The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted economies and expectations for economic growth and development the world over. But even before the pandemic, Asian economies were reassessing their growth strategies.
In a podcast conversation about the new edited volume Shifting Gears in Innovation Policy: Strategies from Asia, APARC's Korea Program Deputy Director Yong Suk Lee discusses some of the impediments Asian countries face in trying to encourage economic development and entrepreneurship, but also the inherent strengths that could allow innovative strategies take hold and grow in East Asia. Listen to the full conversation below.
Edited by Lee, Gi-Wook Shin, and Takeo Hoshi, Shifting Gears in Innovation Policy is the first of three volumes resulting from APARC's Stanford Asia-Pacific Innovation project that produces policy research to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in East Asia and the greater Asia-Pacific region.
Lee explains, “Many Asian countries achieved economic growth by importing new technologies from advanced economies like the U.S., using them very effectively, and then expanding exports. But now where East Asia stands, many of these countries have already successfully caught up to the technological frontier of advanced economies, so if they want to maintain growth, there needs to be a shift in their strategies.”
The shift Lee and the other volume authors propose is one towards economic growth that is driven by innovation and entrepreneurship rather than the ‘catch-up’ model that Asian economies have commonly relied on. Unlike startup hubs such as the San Francisco Bay Area of California, Asian countries often lack an entrepreneurial tradition because of antagonistic financial structures and differences in cultural definitions of success. These additional financial and social risks have cast entrepreneurial endeavors in an unattractive light for multiple generations of workers.
But encouraging entrepreneurship and endemic innovation are crucial to maintaining stable economic growth. With rapidly aging populations, greater interconnections in both trade and diplomacy, and transformation in the workforce, workplace, and work itself, effectively adapting development strategies to meet present and future challenges remains a central priority for East Asia policymakers and innovators alike. As Lee advises, “There’s strong infrastructure in East Asia, both physically and digitally, which is a great advantage. But they’re now at a frontier with no trajectory to follow, and there needs to be indigenous growth and continuous innovation in order to not be surpassed by competitors.”
APARC produces a self-published book series featuring policy-relevant research and analysis by our scholars and affiliates. Titles in this series are distributed by Brookings Institution Press.
University Entrepreneurship Programs May Not Increase Entrepreneurship Rates, Stanford Researchers Find
A study by Yong Suk Lee, the deputy director of APARC’s Korea Program, and Management Science and Engineering professor Charles Eesley investigates the efficacy of two major Stanford entrepreneurship education initiatives, suggesting they may not increase entrepreneurial activity.
APARC Offers Fellowship and Funding Opportunities to Support, Diversify Stanford Student Participation in Contemporary Asia Research
The Center has launched a suite of offerings including a predoctoral fellowship, a diversity grant, and research assistant internships to support Stanford students interested in the area of contemporary Asia.
“Co-Bots,” Not Overlords, Are the Future of Human-Robot Labor Relationships
Yong Suk Lee and Karen Eggleston’s ongoing research into the impact of robotics and AI in different industries indicates that integrating tech into labor markets adjusts, but doesn’t replace, the long-term roles of humans and robots.
Yong Suk Lee explains in the new volume, Shifting Gears in Innovation Policy, that while ‘catch-up’ strategies have been effective in promoting traditional economic growth in Asia, innovative policy tools that foster entrepreneurship will be needed to maintain competitiveness in the future.
Yong Suk Lee and Charles Eesley examine how university entrepreneurship programs affect entrepreneurial activity using a unique entrepreneurship‐focused survey of Stanford alumni. OLS regressions find a positive relationship between program participation and entrepreneurship activities. However, endogeneity hinders causal interpretation. They utilize the fact that the entrepreneurship programs were implemented at the school level.
