Kiyoshi Kurokawa's blog （en）

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.

Photo 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.

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

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.

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.

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?

MBA students in pharma-business from Philadelphia

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Philadelphia is my American home-town where I started my professional career in US at the University of Pennsylvania.

The University of Science in Philadelphia is unique and it offers various programs focusing on pharmaceutical and pharmacy sciences and businesses: it also offers courses for MBA program in this area.  The MBA program offers students a summer course to visit Japan and this year it includes a visit to GRIPS where I am a member of faculty.  I hosted a seminar taking an interactive dialogue style posing a wide range of subjects relevant to these future professionals in healthcare and global health issues.

Photos  Group photo and the session at GRIPS

As I did for Harvard students of School of Public Health, I began asking them how many know and watched on the web of the commencement speeches of Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2005 and of Bill Gates at Harvard in 2006.  The background of about 10 students was quite diverse, which made the session a very interesting and rich.  I enjoyed very much the exchange.

From Davos, part2

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The last keynote speech on the first day was by the US Secretary of State, Ms. Rice.  She delivered a clear and firm message about the current role of the US and the responsibility for the US and the world.  Then, the political and business leaders from the world, such as Mr. Blair, Mr. Kissinger, Mr. J Dimon(JP Morgan and Chase), Mr. KV Kamath(ICICI Bank, India), Ms. IK Nooyi(CEO of Pepsi Co, she graduated from the famous IIT in India…. Can you imagine this in any Japanese company?!), Mr. DJ O’Reilly(CEO, Chevrons), Mr. Wan Jianzhou(China Mobile Communications Corporation) etc, went up the podium for a Q&A session.  Ms. Rice handled this session very nicely.  This is indeed world class. Answering to tough questions in front of a big crowd.

This year, there were especially a large number of participants including 20 or more Presidents and Prime Ministers.  Even only on the first and second day, Mr. Karzai(Afghanistan), Mr. Musharraf(Pakistan), Mr. Yushchenko(Ukraine), Mr. Simon Perez(Israel), Al Gore and Bill Gates were there.

From Japan, ever since Prime Minister Mori attended in 2001, Prime Minister Fukuda will attend. As a hosting country for TICAD and G8 Summit, the world is watching Japan’s leadership of global agenda.  What kind of message will he give to the world? Let’s hope it will be a high toned, powerful speech that reflects as a Prime Minister of the second largest economic power, not something drafted by bureaucrats.  Regardless of domestic circumstances, ‘it’s spoken message that counts as politician.’ It is important to strategically communicate to the overseas press.

Needless to say, Ms. Sadako Ogata, President of JICA, is a global figure representing Japan, but also the global minded professors from Hitotsubashi University School of Business Administration, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Yoko Ishikura as well as Heizo Takenaka of Keio University are taking an active role in various panels and acting as session leader. In a brainstorming session called WorkSpace, Prof. Takeuchi showed his amazing ability as moderator by entertaining the participants while pursuing the subject on track. Wow, this is something inimitable.

Photo1 With Mr. Hatoyama and Ambassador Fujisaki at the conference room

At night, there was Japan Sushi Reception jointly hosted by University of Tokyo and Keio University, supported by Teijin Limited and Sojitz Corporation.  Many guests from the political, academic and business world attended.  I would think this kind of party should be led by the business community.  In fact, it’s the World “Economic” Forum.

Photo2 At Japan Reception with Mr. Hasegawa from Takeda Chemical, my friend and famous Indian political scientist, Mr. Challaney, Mr. Sakurai from Japan Association of Corporate Executives or Keizai-Doyu-kai

Photo3 With Ms. Kuniya of NHK, moderator of ‘Today’s Close-Up’

Photo4 With the President of Peking University

Just to list a few of the big names that attended from the political world, Mr. Hidenao Nakagawa, Mr. Koji Omi, Mr. Yukio Hatoyama(to substitute Mr. Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of DPJ who could not make it), Mr. Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Mr. Motohisa Furukawa, Ms. Kuniko Inoguchi etc.  From the business world we had Presidents, CEO’s and Chairmen from various companies like Mr. Okuda of Toyota Motors, Mr. Yonekura of Sumitomo Chemical, Mr. Sakurai of Ricoh and Japan Association of Corporate Executives, Mr. Nagashima from Teijin, and Mr. Hasegawa from Takeda Chemical, etc.  Ambassador Fujisaki, Mr. Kono the G8 Summit Sherpa and Councilor to the Foreign Ministry, Imai-san and Kuniya-san from NHK, Mr. Xu Zhihong, President of Peking University, Dr. Tachi Yamada of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Initiative also joined and we discussed about Japan’s contribution. Mr. S Brim, Founder of Google also showed up briefly.  Also Dr. Yamanaka from Kyoto University, who is gaining fame by his research in iPS cells, was also there.

Photo5 With Takenaka-san, Dr. Yamada and 2 of Bono’s staff

Photo6 With Dr. Yamada, Prof. Yoko Ishikura and Prof. Anzai, President of Keio University

As Prime Minister Fukuda will participate this year, there is a mixed emotion of expectation and anxiety among us, as to how much he can communicate a high vision and powerful political messages expected of as one of the world’s political leaders.