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A Brief Overview of the Current Startup Ecosystem in Japan

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In recent years, "innovation" has become increasingly important for Japan. Developing innovative businesses that are separate from the traditional Japanese business sphere is becoming increasingly crucial for sustained economic growth. In this report, Asakura focuses on some emerging companies that have the potential to drive innovation, and provide some reflections on the Japanese entrepreneurial environment.

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The Third Globalization: Can Wealthy Nations Stay Rich In The Twenty-First Century? (Book Chapter)

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Chapter 4 of this book "Services with Everything: The ICT-Enabled Digital Transformation of Services" was written by John Zysman, Stuart Feldman, Kenji E. Kushida, Jonathan Murray, and Niels Christian Nielsen. The book is edited by Dan Breznitz and John Zysman.

 

 

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The Future of Blockchain: How it will impact finance, industry, and society (Book Chapter)

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Kenji Kushida's new book chapter, "Blockchain, a Silicon Valley Vantage on its Potential and Challenges" was published in new book, "The Future of Blockchain: How it will impact finance, industry, and society edited by Yuri Okina, Noriyuki Yanagawa, and Naoyuki Iwashita.

The book is an investigation of the potential and challenges of adopting a disruptive technology such as blockchain. Experts on blockchain applications explain the concept of blockchain, how it is being utilized in a variety of areas, and its wide-range impact on economy, industry, business and society, based on cases in Japan and overseas.

 

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Kenji E. Kushida

A Strategic Overview of the Silicon Valley Ecosystem: Towards Effectively “Harnessing” Silicon Valley

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This report provides an overview of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. It draws upon existing scholarship and original insights to derive a picture that is only partially well-known in Japan. Characteristics such as the critical role of large firms for the startup firm ecosystem, the role of Japanese firms in creating the US firms’ “open innovation” paradigm, and the severe lack of local government coordination in providing public transportation creating opportunities for disruptive startups such as Uber, are all aspects of Silicon Valley that are not well-known in Japan. This report also delves into industry-university ties in the crucial research universities of Stanford and University of California Berkeley, highlighting the multifaceted and bidirectional interactions between universities and industry that are often not captured by the common “technology licensing office”-centered view. In the final section, this report briefly reviews a representative set of challenges often cited by large Japanese firms attempting to make use of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, concluding by suggesting areas for further research.

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Kenji E. Kushida

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Intelligence Augmentation (IA), Human Machine Interfaces (HMI): Frontier Research and Policies for Navigating the Future Together

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The diffusion and deployment of technology is not simply shaped by the technology itself. Complementary technologies are often required to derive value from the technology, and other factors such as business models for which the technology solves significant “pain points.” Business organizations that can harness the set of technologies, along with societal factors such as regulations, employment regimes, demographics, social norms, and political dynamics can critically affect how technologies diffuse.

This conference is centered on the technological development, deployment, and diffusion of various forms of human-machine interfaces. In the morning, it examines technologies utilizing AI, IA, and pushing human-machine interfaces to the next level of commercial development (morning session A). It also introduces frontier research in medical fields and focuses on how a design approach has been effective for how medical products and solutions have been developed (morning session B). In the afternoon, it turns to a discussion of policy dynamics and considerations surrounding the use of AI and IA, particularly in broad societal deployments

This conference is a joint production of the Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (APARC) Japan Program’s Stanford Silicon Valley - New Japan Project, and Japanese venture community, Mistletoe, Inc.

Agenda

*Agenda subject to change

9:00 - 9:30             Registration

9:30 - 9:40             Welcome Remarks

9:40 - 11:00           Morning Session A: Next Generation Human Machine Interfaces: From Science Fiction to Reality to Industrial Deployment

Presentations followed by discussion:

Ryoichi Togashi, Program Director, Komatsu

Andrew Pedtke, Co-founder and CEO, Lim Innovations

Lochlainn Wilson, CEO, SE4

Moderator: Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Stanford University

11:00 - 11:15         Break

11:15 - 12:30         Morning Session B: Bio Design and Medical Technologies, and University-Industry Ecosystems

Presentations followed by discussion:

Atsushi Taira, Chief Growth Officer, Mistletoe, Inc.

