The New Champions, From Tianjin

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The second New Champions conference was held in Tianjin.  It’s a new annual meeting organized by the World Economic Forum, known as the Davos conference.  It started last year in Dalian.  The event mainly brings together young leaders of new emerging companies in the world.  I was very pleased that many young entrepreneurs from Japan were taking part.  Out of the nearly 1,500 participants from around the world, about 60 were from Japan.

At 6 am on September 26th, I boarded a shinkansen bullet train to Nagoya.  There’s a direct flight to Tianjin from Nagoya International Airport.  How convenient, I made it to the conference in time for 2 pm, at the risk management workshop moderated by INSEAD’s Dr. Soumitra Dutta.  Apparently a high-speed train service between Beijing and Tianjin started ahead of the Olympics last month, but flying directly to Tianjin seems to be a more reliable and quicker way.

The venue of the international conference is of excellent quality.  China’s vibrancy is similar to the atmosphere in Japan 40 years ago.  Hosting the Tokyo Olympics back then inspired the construction of new infrastructure like the shinkansen bullet train and the Tomei expressway.  Of course, the speed and scale of building are of a different magnitude in today’s world of globalization.

Many of the Japanese participants were also at last year’s conference.  Mr. John Ehara from Unison Capital hosted a "Japan Sushi Dinner."  It was a smash hit.  Japanese-cuisine really has a worldwide appeal.  A dinner like this is a company’s intangible asset because people will surely talk to friends about the experience.  Word of mouth will eventually spread around the world and boost the company’s credibility, resulting in new opportunities.  Mr. Ehara remained very low-key throughout the event.  I’m very grateful for his efforts.  It became such a wonderful gift to our country too.

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Photo1  Dr. Dutta from INSEAD(middle), Dr. Probst of WEF

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Photo2  Yokohama Mayor Nakada

In the afternoon of September 27th, I served as a member of a panel session.  It was quite an interesting experience.  Because I naturally tend to speak fast, I always consciously try to slow down.  But this time I found myself talking even faster than usual.  That’s because each panelist was given only 2 to 3 minutes for an introductory comment.  We also needed to end the session on time since Premier Wen Jiabao was to make his appearance afterwards.  It was a difficult task to highlight my differences with other panelists and make sure that the audience understood the key points.  I need more practice.

Premier Wen Jiabao flew in to Tianjin directly from New York where he was attending the UN general assembly.  He delivered a powerful speech and answered questions very well.  He provided clear answers on some difficult questions involving the earthquake, food safety, and environmental problems.

A gala dinner was held in the evening.  I was a little disappointed that the music and dancing was mostly Western, and not Chinese.

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Photo3, 4  images from the gala dinner

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Crans Montana, Swiss

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Crans Montana is a beautiful small town in a valley two hours drive from Geneva.  Here, I came on September 10th, from London to participate World Knowledge Dialogue.  This was its second, the first was in 2006 in the same town as you see in my earlier (sorry, but only in Japanese, but many pictures), and indeed, my third time to Swiss this year, Davos in January, and St. Gallen in May.

The meeting was for four days and this time I was honored to meet with Prof. Edward O Wilson of Harvard University, one of the most respected scholars of our time, who wrote many epoch-making, sometime controversial books such as ‘Sociobiology’, ‘On Human Nature’, ‘The Ants’ with the latter two received the Pulitzer award.  He is a cheerful and admirable person and we share a good time together over his thoughts including ‘fairy fly’.  By the way, you could see his lectures at Harvard on the web, too.

It was very good that quite a number from Japan including Prof. Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, participated and our contributions were thought significant.

The details of the program can be seen thru its websites for 2006 (I appear at a panel) and for 2008.  And you see many pictures and if you find me, let me know.

This year, I appeared in Day 1 at the Opening with Dame Julia Higgins (we know each other well since her days as Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society), and as Chair of the entire Day 4, thus you could see my commentaries and interactions through the webcasts.  In particular, the Day 4 is tough, the number of participants are less, everyone getting tired, some have to leave before the end, etc, thus I tried to make the entire session more interesting but casual.  I thought it went well and stayed on time and in fact ended 9 minutes earlier than the schedule.  Enjoy the website and webcasts.

