Kiyoshi Kurokawa's blog （en）

Two Keynote speeches at GOLD

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The 4th GOLD Conference by Ms Hiroko Tatebe (Ref.1, 2)(Ref.2 is in Japanese) was held at Tokyo American Club, Tokyo.  This year’s theme was ‘Turning Strategies into Action through 3Cs, Creativity, Collaboration and Connection’.  Its program can be seen here. 

I was given an honor of delivering Opening Keynote speech with Mrs Susan Roos, wife of Ambassador John Roos of the USA, Closing Keynote of the day.  Mrs Roos was indeed kind enough to come to listen to my speech in the morning. 

Title of my speech was ‘Turn Crisis into Opportunity: Time to Shape and Create New Generation Diversity’ (see the text ). It was well received (in Japanese) and I left the venue and back to my GRIPS office. Of course, I was back to Mrs Roos’ Keynote speech ‘Women’s Leadership: From ‘I can’t’ to ‘I will’.’ It was well executed and I liked it very much.

The audience was 80% women, many non-Japanese, very passionate and attentive as may be expected of from the mission of GOLD. I heard many, many good comments of the entire gathering and I am very happy to learn many positive responses to my speech. The conference will be, I hope, On-line, sometime soon and will connect you then.

It was indeed a very good day.

 

The United Nations University – Higher Education and Sustainable Development in Africa

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I assume that many of you readers have heard of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of UN.

It is an ambitious goal which the member nations of the UN promised to achieve by 2015.  However, the situation has changed drastically in these 10 years and now the world is shifting to a very different stage from the 2000’s, the time when the MDGs were planned by the UN.

Given this background, ”International Symposium on the Role of Higher Education for Sustainable Development in Africa” was held at the United Nations University in Aoyama, Tokyo, on October 13th and 14th.

I myself have been working on this theme with the world’s science community (ICSU, IAP, IAC, etc.) (in Japanese) personally and through various organizations such as the Science Council of Japan (in Japanese), the government of Japan, the United Nation’s University (in Japanese), and the World Bank.  Perhaps partly because they knew this, they invited me to give a Keynote lecture.  Unfortunately, I had to go to Abu Dhabi and Washington DC during those days as posted earlier, so with their permission, I decided to prepare a video message.

By coincidence, Dr Miriam Were, the laureate of the Hideyo Noguchi African Prize (Ref.1) was in Japan and planned to visit me on that same day of recording, so I asked her to join in the video.  It was a nice, unexpected, great “Surprise” to the audience of the UNU Symposium.  I thank Professor Masafumi Nagao, and staffs for their support in making this happen.

A report on this Symposium posted on the web site of the UNU (Ref.1) has commented on my video message, too.  I was very pleased and thankful to know this.

I plan to create a link to this video on my web site, so please look forward to viewing it.

Steve Jobs Special Issues and Biography

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Two weeks have passed since the death of Mr Steve Jobs.  The most established weekly magazines in the United States, Newsweek, Times, and Bloomberg, published special commemorative issues - a proof that Mr Jobs was truly an outstanding character in the latter half history of the 20th century.

Newsweek and Bloomberg dedicated the whole issue to Steve Jobs exclusively, eliminating any other articles or even advertisements.  This is extraordinary. Apparently these special commemorative issues are the expression of their deep respect to the great genius, the Artist who completely transformed the ways of our society.

Mr Walter Isaacson, a friend of Jobs as early as since he was at the Times, writes his memories in the special issue of the Times, but will also publish a biography of “Steve Jobs” on October 24th.  This is definitely a book that I would like to read as soon as I purchase it, and I think you will also want to have it in your book collection.

I can’t think of anyone else other than Steve Jobs who has so changed our daily life, from children to the grown ups, in the ways how we see, touch, enjoy.  Our hearts were filled with happiness, excitement, sense of being entertained.. by Steve.  He practically stole our hearts!  

By the way here is a good video which I recommend for you to quickly watch and reflect on Steve Jobs’s life and person as a whole. 

 

To Abu Dhabi for GAC, then to Washington DC

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In the evening of 10th, I departed Narita for Abu Dhabi on a direct flight by Etihad.  The objective of trip is to attend the Global Agenda Council organized by the World Economic Forum.  The conference, for your information, was held in Dubai annually for the past three years. I saw many of my Japanese friends also boarded on this flight to Abu Dhabi for this meeting.