Gordon Miller Saul, Executive Director,  Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign

Christoph Leuze, Research Scientist, Stanford Radiological Sciences Lab

Pushkar Apte, Director of Strategic Initiatives, CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, UC Berkeley

Moderator: Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Stanford University

12:30 - 13:30        Lunch

1:30 - 15:00          Afternoon Discussion: Regulations, politics, and industry dynamic with considerations of accountability and ethics

Presentations followed by discussion:

Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Stanford University

Mei Lin Fung, Co-Founder, People-Centered Internet

Rosanna Guadagno, Director, Information Warfare Working Group, Stanford University

Mike Nelson, Head of Public Policy, CloudFlare

Moderator: Jaclyn Selby, Research Scholar, Stanford University

15:00                    Closing Remarks

RSVP REQUIRED

Limited seating available. Seats will be filled on a first come, first serve basis.

RSVP Deadline: May 20, 2019

RSVP link: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/52119conference

Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Patricia (Tish) Robinson

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patricia_robinson.jpg Ph.D.

Patricia (Tish) Robinson joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a visiting scholar from Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, Japan from May 2019 - April 2020.

Robinson’s research and teaching focus on managerial mediation and managerial coaching. She has published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Perspectives, and Human Resource Management Review, among others, and her research has received the Academy of International Business Farmer Award and the Academy of Management Richman Award. Other awards include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Fulbright Hayes Fellowship, a Fulbright Faculty Fellowship, a Carnegie Bosch grant, a Japan Foundation Faculty Fellowship, and a Shintaro Abe Fellowship, among others.

Robinson has served on the faculty at UC Berkeley, the NYU Stern School of Business and Harvard University, as well as at the Japan Institute of Labor Policy and Training.  She was appointed a Commissioner on the Fulbright Japan-US Educational Commission by Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, was an outside board director to Eisai Pharmaceuticals, elected an elected Governor to the American Chamber of Commerce Board of Governors, and served as a Founding Director of the Society of Organizational Learning Japan under the auspices of Peter Senge.

Robinson received her MBA and Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her BA from Pomona College.

Visiting Scholar, May 2019-April 2020

Japan in the Bay Area: From Competition to Collaboration

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The Bay Area Council Economic Institute and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Japan Program invite you to a forum on the critical transformations underway in Japan’s economy and the unique synergies that connect it to the Bay Area. The program will include a discussion of the high-level findings of a new report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute on Japan’s economic engagement in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley Bay Area, and the role the region is playing as California and Japan look to expand trade and investment and accelerate innovation. Leading experts and practitioners from both Japan and the Bay Area will join us for this discussion. 

This event is brought to you by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Japan Program and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, in cooperation with the Japan Society of Northern California.

 

Agenda

 

1:00pm          Welcome

     Jim Wunderman, President & CEO, Bay Area Council

     Hon. Tomochika Uyama, Consul General of Japan

     Takeo Hoshi, Director, Shorenstein APARC Japan Program

1:10pm          Introduction of Bay Area Council Economic Institute Report: High-Level Findings

     Sean Randolph, Senior Director, Bay Area Council Economic Institute

1:30pm          Observations and Silicon Valley Overview

     Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Stanford University

1:45pm          Panel 1: The Emerging New Japan 

     Kanetaka Maki, Associate Professor, Waseda Business School

     Mio Takaoka, CFO, Medical Note and Partner, Arbor Ventures

     Takeshi Ebihara, Founding GP, Rebright Partners

     Emre Yuasa, Principal, Globis Capital Partners

     Sean Randolph, Senior Director, Bay Area Council Economic Institute (Moderator)

2:45pm          Panel 2: Japanese Companies in Silicon Valley Creating Value in New Ways

     Hiroshi Menjo, Managing Partner, Net Service Ventures

     Tsunehiko Yanagihara, Executive VP, Mitsubishi Corp M-LAB

     Gen Isayama, General Partner & CEO, World Innovation Lab

     Dennis Clark, Managing Director, Honda Innovations

     George Saikalis, SVP & CTO, Hitachi America, Ltd.

     Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Stanford University (Moderator)

4:00pm         Closing Remarks 

Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

Panel Discussions
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

HOW DOES VENTURE CAPITAL WORK AND HOW DO JAPANESE CORPORATIONS LEVERAGE VENTURE CAPITAL?

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Since its establishment, DNX Ventures (formerly Draper Nexus Ventures) has acted as a bridge between growing Silicon Valley businesses and large Japanese firms. Since 2011, DNX Ventures has created more than 100 partnerships between its portfolio companies and its over 25 large Japanese corporate LPs. During this seminar, Managing Director of DNX Ventures Hiro Rio Maeda will extrapolate from his over 15 years of experience in both corporate venture capital and venture capital and extensive experience working with both startups and large Japanese corporations to discuss the basics of venture capital, and how Japanese corporations leverage venture capital to push forward open innovation initiatives. From a VC perspective: how are decisions about strategic investments made? How does money flow? What ratio of successful investments to non-successful investments do VCs aim for? From a large Japanese corporate perspective: how do large Japanese firms use VC to achieve open innovation goals? What are some of the obstacles to Japanese large firm-startup partnerships, and what are some of the ways to overcome these challenges? Maeda will answer these questions and more, as well as share examples of successful partnerships and large Japanese firms that are successfully harnessing Silicon Valley to further open innovation efforts.  