Using the introduction of each school's program as an instrument for program participation, they find that the Business School program has a negative to zero impact on entrepreneurship rates. Participation in the Engineering School program has no impact on entrepreneurship rates. However, the Business School initiative decreases startup failure and increases firm revenue. University entrepreneurship programs may not increase entrepreneurship rates, but help students better identify their potential as entrepreneurs and improve the quality of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship classes and programs in colleges around the world have proliferated over the last quarter of a century, yet the literature examining the impacts and effectiveness of such initiatives is still relatively sparse and limited. Do these initiatives make a difference in the long-term entrepreneurial activity and success of their students and alumni?
Yong Suk Lee, SK Center Fellow and APARC’s Korea Program deputy director, and Charles Eesley, an associate professor and W.M. Keck Foundation Faculty Scholar at Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering, have been collaborating on research that aims to fill in some of the information gaps in assessing the efficacy of entrepreneurship education programs.
In a new article published in Strategic Management Journal, Lee and Eesley examine the entrepreneurship consequences of Stanford University’s two major entrepreneurship education programs that were founded in the mid-1990s. Their findings are sobering but offer lessons for improving such efforts. Lee provides a synopsis of their findings in the video below.
Using a unique entrepreneurship-focused survey of Stanford alumni, Lee and Eesley investigated how the Stanford Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) at the Business School and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) at the Engineering School affect entrepreneurial activity. They administered the survey to a well-defined population of comparable individuals from multiple industries, in total generating 27,783 responses. Respondents reported information on their entrepreneurial status, participation in angel investing and venture capital, and on the founding, duration, and success of start-up ventures. Respondents also indicated to what degree, if any, they had participated in the CES or STVP programs.
The survey results reveal that overall participation in the Stanford Business School CES had a negative to zero impact on entrepreneurship rates and participation in the Engineering School STVP had no impact on entrepreneurship rates. However, the data suggests that participation in the Business School initiative decreased startup failure and increased firm revenue in the long-term. “University entrepreneurship programs may not increase entrepreneurship rates,” Lee and Eesley conclude, “but help students better identify their potential as entrepreneurs and improve the quality of entrepreneurship.”
These findings provide important context to broader questions about entrepreneurship development and incubation, such as whether entrepreneurship is an intrinsic or acquired trait, and as such, whether firms should seek to develop entrepreneurial capabilities internally or acquire them from external sources. This question equally concerns universities and the strategies institutions of higher education employ to foster entrepreneurial talent.
Lee and Eesley note that it is important to take into account variation in entrepreneurship training programs in course content, emphasis, and other dimensions. Their research suggests that general entrepreneurship education that targets a broader spectrum of startups, rather than one that solely focuses on technology startups, may be more effective in reducing the uncertainty in entrepreneurial ability or improving startup performance.
These findings may generalize to other samples of selective-admission college-educated alumni, although there is certainly need for future work that explores the effects of entrepreneurship education in different institutional environments.
Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Economic Development
The advent of how new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, automation, and cloud computing are opening up new possibilities for businesses and societies. New technologies also support entrepreneurial activity, while risk-taking, ambitious entrepreneurs are fundamental to harnessing these news technologies and to creating new innovations and growth pathways. Yong Suk Lee and Charle's Eesley's research effort evaluates the ways in which these new technologies affect regional entrepreneurship and employment.
“Co-Bots,” Not Overlords, Are the Future of Human-Robot Labor Relationships
Yong Suk Lee and Karen Eggleston’s ongoing research into the impact of robotics and AI in different industries indicates that integrating tech into labor markets adjusts, but doesn’t replace, the long-term roles of humans and robots.
A study by Yong Suk Lee, the deputy director of APARC’s Korea Program, and Management Science and Engineering professor Charles Eesley investigates the efficacy of two major Stanford entrepreneurship education initiatives, suggesting they may not increase entrepreneurial activity.
Samsung is a veritable business empire. In 2017, it passed Apple as the most profitable tech company. But there is more to the company than flat screens and smartphones. In Korea, Samsung is ubiquitous not only as a leading electronics brand, but as a major shaper of culture and politics.