After arriving at Abu Dhabi early in the morning I checked in to the YAS Hotel, the venue, which is also the scheduled venue for the Formula One Car Race (Ref.1, 2) in November.  The Car Race was being held at Suzuka, Japan from October 7 to 9, too.  Anyway, I was amazed to see the strikingly gorgeous facilities of this Hotel.

I attended the full two days of the conference at the building standing next to the Hotel.  I understand that this place is going to be used for the Formula 1 also.  As for the meeting, I was in the session of the “Japan Council” for the whole day as the sub-Chair. Thanks to the nice support of Mr. Takashi Mitachi of the Boston Consulting Group  and many others, we managed to facilitate good discussions.  The problem was that there was not much information available from Japan after the “3.11” Disaster (not to mention that six Prime ministers changed within these five years....)  thus offering issues for discussion was not easy, and we had to think hard in order to share views with each other.  However, I am thankful that we had nice constructive discussions with many people.

The reception was at the Royal Tower of the Race Track.  It had a nice view over the straight course of the car race.  Many political leaders including the Prime Minster of UAE were present, too.

After attending the full schedule of the 2nd day, I took a car to Dubai, and boarded on a midnight flight to Washington DC.

It was a very full, busy two days.

 

From Paris to Kyoto – Attending the STS Forum

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After enjoying Paris for two days in the beautiful autumn weather, I returned to Japan at Kansai airport in the morning of Monday, October 2nd, to head for Kyoto where STS Forum (Ref.1) will be held for three days.    I have been participating this Forum since the 1st meeting, and therefore have enjoyed the expansion of networks with wonderful people of the world.  I am now acquainted with a number of extraordinary people.

This year’s Forum had special sessions in the beginning dealing with energy policies, nuclear power and such because of the Fukushima disaster.  I was seated next to Mr. Amano, Director General of the IAEA, at dinner, so had the privilege of talking with him in person on many topics.

Many sessions were held simultaneously, so I chose to participate mainly in sessions on education.  I also participated as one of the panelists in the session on the change in human behavior (in energy consumption, obesity, etc.) chaired by Philip Campbell, Editor-in-chief of “Nature".

On 4th, I returned to Tokyo to have dinner with several political leaders.  In the next morning, I had a breakfast meeting with people related to the American Hospital in Paris, and hosted in the entire afternoon a panel organized by JETRO.  Here, the panelists consisted of six people who participated in the STS Forum; Ellis Rubinstein (YNAS、President)、Mohammad Hassan (TWAS,Treasurer), Risalia Arteaga （former President of Equador, female）、Dr Annette Lraegelou (Leibniz Institute of New Materials, female), Ananda Chakrabarty (Univ Illinois), and Sanwen Huang (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences).  Joined to the conference include quite a number of people from METI, NEDO, and JETRO.  We all participated in a good exciting discussion.

I always enjoy discussions with friends from all parts of the world.  I learn a lot from them, too.

 

Steve Jobs Passed Away, Sadness Spreads, My Message to Young Generation

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People all over the world love Apple.  Today, Steve Jobs - the very person who created Apple, put it back on its feet, and made the company the most valuable enterprise in the United States within a matter of several years - died.

“Death” is inevitable to everyone, as Jobs has stated in his historical speech at Stanford University.  However, his death was mourned by the whole world (Ref.1,2,3), and this is extraordinary.

 

Dear youths, the whole world is open to your future.  You do not have to worry about the common sense/standard of the Japanese society.  It is good to be different from others.

I assure each one of you young people that there are something worthy to devote yourself to.  It is in your inner self, although you may not have discovered it, or have not noticed it yet.  Or maybe you can not find it if you keep on living the daily life only in Japan, because, in the horizon of this globalizing world, there exist so many different societies.
 
Youth does not last forever nor is it repeatable.  I urge you to go out to the world.  For what?  For study or anything your instinct may tell you!  Just get out of your place, go out to different parts of the world for a couple of weeks, couple of months, several months, or even several years.  Breathe in the different air, live, and know many people in the world.  Then, you have a good chance of finding your path.  Someday in the future, you will see those “Many Dots” of direct experiences connect.  This, I can assure you.

Listen every now and then to that historically famous 14 minutes speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford University.  I do, too, occasionally.  It is truly a good speech.  Very moving. But now, we listen to it with tears.

Steve Jobs was a wonderful, extraordinary person.  He totally changed our life and the life of our children in a matter of less than a decade.

See how even a child of only two or three years old touch television, trying to move the images on the screen!