SPEAKER:

Hiro Rio Maeda, Managing Director, DNX Ventures (formerly Draper Nexus)

BIO:

Hiro Rio Maeda is a Managing Director at venture capital firm DNX Ventures (formerly Draper Nexus). Rio focuses on investing in innovative companies in Cyber Security, mobile, storage, and retail tech area that could work on a global scale. His portfolio companies include Cylance, SafeBreach, JASK, vArmour, AppDome, Ayasdi, Remotium, Klout, Fyde, JoyMode, and Hom.ma. 

Prior to joining DNX Ventures (formerly Draper Nexus), Rio spent six years at Globespan Capital Partners where he had put his resource on both investment and business development of Japan/US portfolio companies. Palo Alto Networks(NYSE: PANW) was a good example portfolio company that he took a lead on taking them to the Japanese market.

Prior to Globespan, Rio spent seven years at Sumitomo Corporation, a Japanese conglomerate trading company in which he had built expertise his international business skill in IT technologies and consumer web services in Tokyo and his capitalist career at Presidio Ventures (Sumitomo’s corporate venture capital arm) in Santa Clara.Japanese conglomerate trading company in which he had built expertise his international business skill in IT technologies and consumer web services in Tokyo and his capitalist career at Presidio Ventures (Sumitomo’s corporate venture capital arm) in Santa Clara.

AGENDA:

4:15pm: Doors open
4:30pm-5:30pm: Talk and Discussion
5:30pm-6:00pm: Networking

RSVP REQUIRED:

Register to attend at http://www.stanford-svnj.org/22819-public-forum

For more information about the Silicon Valley-New Japan Project please visit: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/

 

Hiro Rio Maeda, Managing Director, DNX Ventures (formerly Draper Nexus)
Seminars
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Innovative Japanese Companies Harnessing Silicon Valley - Part 2

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This is part 2 of a talk presenting how innovative large Japanese companies are harnessing Silicon Valley. It is a review of the fireside chats and panels presented at the Silicon Valley – New Japan Summit last November at Stanford, which was in Japanese. The talk adds some historical context, and introduces through many of the company cases from the summit, including Panasonic, Fuji Film, Itochu, Rakuten, Obayashi, Nomura Holdings, Sourcenext, Komatsu, SMBC, and Toyota Research Institute.

The current surge of large Japanese companies into Silicon Valley is focused on firms aiming to identify new opportunities to collaborate with the startup ecosystem in order to understand future technological and industry trajectories, to facilitate new forms of “open” innovation within the company, and in some cases to even redefine how to add value to their core offerings. However, given a vast differently economic context from their core operations in Japan, many of the large Japanese firms’ initial forays tend to fall into patterns of “worst practices” that are ineffective. Yet, a small but growing number of innovative Japanese companies are producing novel and valuable collaborations with a variety of Silicon Valley firms, investors, and ecosystem players. The talk will survey a range of strategic options available to Japanese companies, with implications for how to better adapt companies from Japan to Silicon Valley, and more broadly from different political economic systems.

SPEAKER:

Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Shorenstein APARC Japan Program and Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project Leader

BIO:

Kenji E. Kushida is the Japan Program Research Scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University (APARC), Project Leader of the Stanford Silicon Valley – New Japan Project (Stanford SV-NJ), research affiliate of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE), International Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS), and Visiting Researcher at National Institute for Research Advancement (NIRA). He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

Kushida’s research streams include 1) Information Technology innovation, 2) Silicon Valley’s economic ecosystem, 3) Japan’s political economic transformation since the 1990s, and 4) the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams, including “The Politics of Commoditization in Global ICT Industries,” “Japan’s Startups Ecosystem,” “Cloud Computing: From Scarcity to Abundance,” and others. His latest business book in Japanese is “The Algorithmic Revolution’s Disruption: a Silicon Valley Vantage on IoT, Fintech, Cloud, and AI” (Asahi Shimbun Shuppan 2016).

He has appeared in media including The New York Times, Washington Post, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei Business, NHK, PBS NewsHour, and NPR.