I really enjoyed the conference itself and meeting with many interesting people, old and new friends.  Nonetheless, the format required as we discussed, certain strategic goals, participatory processes, and some outreach deliverables and actions.

There is a great champion golf course here and the Omega European Masters was played one week earlier.  I managed to play a round of 18 holes starting 7am finishing 10am.  I enjoyed it very, very much.

In the afternoon of Day 4, we moved to Geneva, visited some historical sites.  One was University of Geneva campus where John Calvin founded in 1559; he was the one who converted the city to Catholic to Protestant community in mid-16th century, and we wondered in front of a large Reformation Wall of Calvin and other three (see at ‘Reformed Geneva’ at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin).

This visit gave me quite a moving feeling since in the Opening speech I mentioned on ‘Incunabula’ and commented Internet is the incunabula of today, that is to lead an unexpected consequence which may change the world. In fact, I said to the audience, because of incunabula of printed Bibles since Gutenberg of mid-15th century to year 1501, the religious revolution ensued almost 100 years later.  This message has been my recurring theme of some of my keynote speeches of ‘flattening and connected world’ as you may see in my blogs (refer 1 , 2 , 3 ) and elsewhere.

By a mere co-incidence, I was just standing there in front of such a consequence of major magnitude by John Calvin.

To London, for the GLOBE planning committee

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2 weeks ago, I received a FAX from Mr. Morley, the Minister of Environment of Mr. Blair’s regime, whom I have introduced before.  He wanted me to participate in the planning meeting of GLOBE, to be held in London on September 8.

I therefore reached London on the 8th morning via Paris, went to the hotel, changed in just 30 minutes and left for the meeting.  I was a bit late and joined the conference at 10:20.  The meeting was held in the Thatcher Room of Portcullis House, House of Commons which is a part of British parliament.  After the announcement of resignation by the Prime Minister, the representative of Japan and Member of the House, Mr. Yoshio Yatsu decided not to participate in the meeting.

Img_1333Photo 1  Photograph of participants, Mr. Morley, Member of the house in white shirt (in the center), to his right Mr. Gardiner, Member of the house. Some participants returned to their countries in the half way.

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Photo 2  The venue of meeting, a new building immediate right to Big Ben (It is not seen here)

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Photo 3  Mr. Tokumaru from the Ministry of the Environment

It is necessary to investigate the policies as well as approach to the "Land utilization, Forest conservation, Biodiversity, Ecosystem" which is actually very difficult.  As Mr. Barry Gardiner, a member of the House of Great Britain, was in-charge and delivered a speech in the beginning followed by a series of serious discussions by about 15 participants.  I think it will be a significant step if we find out the way to focus the policy from domestic to global. It may take a while, but it is very good if such discussions go ahead in a meaningful form in years to come. It is a global and very important subject but does not move forward easily.

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Photo 4  At  the reception, Mr. Gardiner, Member of the House, Mr. Nishigahiro, Minister to Great Britain.

The reception was organized at "The Goring Hotel", a small but sophisticated hotel which is common in London.

After staying for 24 hours in London, next morning, I am leaving for Swiss.  I will send next column from there.

Creative Capitalism

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As you may note, I have been invited this year to a few, but very special occasions to speak on global issues and the fundamental changes underlying such social movements toward ‘One Inclusive Society’ (Reference 1 , 2 , 3 ).

One of a major focus In these speeches is changing faces of capitalism, thus CSR or ‘corporate social responsibility’ and I quoted Mr. Bill Gates for his phrase ‘Creative Capitalism’.  You may wonder what he means by the words.

In a recent issues of TIME magazine, it features a special interview of Mr. Bill Gates ‘How to Fix Capitalism’ where he discuss his concept of creative capitalism as he sees the status of the world reflecting the past century.  It is a very interesting personal, yet powerful argument for business leaders, consistent I believe with what I tried to convey in my speeches.

I would appreciate your giving some thoughts on such a concept and activity reflecting your business or whatever you do and plan to do.

Mr. Bill Gates will be in Tokyo in November.

