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We suggest a framework of the global niche market which would enable a company to create and develop a new business. A global niche market is a small market which has particular and differentiated needs. There are two advantages to this framework. First, it makes the customers’ needs clear and thus companies are able to conform more closely to the particular needs. Second, competition with big companies can be avoided by selecting the appropriate market and business that match with the scale of the company (e.g. smaller scale venture businesses). The company would then be able to sustain its business by using the resources currently available. Here, we illustrate this process of new business creation step by step through a case study.

Porous starch was produced by digestion of freeze-dried potato starch with alfa-amylase from Bacillus sp. The surface structure of the granules became perforated and in the interior of the granules a capsule-like cavity was formed, i.e. the hydrolyzed starch can be used as an encapsulant. The structure change of the granules was observed with confocal laser scanning microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The degree of starch hydrolysis could be correlated with the Avrami equation. The activation energy of starch hydrolysis by alfa-amylase was 83 kJ/mol.

Cyclodextrins (CDs) are known to form inclusion complexes with various kinds of substances, which are included into the CD’s hydrophobic structural cavities without any covalent bonding. It is well known that the presence of water is essential to the formation of the inclusion complex. The inclusion complex cannot be formed by the simple mixing of the CD’s in dry powder form with the aromatic compounds such as d-limonene. Recently, we have studied the formation of the inclusion complex by kneading a slurry mixture of jS-CD and d-limonene at low moisture, and found that the formation of the inclusion complex was influenced by initial moisture content [1]. Saenger et al [2] speculated that the release of the included water molecules in the CD’s cavity, called “high energy water”, was the major driving force of the inclusion. However, there has been no systematic research dealing with the effect of moisture content on the amount of inclusion complex. From a practical point of view in the pharmaceutical use of cyclodextrins, it is important to examine the effect of the presence of other organic solvents such as ethanol in aqueous solutions of CDs [3]. In this study, we focus our attention on the influence of water and ethanol contents on the formation of the inclusion complex at lower water contents. The minimum number of water molecules required for including d-limonene into a-, p- and y-CD’s cavity were measured by the micro-aqueous method.

The concentration distributions of particles were measured in a vertical pipe for both an upward and a doward flow. When the stream Reynolds number was low, the profile for the upward flow was opposite to that for the downward flow. The profiles of the concentration distributions under various conditions were classified into several kinds of modes. They were summarized into a figure by means of the stream Reynolds number and the particle Reynolds number. Two possible forces were suggested in order to explain the general distribution of partices.