Stanford University

Business

Do Startups Learn When They Fail? Using Crowdfunding Data to Compare When and If Entrepreneurs Learn from Experience and Observation

-

Do startups learn from their own past experiences? What about observing other entrepreneurs' experiences? Using the results of her recent study on tech ventures on Kickstarter, Jaclyn Selby will share the circumstances under which startups do - and do NOT - learn from previous success and failure. She will also explore whether startups learn best from prior experience in related or in unrelated industries.

Speaker Bio

Jaclyn Selby's research is at the intersection of technology, management and policy. She focuses on competitive dynamics in high tech and media industries, emphasizing innovation, startups, and intellectual property. She joins Stanford from a postdoctoral fellowship at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Her work has been published in Communications & Strategies, Foreign Policy Digest, and Intellibridge Asia.  Jaclyn holds a PhD from the University of Southern California, an MA from Georgetown University, and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College.

Prior to PhD life, Jaclyn was a Senior Researcher heading federally-funded tech strategy projects at Project Argus, a leader in disease and disaster intelligence. Her group worked with partners at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Open Source Center, the University of Iowa Avian Flu prediction market, and the Al Fornace molecular biology lab. Prior to Argus, she was Research & Marketing Director of the Style and Image Network, a boutique consultancy, and a geopolitical analyst (Intellibridge, Castle Asia, Courage Services). A U.S. citizen, Jaclyn was raised overseas in Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

 

Agenda

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

RSVP Required

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

Womenomics, the Workplace, and Women: Stanford Silicon Valley US-Japan Dialogue 2016

-

As Japan faces a shrinking and aging population, it must pursue productivity growth to remain a wealthy nation. Women, long underrepresented Japan’s workforce, are receiving renewed attention with the Abe administration’s slogan of Womenomics as part of his Abenomics economic reform package. In the second World Assembly for Women in Tokyo (named WAW!) in late August 2015, Prime Minister Abe even went so far as to say “Abenomics is Womenomics.” At the same time as the WAW! meeting, the National Diet passed a law requiring large companies to analyze their current status of women and set numerical targets in one of several areas. Now that the issue of women in the workplace is being taken more seriously than ever before, it is time to mobilize serious research in the form of policy evaluation, create a new dialogue that can spark innovative ideas by injecting Silicon Valley ideas and people into U.S.-Japan policy discussions, and link entrepreneurs, policymakers, and researchers from both sides to cultivate sustained interpersonal networks. 

This conference takes on the issue of women leadership and women’s positions in the Japanese workforce and society, with the objective to bring issues to the table and explore concrete mechanisms by which government policy, business practices, and social factors can be influences to make concrete progress for women's leadership and participation in Japan.

Sponsored by the US-Japan Foundation (USJF), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), and Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (S-APARC) and Clayman Institute for Gender Research.

 

*The below program is subject to change.

Conference Program

8:55-9:25                  Registration and Breakfast

9:25-9:40                  Welcome & Opening Remarks

Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University)

David Janes (US-Japan Foundation)

Toru Tamiya (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)

9:40-11:00                Panel Discussion I:

Women in the Silicon Valley Ecosystem- Progress and Challenges

                                  Chair:                     Shelley Correll (Stanford University)

                                  Panelists:             Ari Horie (Women's Startup Lab)

 Yoky Matsuoka

                                  Emily Murase (San Francisco Department on the Status of Women)

Mana Nakagawa (Facebook)

 

11:00-11:20              Coffee Break

11:20-12:40              Panel Discussion II:                                 

Women in the Japanese Economy- Progress and Challenges

                                  Chair:                    Mariko Yoshihara Yang (Stanford University)

                                  Panelists:             Mitsue Kurihara (Development Bank of Japan)

 Akiko Naka (Wantedly)

 Yuko Osaki (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japanese Government)

                                  Machiko Osawa (Japan Women's University)

                               

12:40-14:00              Lunchtime

14:00-15:20              Panel Discussion III:  

Women's Advancement in the Workplace

                                  Chair:                 Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University)

 Panelists:             Keiko Honda (Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the World Bank Group)

 Chiyo Kobayashi (Washington Core)

                                  Sachiko Kuno (S&R Foundation)

  Kazuo Tase (Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting)        

                                 

15:20-15:40             Coffee Break

15:40-17:00             Panel Discussion IV:  

Work-Life Balance and Womenomics

                                  Chair:                     Kenji Kushida (Stanford University)

                                  Panelists:            Diane Flynn (ReBoot Career Accelerator for Women)

Atsuko Horie (Sourire)

Nobuko Nagase (Ochanomizu Women's University)

                                 Myra Strober (Stanford University)

17:00-17:05            Closing Remarks

 

Conferences

Yusuke Asakura

616 Serra StreetEncina Hall E301Stanford, CA94305-6055
(650) 723-9741 (650) 723-6530
0
yusuke_asakura.jpg

Yusuke Asakura is a Visiting Scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  He is also co-founder of Tokyo Founders Fund, an angel network composed of eight entrepreneurs, which invests in pre-seed and seed stage startup companies globally.

