Stanford University

Hirofumi Uchida

616 Serra StreetEncina Hall E301Stanford, CA94305-6055
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hirofumi_uchida Ph.D.

Hirofumi Uchida joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2017-2018 academic year from the Kobe University’s Graduate School of Business Administration where he serves as a professor of Banking and Finance.

Uchida’s research interests focus on banking, financial institutions, and financial system architecture. During his stay at Shorenstein APARC, Uchida will conduct research on startup finance in the U.S. from the perspective of an international comparison with Japan. For this research, he receives Abe Fellowship (Social Science Research Council).

Uchida's research has been published in International Economic Review, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Economica, and Journal of Banking and Finance, among others. He is also an associate editor of Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and a member of the Study Group for Earthquake and Enterprise Dynamics (SEEDs) and the Money & Finance Research Group (MoFiR). 

Uchida received his M.A. in Economics in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1999, both from Osaka University. Prior to joining Kobe University in 2009, Uchida was with the Kyoto Institute for Economic Research at Kyoto University, and the Faculty of Economics at Wakayama University. He was also a visiting scholar at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University as a 2003 Fulbright Scholar.

Visiting Scholar

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan: Why Japan (Still) Matters for Global Competition

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Through the 1980s, Japan was significant in global competition largely by shaping global technological trajectories, transforming major global industries, and contributing to fundamental innovations in industrial production processes, creating enough wealth along the way to propel Japan to the world’s second largest economy. After the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, however, Silicon Valley moved to the forefront of transforming technology, industries, and production, creating vast wealth along the way. While Japan's role in global competition seemingly declined after the 1990s, careful analyses reveal that Japan was in fact transforming--quietly and gradually, but significantly. In a pattern of “syncretism,” Japan’s economic transformation was characterized by the coexistence of new, traditional, and hybrid forms of strategy and organization. Japan’s new startup ecosystem, though small compared to Silicon Valley, has dramatically transformed over the past twenty years through a combination of regulatory shifts, corporate transformations, and technological breakthroughs that have opened up vast new opportunities. Some large corporations such as Komatsu, Honda, Toyota, and Yamaha are undertaking innovative efforts of sorts unseen in Japan’s recent history to harness Silicon Valley and other startup ecosystems into their core business areas. 

SPEAKER 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), and International Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS). He holds a PhD in political science is 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 Information Technology innovation, Silicon Valley’s economic ecosystem, Japan’s political economic transformation since the 1990s, and 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.

AGENDA

4:30pm: Doors open
4:45pm-5:45pm: Talk and Discussion
5:45pm-6:15pm: Networking

RSVP REQUIRED

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

 

SAFECAST AND FUKUSHIMA FALLOUT: THE POWER OF CITIZEN SCIENCE

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This event is co-sponsored by the Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project and the Japan Society of Northern California.

When the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant experienced a meltdown after the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, people scrambled to get accurate data on radiation. Geiger counters were suddenly a hot commodity. In that moment of crisis, a group of global citizens rose to the occasion to launch Safecast, an open data platform to track, monitor and share data on the radiation levels in Fukushima and throughout Japan. Safecast, a Japan Earthquake Relief Fund grantee, enlisted the help of volunteers who collected the data from all over Japan, and even built its own DIY Geiger counter kit. The Japan Society of Northern California and the Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project are proud to present a program with Pieter Franken, the Co-Founder of Safecast, will look back at Safecast’s evolution—a prime example of citizen science embracing open data and open source—over the last six years and their plans to expand their data gathering efforts to take on new environmental challenges. 

Bio

Pieter Franken's career spans over 25 years in Financial Services, specializing in O&T, Fintech, innovation and large-scale transformations. He has held C-level and executive positions with industry leaders such as Citigroup, Shinsei Bank, Aplus, Monex Securities and Monex Group. His hallmark is pioneering innovative services by implementing bleeding edge technologies while minimizing time-to-market and dramatically reducing costs. Versed in large scale IT transformation, bi-modal management, innovation, software development, datacenter operations, financial operations and FinTech, he is a much looked after advisor and speaker on a wide range of topics and is known for providing deep insights pulling from is wide experience in IT, financial services and innovation management. 

Pieter currently is Senior Advisor at Monex Group (a leading online securities and financial services company in Japan) where he focuses on the Future of Financial Services, Group IT Strategy, Fintech, and Blockchain. 

He is also a member of Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) International Technology Advisory Panel (ITAP) where he contributes in the transformation of Singapore as a leading Fintech Hub. In 2011 Pieter co-founded Safecast.org - a global volunteer initiative to collect citizen sourced environmental data. Pieter also advises startups, such as ModuleQ, an AI startup based in Silicon Valley. Pieter holds a MSc in Computer Science from Delft University (The Netherlands) and currently is a researcher with MIT Media Lab (US) and Keio University (Japan) where he contributes to the advancement in IoT, Digital Currencies, Block-chain technologies and Citizen Science. Pieter is based in Japan and frequently travels across Asia, North America and Europe.