 

Paris in Autumn

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I arrived at Paris in the midst of autumn at 6 am, after departing from Haneda at midnight.  The purpose of this visit is to attend the final jury of 2012 L’Oreal -UNESCO Women In Science Awardees.  A car from L’Oreal picked me up and took me to Hotel Concorde Opera. At the lobby, I noticed quite a number of tourists from Japan in and around the lobby.  Maybe it was because of the good season.  The weather was beautiful, not a single cloud in the sky, and the temperture was around 25-26℃ （77-79Ｆ）.  I was told that it was rather cold until last week, though.

H.E. Kiso, the Ambassador of Japan to UNESCO kindly invited me to his official residence for lunch.  I have been to this place before,  but its been quite a long time since. Dr. Georges Haddad of UNESCO, former President of Sorbonne University (appointed to the presidency at young age of 37) joined us.  He was a fantastic person to talk with, having amazingly broad range of topics including the situation of Japan, and we all had such a nice, enjoyable conversation.

In the evening, I had a dinner at “Kei”, a very popular restaurant recently, with Dr. and Mrs Mimura of American Hospital of Paris.  Kei stands for Chief Kei Kobayashi. I was quite impressed to know his career.  Every dish is wonderful not only in its taste but also in the ways how they are presented.  He certainly well deserves the high reputation.  Why not try this place next time you visit Paris?

The next day was the selection of 2012 L’Oreal Awardees.  The discussion continued for about 7 long hours including lunch time.  After the hard work, we finally succeeded in choosing the 5 wonderful scientists which made us all happy. Participating in this sort of discussions, listening to various views, is very inspiring and there is much to learn from such experience.

In the evening, we enjoyed a concert, which is now a customary event.  We listened to 3 works each by Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly, and Samuel Barber (Piano by Garrick Ohlsson), conducted by  a much loved conductor from Korea, Myung-Whun Chung, who was appointed to the musical director of Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France for this Autumn season.  I find Chung’s crisp, sharp style of conducting very attractive.

At around 10 pm, after the concert, we stopped by at Drouant.  It was sometime past 1 am when we finally said good bye to each other.  It sure was a long day.

Anyway, whenever I come to Paris, I rediscover its beauty.  People in general are not too overweighed, many smoke on streets or at cafés, and many women are dressed nicely, that is, in a chic style, regardless of their age.

I plan to return to Paris next March for the award ceremony of L’Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science Award.  I very much look forward to coming back to this lovely city.

“How to Build a Global Career (世界級キャリアの作り方)”, 10th prints is coming soon

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I believe that many of you who visit this site already know about, or have read my book with Professor Yoko Ishikura “Global Career - How to Build a Global Career (世界級キャリアの作り方)” (published in Japanese and Korean).

The book continues to sell well, and the publisher told us to print its 10th prints (each about 2,000 copies) with a note “the book sale exceeded a bench-mark of well selling book of '20,000 copies’”.

I am very pleased to hear this news.  It is a proof of how the book is attracting a strong attention from the public, particularly youth.

Today, we are living in a “global world” with many uncertainties.  I ask you to tell your friends and young people around you about this book.
 
I am pretty confident that this book has something to offer to every reader.

 

Summary of My Recent Activities: Singapore, Hiroshima, SoftBank, and Kanazawa Institute of Technology

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I have been busy these days, which is nothing new..... And since my blog postings can not catch up with my real time activities, I would like to post here a summary of my recent activities.

From Sydney, I moved to Singapore.  Here, I visited several public institutions such as Temasek, National Research Foundation, EDB (Economic Development Board),  A*STAR, and SPRING with my friends from Japan to promote mutual connections.  Arrangement of appointments with these institutions went quite smoothly because I have been in touch with them for many years as you will see if you search this web site by the key word “Singapore”.  Besides these visits, I also spent some time in Singapore with several private entrepreneurs or companies at meetings or meals.  Anyway, my impression here was that they are quick in understanding our points, very positive, fast in taking actions, so much that we started worrying about whether we can catch up with their speed in follow ups.  In this period of great transformation, nothing matters more than mutual personal trust, networks, and speed for action.

I had dinner with professor Ito (which is a regular event in Singapore) of A*star together with Dr. Shigeki Sugii (in Japanese),  Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore from this year after earning a PhD degree at Darthmouth University, and completing Postdoctoral research at UCSD.  I also had meals with several people including Ms Tan Siok Sun, the daughter in law of Goh Keng Swee, major figure with Lee Kuan Yew in the founding of Singapore.