In the episode "The Republic of Samsung" from Business Insider's “Brought to You By . . .” podcast, APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin gives his perspectives on how Samsung transformed from a small family produce shop to become a core pillar of Korean identity. “Samsung really has become a very powerful group in Korea,” reflects Shin. “Their influence is everywhere, not only in business, but in politics, in education, and in culture.”
This blurry intermingling of business interests, politics, and identity is both the key to Samsung’s success and the source of scandals over bribery, corruption, and nepotism that have rocked the company in recent years. For Shin, the longstanding Korean saying, “What is good for Samsung is good for South Korea,” has additional meaning in the present moment as both the company and the government of the ROK grapple with issues of systemic self-interest, erosion of accountability, and abuses of power that threaten the integrity and identity of each.
Under the leadership of Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, the company is working to refurbish its image. But these efforts are mired in ongoing legal setbacks and new allegations. “Samsung can’t continue in the way that they have in the past. It’s a different era. Now, people demand more transparency, more fairness, more justice,” Dr. Shin emphasizes. As a predominant force for shaping business, politics, and identity in South Korean, this counsel to Samsung may prove a litmus test for the wellbeing of the Republic of Korea’s future as a whole.
Listen above to hear more of Dr. Shin’s insights and learn the rest of the story.
Read More
Commentary
Democracy in South Korea is Crumbling from Within
South Korea is following global trends as it slides toward a “democratic depression,” warns APARC’s Gi-Wook Shin. But the dismantling of South Korean democracy by chauvinistic populism and political polarization is the work of a leftist government, Shin argues in a ‘Journal of Democracy’ article.
APARC Announces Diversity Grant to Support Underrepresented Minority Students Interested in Contemporary Asia
To encourage Stanford students from underrepresented minorities to engage in study and research of topics related to contemporary Asia, the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center is offering a new Diversity Grant opportunity. Application reviews begin on September 1, 2020.
On the Business Insider's podcast "Brought to You By. . .", APARC and the Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin discusses how Samsung Electronics became so entwined with the history and identity of modern South Korea, and what the internal politics of the company indicate about broader Korean society.
In a webinar dated June 8, 2020, American University in Cairo Scholar Amr Adly presented findings from his new book Cleft Capitalism: The Social Origins of Failed Market Making in Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2020). Egypt has undergone significant economic liberalization under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, USAID, and the European Commission. Yet after more than four decades of economic reform, the Egyptian economy still fails to meet popular expectations for inclusive growth, better standards of living, and high-quality employment. While many analysts point to cronyism and corruption, this study finds the root causes of this stagnation in the underlying social and political conditions of economic development. It offers a new explanation for why market-based development can fail to meet expectations: small businesses in Egypt are not growing into medium and larger businesses. The practical outcome of this missing middle syndrome is the continuous erosion of the economic and social privileges once enjoyed by the middle classes and unionized labor, without creating enough winners from market making. This in turn set the stage for alienation, discontent, and, finally, revolt. With this book, Adly uncovers both an institutional explanation for Egypt's failed market making, and sheds light on the key factors of arrested economic development across the Global South.
Japan's startup ecosystem has matured dramatically over the past decade, with greater societal legitimacy, business success, and government support than most observers would have expected 20 years ago. Despite the challenging times ahead with the global pandemic, Japan's startup ecosystem is still poised to inject flexibility and innovation in a system often criticized as too rigid. This panel brings together scholars who have studied and participated in the ecosystem, and one of the key government officials pushing policy supporting the startup ecosystem.
PANELISTS
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Masahiro Kotosaka, Associate Professor, Keio University
Masahiro Kotosaka is an Associate Professor at Keio University and advisor to several global start-up companies. Before moving to Keio, he was a faculty at Ritsumeikan, a junior faculty at University of Oxford, and was a consultant at McKinsey & Company (Frankfurt/Tokyo). As a practitioner, he worked for sixteen client organizations across nine industries and nine countries, and spent four years running three profitable IT/Retail businesses before joining McKinsey. He graduated from University of Oxford with D.Phil. (PhD) in Management Studies and MSc in Management Research with Distinction.