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/

 

Pieter Franken, Senior Advisor, Monex Group
Seminars

Is the War Danger in Korea Real?

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President Donald Trump's ominous threat to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea succeeded at least in garnering the attention of not only Kim Jong Un but the globe. The vague assertion of readiness to carry out a preventive attack on North Korea, even to use nuclear weapons, roiled stock markets, sent Japanese to look for bomb shelters and prompted alarmed warnings against the use of force from both foes and allies, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The piece is available in Chinese, English and Japanese.

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Dun Jiao Du
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The North Korean Missile Test Pushes Xi and Putin Closer

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The most dangerous impact of North Korea’s long-range missile test this past week may not have been the one in the Sea of Japan, felt in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. It was in Moscow where Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin locked arms in a united front on how to respond to the growing North Korea crisis. The target of this front was not, however, North Korea. It was the United States, who the Sino-Russian axis accused of pursuing a military “buildup” in the region.

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Tokyo Business Today
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Shorenstein APARC experts assess the Trump-Moon summit, bilateral challenges

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South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump recently held a summit in Washington, their first face-to-face meeting in a time of heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Experts from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center offered insights in a series of publications and press interviews.

In advance of the summit, William J. Perry Fellow Kathleen Stephens spoke on Bloomberg television about the challenges facing the United States and South Korea, and how those challenges would be prioritized during the bilateral meeting.

Moon would be bringing the message that the U.S.-South Korea alliance is a “strong one and that he remains committed to it,” and that, “only by working transparently and closely together” could the two countries address areas of concern, Stephens said.

“Only when Washington and Seoul are able to talk very frankly to each other and come up with a coordinated plan do we have any chance of making some progress on North Korea,” she added.

Stephens joined the program from Seoul, where a group of Shorenstein APARC faculty and fellows participated in a public seminar and the Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, a biannual conference that seeks to foster dialogue about issues affecting the Korean Peninsula and the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

The seminar, held in conjunction with The Sejong Institute, received press coverage; such articles can be read on the Voice of America website (in Korean) and Sisa Journal website (in Korean).

In an analysis piece for Tokyo Business Today, Associate Director for Research Daniel Sneider assessed the outcomes of the summit between Moon and Trump, suggesting that their meeting was satisfactory – without signs of major discord.

“For the most part, this display of calculated pragmatism worked well. There was no visible daylight between the two leaders over how to handle the North and THAAD totally disappeared from the summit talk, at least in public and in the joint statement issued by the two governments.”

The summit, however, may prove to be a “temporary gain,” Sneider added. “Beneath the smiles, there was plenty of evidence of the gaps, and even the tensions, that exist between a progressive government in Seoul, one that echoes the views of its ideological predecessors of a decade ago, and a nationalist, conservative regime in Washington.”

Read the piece in English and Japanese.

Days after the summit, North Korea test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which the United States and South Korea followed by hosting joint military exercises.

Stephens spoke on WBUR radio about the ICBM test launch and the initial reactions of the Trump administration.

“If [President Trump’s] agenda is to take stronger defensive measures against North Korea, I think he will find strong partners in Japan and South Korea,” she said, noting that other measures, such as diplomacy and economic sanctions, have also been used to affect pressure on the regime.

Responding to a question about China’s relationship with North Korea, Stephens said Beijing has not exhausted all possible tools in its efforts to persuade Pyongyang to slow or abandon its nuclear and missile activities. This is because China fears a collapse of the regime and “takes a long view” in its calculus, she said.

This news item has been updated.

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U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in come out from the Oval Office to deliver joint statements in the Rose Garden at the White House on June 30, 2017, in Washington, DC.
Getty Images - Alex Wong
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Surviving the Trump-Moon Summit

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In the days leading up to the Washington summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump, the tension in Seoul was hard to escape. Fears of an open clash between the two leaders, of a handshake that went on too long, or of a hostile early morning tweet directed at Moon were widespread. But when a senior national security advisor to Moon met a group of American visitors after the first day of talks, he was visibly relieved. The dinner between Moon and U.S. President Donald Trump went so well, he recounted with a slight smile, that it was extended 35 minutes.

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Toyo Keizai Online (Tokyo Business Today)
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Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations

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Rising powers often seek to reshape the world order, triggering confrontations with those who seek to defend the status quo. In recent years, as international institutions have grown in prevalence and influence, they have increasingly become central arenas for international contestation. Phillip Y. Lipscy examines how international institutions evolve as countries seek to renegotiate the international order. He offers a new theory of institutional change and explains why some institutions change flexibly while others successfully resist or fall to the wayside. The book uses a wealth of empirical evidence - quantitative and qualitative - to evaluate the theory from international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Union, League of Nations, United Nations, the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The book will be of particular interest to scholars interested in the historical and contemporary diplomacy of the United States, Japan, and China.

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Cambridge University Press
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Phillip Lipscy
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