On September 12th, I made a keynote speech at 「Innovation Japan 2007」 held in Tokyo International Forum. I talked for 30 minutes from 13:00 and the content I covered is almost the same as "GIES2007"（link to my blog ） and Helsinki （click here to jump to my blog ） where I spoke in English and Japanese respectively and I used mostly the same slides. They are posted on each respective site, so I hope you read, see and listen to it.
When the panel for keynote speech started, it was the very moment when Prime Minister Abe announced his resignation. Mr. Masahiro Hashimoto from NEDO who was the MC for the panel handled it well and broke this news.
The panelists were Dr. Yuko Harayama from Council for Science and Technology Policy, Dr. Kazuhito Hashimoto who is the former Director of Research Center for Advanced Technology also known for photocatalyst research and is one of Japan’s leading, extremely talented and definitely a prominent innovator. Dr. Ryuichi Morishita who is a professor at Osaka University and Director of Anges, Mr. Hitoshi Sekita who is also known as an “out of the box” person who spun-out from NEC and founded Cyber-Laser with a wonderful laser technology. It was a great panel. As always, for detail of this panel and venue, please visit Deguchi san’s site which gives a good description.
I went around and saw mainly the exhibition of university ventures such as Japan Women’s University Dr. Kashiko Kodate’s female student group’s exhibition etc.
As I always say, women’s success is an issue at a global level as well as something we can look forward to. It is especially an important issue for Japan. There are lots of wonderful potentials hidden in the fruit of a research, but what is necessary to make them into businesses, are investors and businessmen with affluent entrepreneur spirits. Most researchers are not good at presentation to investors, needless to say about their experience or knowledge of business. This is the problem that Japan now faces. On this point, Mr.Kazuhiko Toyama’s recent book “Company rot from the top” (Japanese title:「会社は頭から腐る」) is based on a true story and you may sympathize deeply and would be of some reference to you. I recommend you to read it.