Urgent Proposals for Japan's"Innovation 25 Strategic Council"

黒川　清
内閣特別顧問・前日本学術会議会長

KIYOSHI　KUROKAWA
The Cabinet's Special Adviser, Former President of the Science Council of Japan

学術の風
「イノベーション25」初会議と「dndi.jp」
http://www.doctrina-md.com/kiyoshi_kurokawa/columns/0110/top.html#pagetop

The 1st Meeting of the Innovation 25 Strategic Council and dndi.jp

The 1st meeting of the Innovation 25 Strategic Council was held at the Prime Minister's Official Residence in the evening of Oct. 26th. With Prime Minister Abe present, Minister Sanae Takaichi convened the meeting, which I chaired. Those present were distinguished members such as Katsuhiko Eguchi (Head of PHP Research Institute), Tadashi Okamura (Vice President, Japan Federation of Economic Organizations), Ichiro Kanazawa (President, Science Council of Japan), Takeshi Sakamura (Professor, Tokyo University Graduate School), Chiyono Terada (Vice President, Kansai Economic Federation), Taizo Yakushiji (Member, Council for Science and Technology Policy).

'Innovation' now appears to be a prevailing global trend. Last September, Japan's Science Council held an international conference on innovation, which proved to be quite helpful in drawing up the policy plans for the present Innovation 25. (Please refer to the 2006/09/10 column on Global Innovation Ecosystem.)

In Japan, innovation is taken to mean 'technological innovation' in most cases. However, as in the Prime Minister's reply to the Diet, innovation is "about a social system" that constantly spurs major reforms; that is, about creating a "society wherein those of challenging spirit and pillars of people, money and goods that foster and support them will emerge one after another." Newspapers such as Nihon Keizai Shimbun have been printing opinions of experts to publicize that innovation means more than just technological innovation.

For more comments on this topic, please visit:<http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/thetreasureship/4461156.html>

The internet has also spread swiftly in the past 10 to 15 years. www in 1992; Netscape in 1994; search engines such as Yahoo! and Lycos, Windows95 in 1995; Linux, Google, etc.; but hardly any Japanese were involved in their development. They obviously require a different mind-set from that of manufacturing. (Please refer to The Web Evolution introduced in the 2006/08/14 column.)

They are outcomes of not only Technological Innovation but also Product Innovation, Process Innovation, Service Innovation, Finance Innovation, etc. An innovation not in manufacturing of goods, but one that results from one's high aspirations as in the example of Mr. Ogura's 'Kuroneko Yamato delivery service' in Japan. What is demanded here is a process inducing economic growth that, on the one hand, pries open the sphere of influence for the vested interests, while on the other, provides the goods and services that people domestic and abroad crave for by catering to their conscious and unconscious needs.

'Innovation,' 'innovate' means "(from with)in-novate (become new)." It is a concept put forth by Shumpeter in 1938 that implies "no economic growth without 'creative destruction'."

By the way, this site is a new attempt to link the <KiyoshiKurokawa.com> site with that of “Digital New Deal” <http://dndi.jp/> which Mr. Deguchi is sponsoring. His DND Newsletter introduced in <http://blog.goo.ne.jp/rikkyo_chohki/e/bf3b7ea4e21c3d4670ef1e2d8eccfe81> cites many of my assertions such as “The Oh-zumo (Big Sumo)-nization of Universities,” “A Global-track Career…,” etc. Please take a look at his DND Newsletters.