Prior to coming to the US, Asakaura was the CEO of mixi, a public company which runs the largest Social Networking Service in Japan.  At mixi, he led turnaround strategy by diversification of its business and increased its market cap from $200M to $4B in one year.

Prior to mixi, he was the founder and CEO of mobile tech startup, Naked Technology.  The company was acquired by mixi in 2011.

Asakura earned his bachelors degree in Law from the University of Tokyo in 2007.

Visiting Scholar

Zero to One and One to Ten: The art of starting a startup and scaling

-

Akiko Naka was born on October 12th 1984 in Japan. Akiko serves as a founder and chief executive officer at Wantedly, Inc., the professional social networking service she started in her apartment. Following its official launch in February 2012, Wantedly grew to 1 million monthly active users and 15,000 corporates, which has become the leading professional social networking service in Tokyo. She believes that social products enable people to change their life. Prior to Wantedly, she was a growth coordinator at Facebook Japan, contributing in the marketing and product development of Facebook in Japan. Before joining Facebook, she worked at Goldman Sachs in equity sales. She graduated from Kyoto University in 2008 with a B.A. in Economics.

AGENDA

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

RSVP REQUIRED
 
For more information about the Silicon Valley-New Japan Project please visit: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/
Akiko Naka, Founder and CEO, Wantedly, Inc
Seminars
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Bloomberg TV: Next steps for the Bank of Japan

News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) convened in late April to discuss the future of Japanese monetary policy. An outcome of that meeting was a decision to hold interest rates steady. On Bloomberg TV, Stanford economist Takeo Hoshi said the non-move is unsurprising and offered views on what to expect next from the BOJ.

The interview can be viewed here.
 
Hero Image
bloomberg tv hoshi
All News button
1

Managing Open Innovation: Lessons from Harnessing Silicon Valley

-

For firms around the world, the question of how to harness Silicon Valley's innovation engine is increasingly important. The answers are not obvious, since the entrepreneurial dynamism and disruptive innovations and business models of Silicon Valley are often at odds with large firms' internal dynamics and processes. This is especially the case for firms that grew up outside Silicon Valley and began as outsiders here.

This panel brings together expertise from multiple vantages-- SAP from Germany, which has a major presence in Silicon Valley, World Innovation Lab (WiL) which works with large Japanese companies in a variety of ways, and Core Venture Group, a boutique San Francisco venture capital firm co-founded by a Japanese and our panelist with extensive experience working with Japanese firms.

Please join us to get both broad perspectives and specific insights into how large outside firms can harness Silicon Valley.

PANELISTS:

Joanna Drake Earl, General Partner, Core Ventures Group

Joanna has been creating next-generation digital experiences at the intersection of media and technology for over 20 years. Currently Joanna is a General Partner at Core Ventures Group, a seed stage technology start-up fund, investing in serial entrepreneurs who are solving big problems with advanced technologies. Until December 2012, Joanna served as Chief Operating Officer for DeNA West. She oversaw operations outside of Asia for this $5B Japanese public mobile content company, working closely with the Founder and Board of Directors on international expansion and global operations.

After joining Vice President Gore and Joel Hyatt to co-found Current TV in 2001, Joanna spent 11 years with the company including stints as President of New Media, pioneering the world's first social media platform, as well as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, overseeing Sales, Marketing, Distribution, Technology, and International Operations. Earlier Joanna held executive positions at several leading technology and media start-ups, including MOXI and ReacTV. She started her career at Booz Allen & Hamilton in the Media, Entertainment and Technology consulting practice, working closely with the world's leading entertainment conglomerates and the largest Silicon Valley technology companies.

Gen Isayama, Co-Founder and CEO, World Innovation Lab

Gen is the CEO and Co-Founder of WiL, LLC (World Innovation Lab), an organization dedicated to accelerating and promoting open innovation in large corporations across Japan. Funded by enterprises from various industries, WiL provides investment capital and strategic guidance to Japanese startups entering the global market as well as overseas ventures entering the Japanese market. In addition, WiL incubates new businesses by leveraging unused IP and resources in large corporations, facilitating innovation and entrepreneurship. Born and raised in Tokyo, Gen joined IBJ (now Mizuho Financial Group) after graduating Tokyo University and moved to Silicon Valley in 2001 to attend Stanford Business School. After graduation, Gen joined DCM Ventures, one of the top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firms, and worked as a partner until the summer of 2013.

