Back in the day

As part of the project we were assigned, CP, A and myself were tasked to thinking about new growth areas and "soft" export niches we could position the economy in as a form of diversification. Given the high labour cost in Singapore, one of the ideas was to diversify the services we export and make it uniquely singaporean.

anyway, i stumbled upon this article and its a perfect blend of that idea. A country (Japan in this case) that knows what its specialty is, and has set up a form of service so as to draw foreign dollars. Japan has begun running manga programs in some of its universities.

And its not meant to be like those easy elective courses you take to get enough credit, i.e. "rocks for jocks" classes. Rather, the manga programs actually do train you in animation and storyboard design; some also provide internship opportunities to some of the big animation studios in Japan, like Toei.

while this is probably not going to be biggest source of revenue or GDP for the country, it is a smart way of expanding their manga market as well as making a specialty good a service. it might even be a market that's acyclical to the business cycle since media and television aren't usually impacted the same way manufacturing and other services are during a downturn.