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Yoshiaki Ishii, Director of Science, Technology and Innovation, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan
Since getting his start at the government's Small and Middle Enterprise Agency, Dr. Yoshiaki Ishii has shaped his career almost exclusively around supporting young companies and enhancing innovation. Now, he is the director of the Cabinet Office and responsible for determining how to execute the government's mission of supporting deep tech start-ups and creating an innovation ecosystem. Previously, he served as director of the New Business Policy Office, Economic and Industrial Policy Bureau, METI. He has demonstrated expertise in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), and Venture Business Policy, Industrial Organisation, and Innovation Policy. Dr. Ishii earned his PhD from Waseda University, in 2012, after completing an MBA at Aoyama Gakuin, in 2000.
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Kenji Kushida, Research Scholar, Shorenstein APARC Japan Program (Moderator)
Kenji E. Kushida is a Japan Program Research Scholar 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. He received his MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.
Many observers, and many investors, believe that young people are especially likely to produce the most successful new firms. Integrating administrative data on firms, workers, and owners, we study startups systematically in the U.S. and find that successfull entrepreneurs are middle-aged, not young. The mean age at founding for the 1-in-1,000 fastest growing new ventures is 45.0. The findings are similar when considering high-technology sectors, entrepreneurial hubs, and successful firm exits. Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success. These findings strongly reject common hypotheses that emphasize youth as a key trait of successful entrepreneurs.
Speaker:
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Javier Miranda, Principal Economist, Economy-Wide Statistics Division, US Census Bureau
Bio:
Javier Miranda is Principal Economist at the U.S. Census Bureau where he began his career in 1998. Javier received his Ph.D. in Economics from American University in 2004. Previous to joining the Census Javier was a research consultant at the World Bank and the Urban Institute. Javier has published papers in the areas of industrial organization, technological change, job creation, entrepreneurship and firm financing. Among his publications are articles in the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Journal Macroeconomics, Review of Economic and Statistics, IMF Review, World Bank Economic Review, Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss, NBER Macroeconomics Annual, and multiple books and chapters. Javier received the Director's Award for Innovation (2007) and the U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Medal (2011). His contributions to data infrastructure are notable. Javier Miranda is responsible for the development of the Longitudinal Business Database and the Business Dynamics Statistics and is the Synthetic Longitudinal Business Database v3. Together with the USPTO Javier has led the development the Business Dynamics Statistics of Innovative Firms a longitudinal database of firms, patents, and inventors. Javier Miranda is also President of the Board of SEM an adult education and job readiness program designed to address the root causes of poverty, illiteracy, and violence in Washington DC.
Advisory on Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
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Javier Miranda, Principal Economist, Economy-Wide Statistics Division, US Census Bureau
Last fall, SPICE provided me an opportunity to design and organize its first post-collegiate online course. The Stanford-Hiroshima Collaborative Program on Entrepreneurship (SHCPE’s Japanese-friendly pronunciation, “shu-ppe”) was conducted in collaboration with the Hiroshima Business and Management School (HBMS) at the Prefectural University of Hiroshima (PUH). HBMS offers the only Master of Business Administration (MBA) program in Japan’s western region of Chugoku and Shikoku. Interacting with amazing individuals on both sides of the Pacific, this unique experience brought me priceless moments.
Innovation in Itself
SHCPE, a course to help nurture entrepreneurial thinking, was an innovation in itself. The program was born out of Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki’s vision to design and implement a social challenge to help accelerate Hiroshima’s regional growth. Harnessing the resources of Stanford and Silicon Valley, the new online class was launched to empower the students and to revitalize the business sector in Hiroshima. SPICE created the curricular content and HBMS provided the learning environment designed to maximize the academic experience for the students. As the course’s curriculum designer, I leveraged the expertise of my fellow SPICE online instructors and applied design thinking, a method developed by Stanford faculty, practiced widely in Silicon Valley, and popularized globally to understand the end-user, challenge our assumptions, and reconstruct alternative perspectives to generate innovative ideas.