On 10th, I went to Hiroshima to attend a meeting which was originally scheduled in March by Dr. Yorioka, my long time friend, a nephrologist who retired from the position of the Professor of Faculty of Medicine, University of Hiroshima this spring. The gathering was postponed because of the great disaster.  I gave a speech for about an hour.  Recently, I focus my speech on “Age of Uncertainty” because we are now living in the age of global transformation.  This theme, I believe, is relevant to everyone regardless of boundaries, especially to those who are working in the field of education.  I spent a great time here and enjoyed reunions with many old friends.

The next day, on Sunday, September 11th, I saw Dr. Azimi (Ref.1), former Director of UNITAR.  It has been a long time since I saw him before, and there were so many things to talk about, but unfortunately we ran out of time, and I had to leave for Tokyo.

The day was precisely the 10th year of the “9.11”.  The whole world remembered this day, and I think every each one of us, in memory of this tragedy that took place 10 years ago, strongly felt how drastically our world has changed since.  And it happens that this was also my birthday.  I went to the same restaurant as 10 years ago with my family.  I received so many Happy Birthday e-mails and stayed up until midnight sending reply to all messages.
 
On Monday, the 12th, I attended the International Conference for the launching of “Japan Renewable Energy Foundation (自然エネルギー財団)“.   This foundation was founded by Masayoshi Son of Soft Bank.  Multiple resources show that his keynote lecture  (Ref.1) was well accepted.  The program was nice with many guests from overseas.  This conference will continue for 3 days.

In the late afternoon, I gave a lecture at a gathering of business persons hosted by Kanazawa Institute of Technology .  My topic here was again “Age of Uncertainly”.  I used the same title as at Hiroshima, and talked basically the same things although I changed the outline a bit.  The huge hall was filled with quite a number of people.  I think my speech was welcomed by business persons, and especially people at the Kanazawa University, the host of this event.  Since I knew that Kanazawa University has enrollment of over 1000 students per grade, its employment rate exceeding 95%, which means that it holds a high position in the employment rate rankings (though there are a variety of this sort of rankings….), one research showed that Kanazawa University scored 9th in the national level, so I made some comments on the background of this fact, what it means, and what the issues of the companies are.

During this couple of weeks, I have been busier than ever before, seeing lots of people, attending many events, so many things tend to fall behind.

Coming Back to Hayman Island

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After Okinawa, I returned to Tokyo to join in the Talent Show, a　program which started in the late afternoon on the day before the closing of the Liberal Arts Program for high school students.  We enjoyed various performances by the participating students such as wonderful piano music (a semi-professional level!).  In the evening everyone returned to the Ryokan (Japanese-style inn) and I joined in their Reflection.  This epoch-making event will be over in only one more day.

Next day, on the 25th, I left Japan for the Hayman Island at the Great Barrier Reef to participate in the ADC Forum which I quite enjoyed last year. I took a chartered flight from Sydney to Hamilton, connecting to the high speed boat to Hayman Island.  My baggage did not arrive, though.  Anyway, after taking a short rest, I went to the venue to attend the sessions.
 
Next day started with the dynamic talk by Nik Gowing of BBC titled “Acute vulnerability for business, governments and systems in the new public information space” with comments on various issues such as the recent demonstrations spreading from the Middle East to London, indiscriminate gun shooting in Norway, political climate in the U.S. , or even the Tsunami and the nuclear power plant issue of Japan.

This day, I was in the panel of; “Green Growth approaches – any easier now?”, “The reconstruction of Japan”.  One of the participants in this panel, Prof Jean-Pierre Lehman of IMD who is a regular participant of the Davos Meeting studied in Japan when young and took classes of Dr. Masao Maruyama, so I asked him to talk about this experience a bit.  I also hosted “Lenses on science – frontiers in the information revolution”. Drs Robert Bishop, John Mattick and Aaron O’Connel commented respectively on Virtual human brain、the value of the non-coding ‘junk DNA’, and Quantum mechanics.  I opened this session by introducing “The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil, but I honestly think talking about things like this without using slides is not an easy task, especially if it is about Quantum mechanics. Dr O’Conner gave a presentation about this at this year’s TED2011 (Ref.1), too.  What are your thoughts about it?  The discussion following his presentation is also uploaded on this web site.

Next day, I participated in the Closing panel (photo).  Since the boat to Hamilton was to leave in half an hour after the closing, I was in the panel dressed in casual clothes.  The discussion in the panel was quite good.

Wonderful settings, wonderful people, nice reunion with friends… But unfortunately my schedule was so packed that I did not have spare time even to go to the outdoor pool just outside of my room.

From Hamilton, I will head to Sydney.