Kiyoshi Kurokawa's blog （en）

L’Oreal Women in Science Fellowship, Astronaut Naoko Yamazaki Wins Special Award

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On August 23th I left Okinawa AYEPO 2010 closing ceremony for Tokyo where I headed directly to the L’Oreal Women in Science Fellowship Award Ceremony.

As I always say, shining women are the hope of Japan.

Again this year 4 bright and young women scientists were awarded this honor.  Also this year, a special award was given to astronaut Naoko Yamazaki  (Ref.1). The ceremony was even more highlighted by her presence.  The stage was very beautifully set up and the program moved smoothly, which is very much the ‘L’Oreal style’, as I always say.  I was asked to make a toast, which I of course happily accepted. 

Every year beginning 1998, in collaboration of UNESCO, 5 wonderful women scientists are awarded one each from the 5 continents of the world (Ref.1). This fellowship award, by the way, started in Japan five years ago to encourage the young women scientists.

I spent wonderful time with wonderful people just as I did two year ago at the award ceremony of 2008.

Quite a number of people gathered include Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, former Director General of UNESCO, former (Ms Bando) and current (Ms. Okajima) Directors of the Gender Equality Bureau, Cabinet Office (3 successive directors since this post was founded are all women).

The future of Japan lies in how quickly we can create and expand the places for women to participate actively (Ref.1,2). 

I would say that the major barrier is the ‘men-centered chauvinistic’ mindset and social structure, the society  where ‘herbivorous (soshokukei) men’ are dominating and taking charge.  I also suspect they (men) are scared of revealing how they actually are.  However, it is clear that in this transition from ‘vertically’ to ‘horizontally’ expanding global age, the time of ‘social titles’ with little real content or value to the world has ended long time ago.

 

Professor Michael Sandel Visits Japan; What is its Impact?

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Professor Michael Sandel of Harvard University, known and loved by ‘Heated Class： Justice (Hakunetsu Kyoshitsu Justice)’ , a lecture series broadcasted by NHK television, is visiting Japan now.  Right after  his arrival Dr. Sandel gave his lecture at the Yasuda Auditorium of University of Tokyo.  Applications for the seats, as I understand, were more than 10 times of the capacity of the hall?  This class is scheduled to be on air at NHK today (August 26th).  I am sure that it will be broadcasted again sometime in the future.  So please, by all means, watch and hear it.

Professor Sandel is scheduled to give a lecture also on 27th at some other place in Tokyo and I was invited for it but had to be excused because of my other appointments – such a pity!  (I will write a separate column on this later, though…)  So, I introduced the organizers several young people to be there in my place.  I am sure that this will be a very good experience for them.

I have reported on this class in my blog of May 16th  and 19th in which I have made several comments about what I thought was particularly good about Dr. Sandel lecture series – the way he organized the whole session.

Now, students in Tokyo who were lucky enough to have had a chance to attend those classes ‘live’ will naturally compare them to the lectures they hear every day, their own faculties.

And for students to be given such opportunities to attend many classes of various professors beyond one’s own universities even across national borders, for the classes to be opened to students and teachers as much as possible, are the forces which will work to improve the quality of education.  For naturally, everybody will choose what they feel to be better, and teachers will, by witnessing those wonderful lectures and classes, follow the models as their objectives.

In Global Age these good lectures will be ‘open’, thanks to the digital technologies, to public through ‘OCW’, ‘You Tube’, and eventually accumulate ‘global reputations’ leading to the ‘global standards’.  Please note that the evaluations of education and faculties will not be limited only within universities or countries.

Such education based on the concept of ‘open classes’ of the ‘global’ age is provided at Hitotsubashi Business School.  This is something ‘tuff’ to do for faculties but apparently is good for students - they will be encouraged to put much work in their learning which, in return, would lead to the good reputation of the university in both ‘domestic and international’ arena.

‘Impact factors, citations’ of the research outputs are not the only index important in evaluating universities.  Quality of education can also be evaluated globally.  Students need and want this.
 
Of course, the lectures of Professor Sandel can be viewed On-line.

Youths in Action - A New Project By Grameen and Japanese Youths

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As I have reported to you several times in this website, the very first project run by Japanese kicked off by the initiatives of Mr. Saisyo and other students of Waseda University (they are currently on the leave of absence of course) and Grameen Bank, Bangladesh.

The name of the project is "‘The Dragon Cherry Blossoms‘ of the poorest country in Asia" (in Japanese) e-education program.