Bridging Silicon Valley and Hiroshima
SHCPE’s 18 MBA students in Hiroshima met every Saturday morning for three hours from September 28 to November 16, 2019 to connect online with Japanese entrepreneurs, professionals, and scholars in Silicon Valley. The first virtual class focused on discussing the mindset expected for the course as well as the conceptual framework. In the following six weeks, we welcomed guest speakers who shared their diverse experiences. What were their prior experiences, expertise, and insights? What resources did they have to achieve their goals? What were the major promoters and impediments to their journeys? Through active exploration of these questions, the students were exposed to real-life case studies to analyze Silicon Valley’s ecosystem and think critically about entrepreneurial competence and qualification. The course was conducted entirely in Japanese.
The guest speakers engaged and energized the HBMS students. Akira Onozato spoke about the evolution of Silicon Valley over the past three decades. His diverse experiences as a serial entrepreneur painted a rich picture of the San Francisco Bay Area’s growth cycle. Akira’s story provided a great segue to Rika Nakazawa’s lecture on the mindset and culture surrounding startups. Rika highlighted grit, tolerance of failure, and branding as important assets of successful entrepreneurs. Dr. Fumiaki Ikeno spoke on the landscape and trends in the medical device industry. He pointed to Japan’s declining productivity and economic competitiveness and discussed the persistent fear of failure as a major impediment to promoting entrepreneurship. As an active venture capitalist on both sides of Pacific, Seiji Miyasaka explained the funding schemes and financial cycles surrounding the investment climate of startups. Using case studies, he highlighted the role of investors who act as coaches to aspiring entrepreneurs. Tatsuki Tomita’s definition of a startup was shaped by his own experiences of starting multiple companies. His discussion of the pivot pyramid provided a visual guideline for how startups can experiment with ideas and find their product-market fit. Tasha Yorozu shared her expertise as a legal counsel, walking through the steps of starting a business in Silicon Valley. Along with Jumpei Ishii, a visiting legal counsel from Japan, Tasha further discussed their observations of successful startup practices and common pitfalls. The diversity of SHCPE guests represented the vibrant Silicon Valley community.
Active Learning and Knowledge Construction
While these professionals provided informative accounts of their expertise, SHCPE’s ultimate goal was to help each HBMS student to develop a mindset of an active learner. The MBA students were constantly challenged to think critically about the weekly theme, and work in pairs or teams to discuss assigned topics. The experience offered a dynamic and interactive learning environment for the Japanese students in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who had been accustomed to traditional lecture-style formats. SHCPE’s curriculum based on design thinking adopted an inquiry-based learning pedagogy, which engaged every student through weekly assignments and in-class discussions. During the first class, the students were informed that SHCPE would not teach them entrepreneurship. Instead, this course would provide them with the opportunity to reconstruct their knowledge of entrepreneurship and innovation based on what they observe, hear, and feel during the class. In addition, the students were required to provide feedback after each class, which was utilized to redesign the lesson plans for the following week.
This active and experiential mindset was envisioned by Dr. Gary Mukai, Director of SPICE and a renowned Japan–U.S. educator. “At SPICE, we provide students an opportunity to own their learning experience. Education is about empowering the students,” Dr. Mukai asserts. This tradition comes from the American philosopher and education reformist John Dewey, who said, “I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing.” SHCPE’s inaugural curriculum aimed to implement this philosophy through direct, real-life interaction with founders and movers in Silicon Valley, and through the iterative process to deconstruct and reconstruct their knowledge on entrepreneurship.
