considered the common
regional phenomena (i.e., population decline thathas caused a decrease in the workforce population,
greater demand for nursing care due to an aging
population, and continuation of services at thesame levels using aged infrastructure) as
preconditions. Therefore, the analysis isconducted the local speciﬁc issues based on suchpreconditions.

1

Small satoyama community-based region(population of up to 10,000)[e.g., Nishiawakura Village (1,500), Ama Town (2,300)]

2

Small regional city (10,000 - 200,000)[e.g., Eiheiji Town (19,000), Nanao City (54,000),
Toyooka City (79,000), Yamaguchi City (190,000)]

3

Regional central city (200,000 - 500,000)[e.g., Gifu City (410,000), Toyama City (420,000),
Takamatsu City (420,000)]

4

Regional metropolis (500,000 - 1 million)[e.g., Shizuoka City (700,000), Niigata City (810,000)]

SIIF’s scope of analysis: the segment 1, 2 and 3.
※Data collection methods: desk research and semi-structured
interviews with 15 experts.

Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

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6. Regional Revitalization: Issue summaries
In the regional revitalization theme, SIIF identiﬁed the four critical challenges of regions in Japan: work, life,value andenvironment.
Work•

There are three major critical challenges in work category: the ﬁrst is the stagnant ﬁnancial ﬂows due to the declining
local industries and shrinking regional economies, and the second is the lack of attractive employment opportunities
due to the absence of high value-added industries and low productivities of local industries. Finally, the startups andentrepreneurial businesses are not likely to emerge in the local economies.

Life•

Regarding the life, the following elements are the key challenges: deteriorating educational and healthcare
environments, lower levels of convenience, declining safety and security, population declining of young people.

Value
•

As the negative contributing factor, intolerance for diversity and resistance for change in the local culture are
discussed.

Environment•

Deteriorated natural ecosystems and intensifying natural disasters in rural areas are considered as the downsides ofenvironment category.
Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

126. Regional Revitalization: Issue Design Map

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6. Regional Revitalization: Theory of Change (ToC)
Theory of Change: Regional Revitalization

SIIF’s key actions
Acti
vity

Input: humanresources,
goods, money

Developing the system to engage the bridging social capitals and update more inclusive gender perspectives
in the regions, by facilitating co-creation process among diverse generations, sectors, local citizens andexternal visitors

Leverage points:
activities of investees

Outcome:short-term

Outcome: short-term

Provision of diverse
education activities:
alternative, private,
remote, etc

Diverse options: childeducation andactivities

Mitigated educational
opportunity gaps between
urban and rural areas

Better educational
environments and access tohigher education by
utilising distant learning

More proactivity, diverse
perspective among children

Local mobility service:services for local
residents without cars

Improvingproductivity anddiversity of workstyleSupporting
entrepreneurshipbusiness successions

Adding signiﬁcantvalue to the local
businesses and theirresources

More variety oftransportations forresidents without carsMore diverse, ﬂexible
workstyle

Improved eﬃciency at
work
More entrepreneurs
and businesssuccession cases
Better wages andrecruitments in local
businesses

Better accessibility to higher
education in regions
Better quality and ﬂexibility ofwork
More young business owners lead new
businesses with digital technologies
and competitive talents

Innovative role models withcreative perspectives
More fulﬁlling work opportunities withutilising one’s talents and local
resources

Better wage standard for living
conveniently

Outcome:long-term

Local residents cankeep living in theirareas, thanks to the
choices of educationand employment
More creative classindividuals anddiverse people canchoose to stay andcontribute to theregions
Innovative people
from the outside of
local communities canﬁnd their path to live
and work in the local
areas
Co-creation between
locally grownresidents andresidents from out
side of the local areas

1. Smaller municipalities(population less than 10,000) areconsidered as more eligible to fostersocial innovation
2.Creating the small success cases
initiates changes

Key preconditions
for local
innovation

Open to the outsiders,experimental actions,collaborations

More inclusive culture, lessreliance on establishedinterests in local areas

The key action
strategy forsystems change

VisionThe transition of
the regions:the residents canbeneﬁt fromwellbeing andprosperities,
safety because
the enrichedsocial capitals
continuously
generate positivechanges inrespect of local
cultures andnatures.

Applying the key concept ofplaced-based investment, SIIF
will identify the key themes
relevant to the local contexts
with the key stakeholders inregions.
The examples of potential
investment themes are below.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Education
Mobility
Employment
Entrepreneurship
Industry facilitation andbranding
Nurturing social capital
Diversity

Ending, or declining ofpaternalism

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7. Healthcare: Analysis of issue structures
SIIF categorised healthcare into three components, health systems, health literacy, and social capital. Then, mapped
the issues connected to these components around (1) patients with physical and emotional health issues and (2) seniorcitizens with physical and emotional health issues. This page shows the deﬁnitions of these components.

Health systems•

Any organizations,institutions, andpeople’s actions forpreventing diseases,
providing treatments,
achieving recovery from
illness, and improving
and maintaining health

Health literacy•

Knowledge, motivation,
and ability to discoverand utilise healthinformation for making
critical decisions daily
regarding healthcare,disease prevention, andhealth promotion, tomaintain and enhance thequality of life (QOL).

Copyright© 2023 SIIF All Rights Reserved.

Social capital•

The social functions toimprove its eﬃciency
such as trust, discipline,
and network, byfacilitating people’s
collaborations.

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7. Healthcare: Issue summaries
To explore the healthcare issues, SIIF considered the problems stem from individual illnesses as preconditions of theanalysis, rather than issues to be solved. Based on that, SIIF identiﬁed the key issues of healthcare-related challenges
as below.
About Patients with Physical and Emotional Health Issues•

Health system-related issues: The slow development processes of adaptive medical products and services which ﬁt forindividual user needs with two reasons. The ﬁrst is the inactive applications of medical research, and the second is the lackof support system to engage individuals to participate in clinical trials.

•

Health literacy-related issue: The information asymmetry that individuals cannot choose the appropriate treatments
and hospitals due to the lack of understanding of their physical conditions and illnesses.

•

Social capital-related issue: The lack of social connections that patients cannot talk about their health to anyone,
aggravate their illnesses. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted to increase the downsides of this issue.

About Senior Citizens with Physical and Emotional Health Issues•

Health system-related issue: The barrier to develop the new, non-insurance services due to current nursing careinsurance system.

•

Health literacy-related issue: The complicated nursing care system and its process limit users’ self-decision making.

•Social capital-related issues: The weakened social capital due to the decline of local communities and negative inﬂuenceof the COVID-19 pandemic.
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7. Healthcare: Issue Design Map

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7. Healthcare: Theory of Change (ToC)
ToC for the Society without the isolation of elderly people

Input

Human
capitalActivities

Nurture
the
weak
ties

Outputs

Enrichedsocialcapital

Goods

Money

Educateaging
literacy

Nurtured
aging
literacy

1st-level
Outcomes

2nd-level
Outcomes

SIIF’s key actions

Ultimate
ImpactAcceptingpositive
aging
Filling the
gap
betweensubjective
wellnessandobjective
healthindicators

Nurtured
self
existence,eﬃcacy,esteemRich and
positive
aging

1.

Nurturing the
weak ties of
elderly people toimprove theirwellness2.

Nurturing theaging literacy toraise awarenessand readiness to
become elderlies

Decreasedneeds ofelderlycares

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