Joi Ito - Later Life

Later Life

Ito became a disk jockey working in nightclubs in Chicago such as The Limelight and The Smart Bar and to work with Metasystems Design Group to start a virtual community in Tokyo. Later, Ito ran a nightclub in Roppongi, Japan called XY Relax with help from Joe Shanahan of Metro Chicago/Smart Bar. He helped bring industrial music from Chicago (Wax Trax) and later the rave scene, including importing Anarchic Adjustment to Japan.

Ito is the Chairman of Creative Commons. He is on the board of Digital Garage, Culture Convenience Club (CCC), Tucows, Machinima.com, EPIC, Technorati, and WITNESS. He is the founder and CEO of the venture capital firm Neoteny Co., Ltd. In October 2004, he was named to the board of ICANN for a three-year term starting December 2004. In August 2005, he joined the board of the Mozilla Foundation. He served on the board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) from March 2005 until April 2007. He currently serves as a Board Emeritus for OSI. He was a founding board member of Expression College for Digital Arts as well as the Zero One Art and Technology Network. In 1999, he served as the Associate to Mr. Mount (the executive producer) on the film The Indian Runner. Ito also served as a Board Member of Energy Conversion Devices from 1995 to 2000.

Ito is a venture capitalist and angel investor and was an early stage investor in Kickstarter, Twitter, Six Apart, Technorati, Flickr, SocialText, Dopplr, Last.fm, Rupture, Kongregate, etology Inc, Fotopedia and other Internet companies. A vocal advocate of emergent democracy and the sharing economy, Ito is a doctoral candidate in Business Administration focusing on the sharing economy at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University. He is the author of Emergent Democracy. Ito is Senior Visiting Researcher of Keio Research Institute at SFC. In May 2011, it was announced that Ito's company, Digital Garage, will provide PR, marketing, product marketing research and market research for Linkedin Japan.

Ito is a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer (MSDT) and a Divers Alert Network (DAN) Instructor.

In recent years, Ito has become critical of what he sees as Japan's inward focus. He stated in a 2011 interview that he thinks Japan needs to look internationally if it is to continue to be "relevant', and that this is one of the reasons that he is on the board of Tokyo's Nishimachi International School. He also serves as a member of the Japanese Cabinet, as a member of the "IT Strategic Headquarters" (高度情報通信ネットワーク社会推進戦略本部)