Kenji Kushida, Research Associate, Stanford University

Kenji E. Kushida is a Japan Program Research Associate at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and an affiliated researcher at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Kushida’s research interests are in the fields of comparative politics, political economy, and information technology. He has four streams of academic research and publication: political economy issues surrounding information technology such as Cloud Computing; institutional and governance structures of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster; political strategies of foreign multinational corporations in Japan; and Japan’s political economic transformation since the 1990s. 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. His received his MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

David Swanson, Executive Vice President, Human Resources, SAP SuccessFactors

David Swanson has over 25 years of human resources management experience. He is currently the executive vice president of human resources for SAP SuccessFactors partnering with the company’s sales organization to showcase how SAP is using SAP HR. Most recently he was the CHRO for North America and prior to that the global head of HR for SAP’s products and innovation organization where he delivered the people strategy to drive business performance. In addition he has held executive human resources roles at a number of technology companies supporting global development, marketing, sales and service organizations. 

Swanson is a keynote speaker and panelist on the Future of HR focusing on how HR can make an impact in the business through analytics and big data not just activity reporting. He is actively involved in the human resources community as a board member of the Bay Area Human Resources Executive Council (BAHREC), on the innovation advisory board of HULT the global business school, an adjunct lecturer with the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension, and a regular presenter and facilitator with the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) and the Northern California Human Resources Association (NCHRA).

AGENDA:

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

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

 

Panel Discussions
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Big Data: Lessons from the Field

-

Gaurav Kataria is a Big Data leader at Google who is responsible for driving Production Adoption initiatives across various Google for Work product lines - Gmail, Drive, G+, Hangouts, Google Docs, Drive, Android and Chrome. His group employs sophisticated machine learning and data mining techniques to understand the usage patterns across different products, and based on that creates programs to improve user engagement.

Gaurav holds a guest lecturer appointment at Stanford Business School where he co-teaches a course on 'Data-Driven Decision Making.' He actively supports the startup community in the Bay Area and is an advisor to multiple startups in mobile space. Prior to Google, he was a senior manager at Booz Allen and a researcher at Cylab - Carnegie Mellon. He has a Masters and PhD in Information Security Risk Management from Carnegie Mellon University and Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology. He currently lives in Palo Alto, California and enjoys hiking the Bay Area mountain ranges in his spare time.

Gaurav will share his perspective on how to create a data-driven organization and the specific capabilities businesses need to develop to harness the power of machine intelligence.

AGENDA:

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

RSVP REQUIRED
 
For more information about the Silicon Valley-New Japan Project please visit: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/
Gaurav Kataria, Head of Product Adoption Google for Work
Seminars
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Stanford experts discuss innovation on NHK television program

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Four scholars from Stanford University participated in a public panel discussion on Silicon Valley and Asian economies last month, part of a filming for an NHK Broadcasting series that aims to bring opinion leaders together to discuss issues facing contemporary Japan. The panel event will debut online this Friday.

“Silicon Valley is known worldwide as a place for many new innovative ideas, individuals and companies,” said Takeo Hoshi, director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). “Such economic dynamism is what many countries and regions across the world want to imitate. This is especially true for Asian economies.”

During the hour-long event, Hoshi moderates a discussion between William Barnett, a professor of business leadership, strategy and organizations at the Graduate Business School; Francis Fukuyama, the director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law; and Kenji Kushida, a research associate of Shorenstein APARC’s Japan Program.

The panel set out to consider how Silicon Valley realized success and its implications for Asian countries that seek to develop similar innovation-based economies. Panelists started by offering a single keyword that represents Silicon Valley in their own definition. They are: harness, social capital, and failure.

“The question that everyone is interested in is how to make use of Silicon Valley,” Kushida said. “How to ‘harness’ the innovation ecosystem that works fairly well here.”

A key component of Silicon Valley’s success is the high level of social capital found in the region, the panelists said.

“The level of informal cooperation…is higher than in other parts of the country,” Fukuyama explained. Silicon Valley has a norm of reciprocity and lacks extensive business contracts that impede fluidity of ideas, he said.

The panelists also explored the impact of government policy. They said that it provides an essential service in supplying a framework – at least initially – from which innovation-based economic activities can emerge.

“The government needs to set up a playing field upon which firms and entrepreneurs…can do the unimaginable,” Barnett said.

The U.S. government played an important role in a number of defense-related projects that led to the formation of new technologies, including the Internet. However, a government role “cannot smother and be too directive,” Fukuyama said.

Kushida notes that he leads a research project that looks at the institutional foundations of Silicon Valley and offers lessons applicable to Japan. Last year, Kushida and Hoshi authored a report with three other scholars that identifies six institutional factors that encourage innovation, and what the Japanese government can do to encourage development of a more effective innovation ecosystem.

Culture can play a powerful role, too, the panelists explained. They described how both organizational and national cultures can foster or impinge upon innovation.

Barnett said it may be “cool” to be an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, but in Japanese culture, for example, it is the opposite. Barnett has studied entrepreneurs in Japan and has written many publications about how organizations and industries evolve globally.