As you see in the blog of Mr. Saisyo (in Japanese), the Asahi Shinbun newspaper published an article on this in Japan.  A series of coverage is also scheduled to appear on ‘Soto Koto’ magazine.  The first report （in Japanese） was already published.  Do you see how hard they are working?  I am very pleased.  Please support them in any way you can.

They have taken the students of the village on a bus to see the Dhaka University campus – a 7 hours travel.  I think this sort of ideas and actions will never occur  unless you actually live at the place and think locally.  According to the e-mail and photos from Mr. Saisho （in Japanese）;

“Yesterday, I took the village high school students to a study tour to Dhaka University.  This idea came because I saw the students having hard time trying to imagine themselves ‘entering Dhaka University’.  ‘We might as well take them to the place! ‘ that was the concept of this plan.”
“ ‘It was my lifetime experience!!!’ was their reaction.  The tour was a huge success.”

Was Saisyo-kun’s report.

What kind of experience was this to the village children, parents, or villagers?  Of course this will, I would say, eventually affect the way Dr. Yunus and the people at the Grameen Bank see Japanese young students and people.

This is a good example of the basic concept of Citizen Diplomacy.  Universities, not to speak of companies, have responsibilities to support and encourage such youths.  This sort of activities of private sector will be a good brand toward the future. Sucn activites of private sector are indeed ‘social enterprises’, the ‘strategic investments’.  We don’t necessarily have to depend on governments.  After all, how could we depend on grown up people who almost automatically respond by excuses saying ‘A good idea, but not possible to do because,,,’ , ‘we don’t have budgets….’, or rely to that never changing education policies? We should rather think and come up with ideas on how to support these activities by the youth.  The last thing we need to do is to discourage the ambitions of the youths (Ref.1).

 

Activating Intellectual Property of BioScience and Tech in Universities; Can We Succeed?

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Although countless problems are still to be solved, attempts to make use of intellectual properties accumulated in university and research institutions will get started.  This is good.  This is an effort to build functional structures that are attractive to enterprises.  There are still, however, many problems and challenges along the way enough to cause you a headache…..

I joined the press conference (in Japanese) in August 6th with my colleagues.

Scientists, engineers tend to draw a big picture or expectations from their own findings or inventions, thinking and sensing somewhat in a linear, direct goals.  It is only natural that they do so and there is nothing wrong about it.

However, people who are not scientists or engineers would often think about these findings or outcomes in relations to other ‘idea/information’ and sometimes better ‘idea/information’ emerge from such thinking.  In Japanese, we express this phenomenon as; ‘Okame Hachimoku (Onlookers can read the game (far) better than the players themselves)’ (in Japanese).  Many examples of Okame Hachimoku are found in history.

After all, it is private sector and enterprizes which deliver new services and products from inventions and discoveries to customers, thus create new market. Scientists or engineers can not do this. Of course, there are always exceptional scientists and engineers who also succeed in business, but they are exceptions.　

The new combination - ‘Neues Kombinazion’ as Schumpeter put it　- is precisely what creates new values.  This is precisely the ‘innovation’ that Schumpeter talks about.

Clayton Christensen, as you know, is today’s guru of Innovation.  Especially, ‘Disruptive Innovation’ is the core of his outstanding research.  His analysis, insights, views…everything in his books are extraordinary.  More recently, he writes on education and health care, too.

I think many businessmen read ‘The Innovator’s Dillemma’, another well known book, a bit older, but a classics, published about 10 years ago.

See-D Contest: Technologies Appropriate to Local Needs Will Save the World

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The ‘See-D’ which I introduced to you recently, was held at the Fukutake Hall of University of Tokyo on July 31st Saturday.  About 200 people participated, mainly young students, including those who by coincidence came across the event and decided to join.  Kopernick is one of the important supporters of this meeting..

This event is hosted by Ms. Riku and Mr. Tsuchiya (also members of MIT D-Lab, currently living in Boston), D-Lab Japan office, other organizations, and some students from Boston who are in Japan for their summer vacation.  These people are the main driving force for planning and carrying out this conference.

It is very important that such projects/actions are created, spread and encouraged for action, particularly by young people.

At the See-D conference room, twitter and Ustream（Ref.1) were displayed on the screen in real time.  Live program with East Timor through Skype enabled the audience to  communicate by writing some comment via Post-It to moderating staff.  The three people in East Timor responded in English and those comments were instantaneously summarized in Japanese and shown on the Screen; a kind and considerate service!  The report of this event is posted on the web site of See-D Japan  (in Japanese).