Brilliant Female Researchers with Red Roses

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As I had introduced before, the well-known cosmetics company, L’Oreal, presides over a program called "For Women in Science" (As this website is very pretty, browse it) in collaboration with the UNESCO and appeals its existence to the world.  This year the program has celebrated its 10th anniversary at Paris in the spring.  The prizewinners until now were invited and Congratulatory meeting was held.

3 years ago, Japan has also launched a program to award young female researchers living in Japan.  I attended the commending ceremony and congratulatory party last year.  Also this year, wonderful people were commended and their family members, teachers and fellow researchers attended the ceremony.  It was a very splendid gathering and I was glad to see it.

4 brilliant people were selected for this year. We shared a cheerful, pleasent time together.

A women’s magazine, Marie Claire, has also participated in this activity and presented red roses (Photo) to all the winners.  I met Dr. Noriko Osumi, whom I worked with 2 days ago in Okinawa and her mother who is also a famous scientist.

Lorealjapan200801Photo Ms. Bando and 4 winners

Ms. Bando, a chief of gender equality bureau of cabinet office, mentioning that percentage of female scientist in Japan is the lowest among OECD countries, encouraged the audience for further effort.  I was responsible to propose a toast and spoke on various topics like, though, Gender Development Index of woman in Japan is within top 10 in the world, Gender Empowerment Index of woman is as low as about 40th in 70 countries in the world.  This difference is due to the male oriented society which is not competency based.  There may be some hint in understanding the basic difference between male and female in Japan, in what we saw of (male) baseball and (female) softball at this year’s Beijing Olympic. In that sense soccer, wrestling and judo, etc. as well. Please think about it.  I think actually here lies the problems of Japanese society.

I would like to express my appreciation to all the winners, family members, fellow researchers, people involved in the selections and all related people for their hard work.

At any rate, we can see a strategy of a world class enterprises when such prizes are awarded.  Each winner, over a period of years, will act as an ambassador of L’Oreal and will fulfill wonderful duty of moving the mind of men and catching the hearts of women in the world and act as advertising tower of the sponsor enterprise.  I think there is no such a splendid and beautiful advertising media as this.  I expect Japanese enterprises to think more strongly about social contribution from this viewpoint.  This is what social responsibility (CSR) of the enterprises is all about.

Singapore, Okinawa and energy of young people

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After "Obon" (a vacation season in Japan relating to celebration of ancestors), I went to Singapore for the meeting of board of directors of A*STAR, from Aug. 20th to 22nd.  The venue was newly established Fusionopolis (The opening ceremony will be held in October).  Finally, an ambitious attempt of uniting biotechnology with science and engineering field has started.  On 21st, the day of meeting of board of directors, an awarding ceremony for contributors took place with high spirits in the evening. Minister of industry was also present as a Guest of Honor.  There was really motivation and vigor.  Many young people, both researchers and clerical workers, have also taken an active part.

Then I went to Okinawa on 24th.  Had participated in the "Asian Youth Exchange Program". The original idea is from our proposal, where about 80 youths (age 14 to 17) from various Asian countries and Japan (from Okinawa and mainland) spend three weeks together in Okinawa and interact with each other.  "Haisai Diary" of the program’s website was full of cheerful photographs and reports.  I think the basic spirit of this program can be read from my message also.

I participated in "Scientist Symposium" on that day.  Dr. Noriko Osumi who is doing brain research in Tohoku university, Dr. Tsuchiya, known for coral research is Director of Science Department in Ryukyu University (I am thankful for his kind assistance in The21st Pacific Sience Congress last year.  Now, he has become executive director of this scientific society), Dr. Ishiwatari who was involved in the development of "OlycetNet", at Sumitomo Chemicals, an epoch-making mosquito net effective for malaria, have participated in this meeting.  Dr. Shiomitsu of Ochanomizu University was the chairperson.  Students who have participated were energetic, seemed to be in good spirits which made me very happy.  Of course, the common language was "Broken English".

Some university students also helped.  They were foreign students of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, which is located in Oita.  Exchanges like this at the young age widens outlook, acknowledges differences, and raises friendships more than anything else.  I am excited about what their future brings after 10 years, 20 years.  It’s thrilling.  I would like to see more of such activities like exchange home stay on summer vacations etc. start voluntarily in schools across the country.