He is also a trustee of the Japan ICU Foundation, a fellow of the US-Japan Leadership Program, an alumni of the Trilateral Commission David Rockefeller Fellows, and a member of the Mansfield Foundation Network for the Future.

AGENDA:

4:15pm: Doors open
4:30pm-5:30pm: Talk and Discussion
5:30pm-6:00pm: Networking

RSVP REQUIRED:

Register to attend at http://www.stanford-svnj.org/12819

For more information about the Silicon Valley-New Japan Project please visit: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/

 

Kenji E. Kushida

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Former Research Scholar, Japan Program
kenji_kushida_2.jpg MA, PhD
Kenji E. Kushida was a research scholar with the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center from 2014 through January 2022. Prior to that at APARC, he was a Takahashi Research Associate in Japanese Studies (2011-14) and a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow (2010-11).
 
Kushida’s research and projects are focused on the following streams: 1) how politics and regulations shape the development and diffusion of Information Technology such as AI; 2) institutional underpinnings of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, 2) Japan's transforming political economy, 3) Japan's startup ecosystem, 4) the role of foreign multinational firms in Japan, 4) Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster. He spearheaded the Silicon Valley - New Japan project that brought together large Japanese firms and the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams, including “The Politics of Commoditization in Global ICT Industries,” “Japan’s Startup Ecosystem,” "How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan’s Domestic 'Galapagos' Telecommunications Sector," “Cloud Computing: From Scarcity to Abundance,” and others. His latest business book in Japanese is “The Algorithmic Revolution’s Disruption: a Silicon Valley Vantage on IoT, Fintech, Cloud, and AI” (Asahi Shimbun Shuppan 2016).

Kushida has appeared in media including The New York Times, Washington Post, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei Business, Diamond Harvard Business Review, NHK, PBS NewsHour, and NPR. He is also a trustee of the Japan ICU Foundation, alumni of the Trilateral Commission David Rockefeller Fellows, and a member of the Mansfield Foundation Network for the Future. Kushida has written two general audience books in Japanese, entitled Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities (Chuko Shinsho, 2006) and International Schools, an Introduction (Fusosha, 2008).

Kushida holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his MA in East Asian Studies and BAs in economics and East Asian Studies with Honors, all from Stanford University.
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Dual Labor Markets and Economic Globalization: Theory and Evidence from Japanese Manufacturing

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Labor market duality refers to the coexistence of temporary workers with low dismissal costs and permanent workers with high dismissal costs within the same firms. The prevalence of temporary employment is a common feature in several countries, such as Continental European countries. Further, since the 1980s, the Japanese labor market has been experiencing a substantial increase in temporary jobs. The quality of temporary jobs tends to be lower than that of permanent jobs (e.g., the former includes lesser job security, lower wages, and fewer training opportunities compared to the latter). For this reason, the causes and consequences of widespread temporary employment have both policy and academic implications. To date, most of the research on this topic has focused on the supply side of labor markets (demographic changes in workforce), macroeconomic impacts (business cycles), and labor-market institutions. However, since the majority of temporary workers tends to be involuntary, the demand-side analysis is important, as well. It has rarely been examined how market competition would affect firms’ demand for temporary and permanent labor, particularly within the context of economic globalization.

Our study attempts to fill this gap. By proposing a heterogeneous-firm trade model with a dual labor market, we examine the relations between the demand for temporary and permanent workers and economic globalization. Our model highlights intensified product market competition as a driving force behind the shift in demand from permanent to temporary workers. In addition, our model demonstrates that international outsourcing effectively reduces labor adjustment costs, which decreases the demand for permanent workers. Using industry-level data from the Japanese manufacturing sector, we empirically test the relations between the demand for temporary and permanent workers and economic globalization and find that they support most of our theoretical predictions.

 

headshot sato
Hitoshi Sato joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2018–2019 academic year from the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO), a national research institute in Japan, where he currently serves as a senior chief research fellow. Sato’s field of study is international trade, and his current research interests include the relationships between internationalization of firms and labor markets. His research efforts have been published in journals, books, and policy reports, including the Journal of Japanese and International Economies. Further, Sato has been appointed as a consulting fellow by the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry since 2013. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2006.

Philippines Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

Hitoshi Sato

616 Serra StreetEncina Hall E301Stanford, CA94305-6055
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Dr. Hitoshi Sato joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) for the 2018 year from the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO) in Japan, where he serves as Senior Chief Research Fellow.  He will be working on the internationalization of firms, management practices, and development.  Dr. Sato received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. 
Visiting Scholar at APARC
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series
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