Those gathered are eager and enthusiastic in search for what they could do. Three panelists with overseas experiences through JICA programs shared their work and thoughts with us.  One of them was Mr Ide who now works at Sumitomo Chemicals and its mosquito net or BetNet in Tanzania. I met him first time last March year in my flight to Dubai, sitting next to each other and we met a few time since then.

I had an opportunity to further encourage them in my ending remarks.  Here again my focus was on ‘the importance of first hand experience' (Ref.1, 2)　and ‘advice to take leave of absence from school and go abroad’.  I think the event was very hot.  I had the same impression by browsing through the many tweets. 

Anyway, everybody was so lively and high spirited.  The conference fully utilized high-technologies, too.  It was truly a motivating, good, happy conference.  By the way, Mr. Miyoshi (in Japanese)  whom I have introduced in this site many times, currently working in Bangladesh, also joined via twitter.

After this meeting, I moved to join ‘Global Health Summer Course'  which we co-host with the University of Tokyo.  It was almost 7 pm, but everybody was still working hard to make policy recommendations, presentations, having discussions. Thanks to all participants and staffs.  Tomorrow, they will present their policy recommendations in the presence of several legislators.

University of Tokyo and Health Policy Institute Co-Organize ‘Global Health Policy Summer Program’

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Global Health is now a hot topic at the University of Tokyo.   In this context, our Health Policy Institute and the University of Tokyo co-organized‘Global Health Policy Summer Program 2010’ (in Japanese.  English version will be posted soon) with participation of about 30 very eager and movited students (including graduate students and those who are currently studying abroad).  I joined this event on the opening day, July 26th, and enjoyed mainly interactive dialogues for 90 min. The session was carried out half in English and half in Japanese.

Everyone spoke up actively which I think resulted in good exchange of views.  After my speech, Professor Kenji Shibuya, the host from the University of Tokyo, gave another session in English.

As always, I asked the participants to send me e-mails, which they responded, so I continue to hear and exchange views even after the event.  Through these correspondences I realized how each student are thinking hard in spite of all sorts of difficulties and uncertainties that they feel because of their strong interest to this topic.  I sincerely wish that their experience in this program will help each of them think about next steps, in whatever way possible, in the future.  I look forward to seeing what sort of policy recommendations they will come up with.

Fly and soar, you future leaders of the Global Health! 

Sharing Time with Dr. Muhammad Yunus

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Dr. Muhammad Yunus is known for starting a program to support poor women in Bangladesh to earn living through a system called Microfinance (Grameen Bank). Today, the method of Microfinance is spread throughout the world.

Dr. Yunus was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, and I have touched on it describing its effect/meaning to the world in my Opening Keynote at the Meeting of Ministers of Environment, 2008 G8+5 Summit.   Also, there are several postings in my website introducing him to you (Ref.1,2).  

As you may know, Dr. Yunus visited Japan just recently.  Media reported that President Yanai of UniQlo  will collaborate with him.  Many of you may also have seen the media coverage of other variety of activities Dr. Yunus was involved during his stay in Japan.  Kyusyu University and Rikkyo University (the links are in Japanese) (Ref.1) also have been working with Dr. Yunus.

I had an opportunity to join dinner with Dr. Yunus and talk about many things.  His words are always impressively passionate and clear.  I understand that now he is helping the issue of poverty in the United States; his activities are quickly expanding to such fields as poverty, education, health care, job creation.   We enjoyed listening to many of his thoughts including his very clear and persuasive view on ‘why women?’.

Dr. Yunus and I also talked about the project of the students of Waseda University which we helped get started.  Two of the students took leave of absence from the University to begin a new Japanese project with the local Grameen bank.  They also launched Grameen Change Maker Project (Ref.1) (the links are in Japanese) in Japan to encourage participation of more Japanese university students and youths.  What they are doing is absolutely wonderful and full of young energy.  I am very pleased to see this happening.

Visit their websites (Ref.1) (the links are in Japanese) and you will see how enthusiastic and passionate they are.  I believe youths must be ‘full of enthusiasm’.

Just as Dr. Yunus and I were talking about them, an e-mail from these students, Mr. Miyoshi and Mr. Saisyo, came in from Dhaka.  I quickly sent reply to them and said to Dr. Yunus that ‘I have copied my reply to you, too’.  Such things can happen because we live in a very inter-connected world.

