Stanford University

Entrepreneurship

Ming Zeng

Shorenstein APARC Stanford University Encina Hall E301 Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
Visiting Scholar at APARC
Ph.D.

Ming Zeng joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as visiting scholar for the 2020 calendar year from Alibaba Group, where he serves as chairman of the Academic Council and formerly as Chief Strategy Officer, and the Hupan School of Entrepreneurship, where he serves as founding Dean and Professor of Strategy. At APARC, he will be conducting research on innovation and entrepreneurship in the Asia-Pacific, specifically on the globalization of Chinese digital companies across Asia.  Prior to coming to APARC, Zeng was a visiting scholar at the Stanford King Center on Global Development at SIEPR.

The Logistics Operations Underlying Retail: US, China, and Japanese Models Compared

-

This event is part of the Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project Public Forum Series.

 

Consumption is a major driver of national economies, and scholars often study important differences across consumption patterns across countries, which influence many aspects of their societies and economies. Yet, the underlying business of logistics operations, and how they support countries’ respective retail industries, has as much, if not more impact than simply examining consumer behavior. In this public forum, Ryuichi Kakui, with deep expertise in eCommerce logistics, will explain how logistics are used in retail industries, comparing across the world’s three largest economies: the US, China, and Japan. He will introduce the concept of strategic logistics thinking and the “4C” framework and informs leading strategic logistics thinking. A conversation with Kenji Kushida, who examines how technologies and specific industry dynamics shape varying models of political economies around the world, will then link the area of logistics and retail to important systemic differences and underlying similarities across the world’s leading economies, which are pursuing contrasting models of social, economic, and political organization.

 

SPEAKERS

kakui headshot

Ryoichi Kakui is the founder of E-Logit, the leading eCommerce logistics company in Japan. He has published 29 books related to logistics, Amazon, and “omnichannel” distribution, which have been published in Japan, the US, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam. He is a frequent commentator on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and other media. Educated in Sophia University in Japan with an MBA from Golden Gate University, he founded UKETORU in 2015, a app addressing the issue of re-delivery, which escalated to a social issue in Japan.

kushida profile 9 2015 cropped

Kenji Kushida is a research scholar at the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. One of this research themes examines how IT technologies shape political economies around the world, and how varying national political economic models shape the development trajectories of technologies. He leads the Silicon Valley – New Japan Project, a sustained platform for research and collaboration between Silicon Valley and the new and emerging aspects as Japan transforms itself.

 

PARKING

Please note there is significant construction taking place on campus, which is greatly affecting parking availability and traffic patterns at the university. Please plan accordingly. Open parking at Stanford University available starting 4:00pm unless otherwise marked. Nearest parking garage is Structure 7, below the Graduate School of Business Knight School of Management.

Seminars

Shintaro Nishihara

0
Global Affiliate Visiting Scholar, 2019-20
Future Architect
shintaro_nishihara.jpeg

Shintaro Nishihara is a global affiliate visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2019-20.  Nishihara has experience and knowledge working in information technology, project management and the retail industry. Currently, he is a director at Future Architect, an IT consulting service in Japan, where his most recent project optimized logistics and improved ordering accuracy using artificial intelligence.  He graduated from Kyoto University in Japan with a BS in Integrated Human Studies.

A Brief Overview of the Current Startup Ecosystem in Japan

Paragraphs

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.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Working Papers
Publication Date

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

Paragraphs

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.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Working Papers
Publication Date
Authors
Kenji E. Kushida

Academic Prize Awarded to Korea Program Deputy Director

Authors
Noa Ronkin
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

We are happy to share that FSI’s SK Center Fellow and APARC's Korea Program Deputy Director Yong Suk Lee is the recipient of the 2018 Urban Land Institute United Kingdom Academic Prize for his paper “Entrepreneurship, small business and economic growth in cities.”

The winner of the Urban Land Institute Prize is selected by The Journal of Economic Geography (JoEG) Editors, Oxford University Press, and the Urban Land Institute. The prize is awarded annually to the author(s) of the best JoEG paper published online in the previous calendar year. Papers are evaluated on the basis of their creativity, quality of scholarship, and contribution to advancing understanding of the geographic nature of economic systems and global economic change.

Lee’s paper investigates whether entrepreneurship causes local employment and wage growth, and if so, how large the impact is. Empirical analysis of this question is difficult due to the joint determination of entrepreneurship and economic growth. Lee’s article uses two different sets of variables—the homestead exemption levels in state bankruptcy laws from 1975 and the share of metropolitan statistical area (MSA) overlaying aquifers—to instrument for entrepreneurship and examine urban employment and wage growth between 1993 and 2002. Lee’s research shows that the creation of small businesses indeed causes substantial employment and payroll growth in cities.

Download Lee’s paper >>

Hero Image
All News button
1

Nan Jia

616 Serra MallEncina Hall E301Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
nan_jia.jpg
Ph.D.

Nan Jia joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2019-2020 academic year as a visiting scholar, from the University of Southern California, where she serves as Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the Marshall School of Business. She obtained her Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the University of Toronto's Joseph L. Rotman School of Management.

Visiting Scholar at APARC

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

-

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

Innovative Japanese Companies Harnessing Silicon Valley - Part 2

-

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

0
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.
Subscribe to Entrepreneurship