Abstract: Following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, Thailand’s economy which did rely on external capital
and resources suffered from an imbalanced economic growth. As a solution to the economic restructuring
process, endogenous development concept proved to be an alternative development paradigm which
prioritizes the community development, human empowerment in the transformation of local resources.
Accordingly, One Tambon One Product (OTOP) was designed to unlock grass-root potentials by generating
income through developing local products in a national, regional, and global scale. This initiative was first
developed under the name of One Village One Product (OVOP) by local people in the poorest Oita Prefecture,
Japan in 1961. The aim of the paper is to compare two development models of OVOP and OTOP. The
comparative study draws useful lessons from the experience of OTOP for future applications of the OVOP
model in developing economies. The paper finds that there are inevitable differences in terms of
administration, finance management, human resource management, and marketing promotion management
between bottom-up OVOP in Japan and top-down OTOP because of social diversity, political culture, and
economic capability in Thailand. The paper contributes to provide a comparative study into models of
sustainable development in the context of increasing gap between the urban and rural in globalization.