World is getting smaller and smaller.  I recommend young people to go outside to see the world.  ‘Let Us Take Leave of Absence from School’(Ref.1) is the key.  This will provide you with a very good opportunity to broaden your view, look at your ‘self’, see Japan from outside and find your ‘self’.   I ask universities (and government) for their support and encouragement, too.  I say so because this is also the direction in the major universities of the world, which recognize such programs very important for nurturing the leaders of the global age.

‘See-D’ Contest; Looking for New Ideas for the Developing Countries

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See-D Contest will kick off soon by students with entrepreneurship in search for new ideas that utilize ‘appropriate technologies’ for the benefit of developing countries.  I have introduced some activities of these students as you see in my blog postings (Ref.1).  

The sub-title of this contest is ‘Open Symposium for Creating Innovative Ideas for the Developing Countries’.

The date of the contest is July 31st (Sat.).  Students, engineers, companies interested in supporting and joining such activities, are cordially invited to participate.  Please register through the web site of See-D Contest.

You are also welcome to join us in ‘FaceBook’.

Asian Innovation Forum 2010 in September

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Asian Innovation Forum (AIF) organized by Mr. Nobuyuki Idei, the former President and CEO of Sony who leads Quantum Leaps), will open on September 28th and 29th in Tokyo.  For a report on last year’s forum, please refer to my blog posting.  You can register through their website.

The Forum started 4 years ago, and ever since then I have had the pleasure of working with Mr. Idei for this important event by the wonderful leader in business sector of Japan.

I hope and expect this year’s ‘AIF2010’ to serve as a platform for even more provocative discussions than last year.  For we have seen no progress at all in the situation of Japan - rather it seems to be getting worse.  Don’t you agree?

The Forum also has a Twitter account for you to follow.

Please come and join with us.  I look forward to seeing you all at the Forum. 

A Very Provocative Dialogue with Mr. Kazuhiko Toyama

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Among the books that I recommend to young people are the books by Mr. Kazuhiko Toyama (Ref.1) (links are in Japanese), ‘Yubi ippon no syunen ga shyobu wo kimeru (A finger-tip of obsession decides the winner)’ and  ‘Kaishya wa atama kara kusaru (A company will rot from the head)’.  If you have not read these books yet, I can assure you that they are worth reading.  Mr. Toyama has done a great job at Sangyo Saisei Kiko (Industrial Revitalization Corporation of Japan) and more recently was involved actively in the effort of revitalizing JAL (Japan Air Line)

Three years ago, Mr. Toyama and his colleagues established International Growth Platform and I was invited to its 3rd Anniversary on July 8th.  At preliminary discussions we decided that we should make very provocative comments.

The program opened by a dialogue between Mr. Toyama and Professor Kunio Ito of Hitotsubashi University (in Japanese), followed by a keynote speech by Mr. Hasegawa (Ref.1,2) (links are in Japanese), President and CEO of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., and the last was a dialogue between Mr. Toyama and myself.  Audience was about 200 people.  I arrived at the venue late so I missed the dialogue session of Mr. Toyama and Professor Ito.

President Hasegawa is a very sharp and able business executive, always speaks up his real views without hesitation and ‘no no-sense’, demonstrates strong leadership in carrying out what he believes is right.  He also earns high reputation at the Davos meeting as a top business leader.  Mr. Toyama and I, standing on the stage throughout the session, exchanged challenging and very provocative views to endorse and enhance the messages delivered by Mr. Hasegawa - his (as always) sharp analysis and drastic points of view reflecting his deep concerns about the future of Japan.  

I said, for example, that weeks before the World Cup games in South Africa I foresaw that the ‘key’ to Japan was to let Honda play as freely as he believes; that in the audience of that day, only several women (below 10) were present; that in Mr. Toyama’s company 80% of the 100 employees are ‘career’ and among them, ‘None’ employed as fresh university graduates or ‘zero’ (and this actually is pretty normal outside of Japan….); that components made in Japan were drastically less in iPad than in iPod.  I also pointed out how Japanese lack ability to recognize the ‘strength’ or ‘weakness’ unique to them, how in general, poor in building global networks of connections on individual basis, or how I hate being told of ‘reasons for why something can not be done'. Our dialogue also included many specific examples as well as specific recommendations.

Frankly, I enjoy this kind of ‘events’.  The reception that followed was filled with excitements, too (as I was told later).  But actually, to be honest, the most important key is how each one of us can take actions from here…..  I sincerely urge each one of you to start actions whatever you can in whatever position you may be.