Dr. Osumi went to the airport immediately after finishing the panel.  She posted her blog in the evening of the same day, which is very fast.  Photographs as well as the writing were good.

I went to see "Eisa festival" celebrated on the whole Okinawa Island with Mr. Fukui, head of Okinawa General Bureau supervised by the Cabinet Office.  Especially, "Ryukyu-Country festival Taiko" was excellent(photo1-3).  After that, I was invited for dinner.

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Thanks to all for your help and support.

Executive personnel management- simple questions from an outsider?

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I was interviewed by Nihon Keizai Shinbun for a column called "Airspace violation".  It is an interview report and aims to have a person present open questions about things other than his/her profession.   Although I had several themes in my mind, I decided to talk about personnel management of enterprises.  The article appeared in the morning edition page 5 on Aug. 4th, 2008, under the heading of " ‘Tenures’ are not appropriate for executives.  Decide according to their performance and actual results." The article is as follows. Gist of my remarks are in the quotation marks.

■ We understand that you have doubts about "Tenure" of business executives?
"I hear that there are many enterprises which have customs or byelaws that set presidents’ tenure as 2 terms of 4 years or 3 terms of 6 years.  But does it make any sense?  I hardly think that the governance of Japanese enterprises so far was good enough just because they have a tenure system. "

■Current trend is to shorten the tenure of top managements of large industries. Along the trend, many enterprises are shortening the term of office of CEO from 2 conventional years to 1 year.
"If manager’s term of office is set short, he/she won’t consider the business on long term scales.  Suppose some problem occurs during the tenure.  I suspect that it will not be solved by he/her but will be transferred to their successor."  "Same things happen in governments as well as universities, the field where I come from.  As government officials are replaced one after another the problems go on passing to the successors.  Since tenure of deans and president of university is short, talent training cannot be planned from long term perspectives."

■On the other hand, there are adverse effects if the tenure is prolonged and also criticisms about "problems caused by aged people".
"For ‘problems caused by aged people’, you can simply set young presidents in their 40s.  Then even after serving for 10 years, his/her age will still be below 60.  There are some cases, like Sharp or Hotel Okura, which had presidents in their 40s.  However, in large industries in Japan, the number of young managers is still very small.  What is required of a leader is; vision, ability of conveying the vision to the other people, intellectual and physical strength, and strong faith.  Age is irrelevant.  Younger talents should be selected."  "Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that ‘long term control’ is always no good.  There are many founders of corporations in Japan, like Mr. Akio Morita of Sony, who demonstrated wonderful management skills for a long period of time.  There may be many employed managers who can achieve excellent results in their long term tenure."

■Problem is not the short or long length of tenure?
"The point is not to set tenure but to build a mechanism so that the ability and achievement of a manager is evaluated objectively and in case any problem arises, the mechanism must work to have him removed immediately.  But how many Japanese enterprises actually have such structure functioning? If a company can not have a person to retire till completion of his customary tenure we must say that governance does not exist."

■One more word, please.
Once you become a professor, you will be safe till retirement.  This is also strange.

■A word from the interviewer.
How should we select and evaluate the heads of management?  It is a very important issue connecting to the base of enterprise governance.  There are cases where external reporters or external directors participate in selection of the succeeding director but such advanced examples are yet very few.  How do Japanese managers answer to those simple questions about executives raised by Dr. Kurokawa? (Editing committee, Yoshiyuki Miyata）

I expect there will be various opinions, points regarding the contents of this article.  Although I spoke for a long time they had to summarize it in a little space.  Anyway, pushing theory of your own is useless in this era of global economy, especially if it is the world’s second great economic nation.  It is a matter of credibility of a business, a nation.  In this information age, governance with transparency is the basis of company’s worth. Not limited to enterprise, everything is transparent from the world even if you tried to hide.  And here lies the challenges of "Flat age".

Some of the arguments about this article have appeared at Nikkei Net PLUS.  You are able to read them by registration (free).  What do you think?