Approaches to overcoming hard-fastened barriers to innovation include developing a culture of trust and acceptance toward failure, the panelists explained. Yet, they also cautioned against attempts to copy Silicon Valley too closely.

“I don’t think we should take this Silicon Valley gospel for granted – that disruption is always great and that things will always be necessarily better in social terms,” Fukuyama said.

The panelists recognize the outgrowth of high-tech areas in other areas around the world, and note that it is impossible to predict what innovations will come next and their impact on humanity.

The panel event was broadcast and live-tweeted with #SVAsia on Friday, March 4, from 4:10-5:00 p.m. (PST). The video can be viewed on demand here.

Hero Image
img 1422a headline
Stanford's Takeo Hoshi (far left) moderates a panel discussion between Kenji Kushida, Francis Fukuyama and William Barnett focused on Silicon Valley and Asian economies. The event was filmed for the NHK Broadcasting program, Global Agenda, and will air in March.
All News button
1

Back to the Source: Yamaha Motor's Challenges on Business Development

-

Hiroshi “Hiro” Saijou is CEO and Managing Director at Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley. Prior to founding YMVSV, Hiro was a Division Manager at Yamaha Motor Corporation, USA where he led exploratory efforts in Silicon Valley.  Hiro started his career at Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (Iwata, Japan) where he worked for almost two decades on a broad array of surface mount technology and robotics efforts in addition to new business development efforts. Hiro enjoys exploring the California Bay Area, sometimes with his golf clubs.  He speaks at conferences frequently on bold, ambitious, sometimes crazy corporate innovation. Hiro earned a software engineering degree from Kyushu University, one of Japan’s National Seven Universities.

SEMINAR DESCRIPTION

The introduction of Yamaha Motor's business development effort utilizing Silicon Valley Ecosystem. Growth of business and corporation to deliver more value to the society is essential desire for all of us, but there are so many options to be taken. In this presentation, we will share our thoughts and experience; what is our objectives, how Yamaha Motor started this business development tasks, why we need to incorporate Yamaha Motor Ventures and how we did it, what are our ongoing ambitious / unique / crazy projects.

AGENDA

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

RSVP REQUIRED
 
For more information about the Silicon Valley-New Japan Project please visit: http://www.stanford-svnj.org/
Hiro Saijou, CEO and Managing Director, Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley Inc.
Seminars
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project

Chronicles of the Silicon Valley - Japan Relationship and Lessons Learned: An insider's view of large firms, startup firms, and entrepreneurs since the 1970s

-

Masa ISHII is founder and a Managing Director of AZCA, Inc., a management consulting firm specializing in US-Japan corporate development for high technology companies.  To date, AZCA has helped numerous companies in Japan and US in developing their new business across the Pacific Ocean.  Masa is also a Managing Director of AZCA Venture Partners, a venture capital firm whose most recent fund specializes in the domain where IT/Electronics and Life science converge.  Formerly, Masa worked at McKinsey & Company, Inc. and at IBM. Masa is a frequent speaker and writer on issues involving international business development in the high technology industry. He is a visiting professor at Waseda University Business School and at Graduate School of Engineering, Shizuoka University.  Masa holds a Bachelor of Engineering in mathematical engineering and instrumentation physics from the University of Tokyo and a Master of Science in computer science from Stanford University.

 

SEMINAR DESCRIPTION:

It was in early 1970s that Japanese companies first started interacting with Silicon Valley.  As Silicon Valley grew, many Japanese companies started trying to work with high-tech start-ups in Silicon Valley with the purpose of innovating and developing new businesses. More recently, start-up companies and SMEs from Japan have started taking root in Silicon Valley by fully taking advantage of its high technology infrastructure.  In doing so, however, many Japanese companies failed to achieve their strategic goals.  These hard-learned lessons over time are bound to be forgotten as the new generation of Japanese companies attempt to enter the Silicon Valley’s ecosystem unless they are recorded and the memory is institutionalized. Having lived and worked between Japan and Silicon Valley over the past 30 years, the speaker will share an insider's view of large firms, start-ups and entrepreneurs since the 1970s and his direct experience and reminiscence in dealing with companies in Japan and Silicon Valley, so that the long-built up experience of firms entering this region for the last 40 years can prove to be of benefit to others in the future.

RSVP REQUIRED:

AGENDA:
4:15pm: Doors open
4:30pm-5:30pm: Lecture, followed by discussion
5:30pm-6:00pm: Networking

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

Philippines Conference RoomEncina Hall, 3rd Floor616 Serra SteetStanford, CA 94305
Masa Ishii, Managing Director of AZCA, Inc and Visiting Professor, WASEDA Business School; Graduate School of Engineering, Shizuoka University
Seminars
Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project
Subscribe to Business