Innovation Through Education
What SHCPE aimed to achieve was innovation through education. The weekly three-hour online class was roughly divided into three parts: guest lecture, class discussion, and interview. Prior to the interview session, a pre-assigned team of three students met with me in a separate online room and brainstormed their interview questions. For the majority of the students, it was their very first time to formally interview a person, and the experience brought a novel learning opportunity to think critically about entrepreneurial competence. Many commented on the challenge and the excitement of getting to know strangers by engaging them in a thoughtful conversation. The weekly interview highlighted the philosophy, aspiration, and raw sentiments of the guest speakers, evoking passion, energy, and empathy among the students.
SHCPE 2019 team with Ken-ichi Nakamura, President of the Prefectural University of Hiroshima
Through observations and discussions, the SHCPE participants built their own knowledge and understanding of what constitutes entrepreneurship. To conclude the eight-week course, I had the chance to visit Hiroshima to offer the last SHCPE class in person, and to observe first-hand their reaction to the curriculum design. Meeting the students as well as the HBMS faculty and staff who supported SHCPE, was an incredibly rewarding experience. My class focused on education and empowerment. The students discussed in teams how they might develop a curriculum to promote entrepreneurship in Hiroshima. Much to everyone’s delight, one of the students expressed his hope to apply what he learned in this course and serve as an angel investor to support local startups. The class culminated with a closing ceremony during which each student was presented an official Certificate of Completion. My trip to Hiroshima also provided a valuable opportunity to visit Governor Yuzaki as well as PUH President Ken-ichi Nakamura, who emphasized the importance of adding a real-life, global perspective to the HBMS curriculum. Programs such as SCHPE were made possible through these leaders’ foresight and support.
SHCPE strived to adopt the pedagogy of active learning and the toolsets of design thinking to implement Governor Yuzaki’s vision of “learning innovation.” The course appears to have succeeded in helping to realize his vision as one student reflected upon his experience:
This class does not intend to offer answers [to the question what entrepreneurship is]. Instead, it urges the students to constantly think on their own and engage themselves in learning. This is very different from the Japanese traditional pedagogy, which relies on rote memorization and mechanical process of practice problems. This class highlighted the fundamental difference in the philosophy of how we look at education, and I enjoyed this eye-opening experience.
SHCPE ’19 concluded with much enthusiasm. SPICE looks forward to continuing its partnership with HBMS to build upon the invaluable lessons learned from the inaugural program. With Stanford e-Hiroshima, an online course for high school students managed and taught by my colleague Rylan Sekiguchi, SPICE will continue its efforts to empower the people in Hiroshima.
Acknowledgement
I am greatly indebted to Dr. Gary Mukai for providing me this invaluable opportunity. Special thanks go to Carey Moncaster, Dr. HyoJung Jang, Jonas Edman, Meiko Kotani, Naomi Funahashi, Rylan Sekiguchi, Sabrina Ishimaru, Dr. Tanya Lee, and Waka Takahashi Brown for their valuable comments on the preliminary curriculum. I thank all of my colleagues at SPICE for their support and encouragement throughout the process.
My special gratitude goes to Akira Onozato, Dr. Fumiaki Ikeno, Jumpei Ishii, Rika Nakazawa, Seiji Miyasaka, Tatsuki Tomita, and Tasha Yorozu who took the time out of their busy Friday evening to participate in the virtual classroom. Their contagious enthusiasm energized the students.
Last but not least, I would like to express my deep appreciation to my collaborators at HBMS. I thank Professor Katsue Edo for his hard work and commitment to implement the program, Professor Yasuo Tsuchimoto for his technical expertise and dedication to administer the distance-learning, Professor Narumi Yoshikawa for supporting in-class discussions, and Kazue Hiura, Yoshihiko Oishi, and Kenji Okano for their capable assistance and thoughtful arrangements. Last but not least, my heartfelt congratulation goes to the 18 MBA students who successfully completed SHCPE ’19. The inaugural class will always have a special place in my heart.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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mingzeng@stanford.edu
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.
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
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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.
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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.
SHCPE 2019 team with Ken-ichi Nakamura, President of the Prefectural University of Hiroshima