Again from New Delhi

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Here I am in New Delhi for the second time in this year(Refer 1, 2 ).  Following last year, purpose of the visit is for the Health and Welfare Minister Advisory Council meeting lead by Jeffrey Sachs as before.  The meeting was held for 2 days.  On the second day, face to face discussion between us and Dr. Ramadoss, Minister of Health and Welfare, and advisory committee was held for about 3 hours.  The minister replied clearly to the comments and questions one by one.  I felt that he had a clear recognition and plans for the problems.  You can see the report contents on the website.

The results of health services in the regions of India (rural area and slum area) for these 3 years are emerging clearly.  Also, it is expected that the budget for the health service will be increased along with the economic growth.  Medical expenses in India are 1% of GDP.  It is extremely rare and it is an exceptional country.  I expect that the services will be improved even though there are lot of problems. But the success is still far away.  I think this medical policies for rural areas in India should be more referred to by developing countries. 

Dr. Hara at Health Policy Institute Japan, accompanied me as it was in last year.  We invited my friend Ashok Khosla, President of "Club of Rome" and Dr. Sunil Chacko (whom I introduced earlier) to dinner, and we had a wonderful time together (photo 1).  Also, it was a great pleasure to have an opportunity to meet Mr. Oscar Fernandes, the Minister of Labor through the introduction by Dr. Chacko and Dr. Mishra, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi Naitonal Open University (photo 2).  It was 10 o’clock in the evening, yet still lots of people were waiting to see him and his work was not over yet at all.  He is such a person, they say.

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Photo1　Dr. Khosla (in the center) with Dr. Chacko and Dr. Hara

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Photo2　From the right with Dr. Mishra, Dr. Chacko and Minister Fernandos

Students from India

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I reported earlier in my blog that I went to New Delhi in relation to the YES program of Honda Foundation in February this year.

In that YES program five students were awarded.  They were students from IIT which is a prestigious university in India.  Out of these students, four studied in Japan for 6~8 weeks from the end of May.  Mr. Jain participated in the research of robots at Honda, Mr. Goyal did research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Mr. Tomar did the research for 4 weeks at the Okazaki Laboratory and Tsukuba University respectively, and Mr. Agarwal participated in research at JVC.  All of them gathered at GRIPS (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies) to participate in the round table talk before going back to the home country the next day.  I have heard that one person did his training in Google as there was some problem for acquiring Japan visa.  It is very unfortunate as it is such a trivial thing.

I asked everyone to talk about the awarding ceremony of Honda YES Award, their conversation with Mr. Pachauri, and about their personal experiences in these several weeks in Japan.  All four talked about how they enjoyed the study and doing the research in Japan, how everybody helped them very kindly, how they could do the exchange with many young people and how wonderful the teachers were who gave them splendid guidance.  Mr. Agarwal stayed with a host family who treated him very well.  It seems that everyone had a wonderful experience.  During the talk, everyone commented on the differences between India and Japan which they often experienced.  Hands-on experiences like these at young age are very important.  I am confident that they will all become precious "ambassadors of Japan" with wonderful memories of Japan in their mind.  I said so to the students, too.

We had dinner together in the evening.  I am thankful to many people including those from Honda Foundation who helped us.  International exchange of young people like this is inconspicuous but it is an extremely important activity which would increase the fans of Honda in India as well as the world.  It is a delightful thing.  I would like to see such type of activities expand more and more.  I would be happy if this kind of efforts arise more from civil and/or private sector.  Expanding personal relationships from the young age is the basis of making friends internationally and also to nurture the diversified human talents (resource) in this global era.  It is most important for the future of Japan.

Furthermore, to encourage youth of Japan to have actual experiences overseas is even more important. Knowledge only is not useful.  Activating the bilateral exchange is an important policy through which big effects towards the future of Japan in the global era can be expected.  After all, nowadays, there are too many extremely introvert Japanese.

Japanese businesses go to Africa

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This year, I had many opportunities to write columns on Africa in my blog (ref. 1 ・ 2 ）.  Japanese mass media also brings up topics about Africa often this year partly because we had TICAD4 and G8 summit.  I have written in my column "Cape Town," but the "Nikkei Business," a business magazine in Japan also writes about how Japanese companies are active in this area.  Please take a look, since my comment is in it at the end. (※A free registration is necessary in order to read the whole article on NBOnline.)

It is exciting to see Japanese businesses going abroad.  I appreciate their effort very much.