August 2011
1 post
“The corrosion of trust, at first aimed at faceless bureaucrats and lawmakers in...”
– Doubting Assurances, Japanese Find Radioactivity on Their Own - NYTimes.com
December 2010
1 post
Luc de Brabandere : "Le plaisir est le secret de...
http://www.lesechos.fr/management/carre-vip/300436159.htm
L. de Brabandère part 1: Créativité et innovation
envoyé par leblogdetom.
Pourquoi intituler votre ouvrage sur la créativité en entreprise (1), écrit avec Anne Mikolajczak, “le Plaisir des idées” ?
Tout au long des centaines de séminaires que nous avons animés, nous avons compris que le secret de la créativité...
November 2010
5 posts
The Japan syndrome →
The biggest lesson the country may yet teach the world is about the growth-sapping effects of ageing
Nov 18th 2010
IN 1979 Ezra Vogel, a Harvard academic, wrote a book entitled “Japan as Number One: Lessons for America” in which he portrayed Japan, with its strong economy and cohesive society, as the world’s most dynamic industrial nation. Three decades later, Japan holds lessons of a less ...
War Clouds Over Taiwan
Beijing’s expectations that Taiwanese will relinquish their separate identity will be disappointed.
By J. MICHAEL COLE
Two years into his term, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou seems to have transformed the dynamics of his country’s troublesome relationship with China. But this détente is only a temporary phenomenon. The risk of war in the Taiwan Strait is actually growing as...
Why can't Japan be more like South Korea?
Why can’t Japan be more like South Korea?
Countless commentators both here in Japan and abroad have deplored the insularity of Japanese society. They lament the paucity of Japanese venturing abroad to study, teach or work. Japan’s multinational corporations are regularly criticized for failing to internationalize their corporate management.
The implicit tone of much of this...
Looking back at 'Japan as No. 1'
Since the best-selling book “Japan as Number One” came out in 1979, the country has suffered through a diminished global presence and been beaten out in international business competition, according to experts who gathered to look back and evaluate the intervening decades.
Despite the downside, the experts agree the country retains positive aspects, including healthy and...
Japan still teaching the world
Japan still teaching the world By R Taggart Murphy The following remarks were prepared for the forum “Japan as Number One Revisited” held on October 27 at the Iwasaki Koyata Memorial Hall of the International House of Japan in Tokyo. The occasion was an 80th birthday celebration for Harvard Professor Emeritus...
October 2010
7 posts
Skype forms tie-up with Japan's KDDI - AFP →
Can Skype Revive KDDI's Fortunes in Japan? - Wall... →
Can Skype Revive KDDI's Fortunes in Japan? - Wall... →
SK Telecom to Spend 1 Trillion Won to Develop... →
Japan shifting from consumer to specialized... →
With Korea, Taiwan and China beefing up their tech efforts and gadgets to penetrate the region and world markets, Japan’s innovative streak may be deemed to be losing steam. But industry watchers argue otherwise, noting that the country is still ahead of the game in other different areas of the technology sphere.
Andrew Milroy, ICT director at Frost & Sullivan, noted that whether...
Japan, Taiwan chip deals unlikey to unseat S....
SEOUL (AP) — The global dominance of South Korean chipmakers is unlikely to be toppled anytime soon, even as Japanese and Taiwanese rivals consider forging stronger ties, a ratings agency said Monday.
The report by Moody’s Investors Services follows reports last week that Elpida Memory Inc., Japan’s biggest semiconductor maker, is mulling listing its shares on the Taiwan Stock...
Canon Looks Abroad for Growth, May Seek Deals...
By Matthew Campbell - Oct 12, 2010 Canon Inc., the world’s largest camera maker, may make acquisitions bigger than its $1 billion takeover of Oce NV as it starts a five-year plan to diversify into new countries and products. Deals larger than the acquisition of Dutch printer-maker Oce are “fine with me,” and could focus on printing, chemicals, or medical companies, Canon Chief Executive Officer...
February 2010
1 post
South-east Asia: A wider radius
South-east Asia: A wider radius
By Tim Johnston
Published: January 27 2010 22:55 |
When Laos won its bid to host last month’s South-East Asian Games, China offered to help the tiny nation by building a gleaming new venue on the outskirts of the capital Vientiane. The facility included a “natatorium” for swimming and a stadium for soccer. But for the Laotian government, such generosity...
January 2010
23 posts
Questions Grow on Japanese Manufacturing Quality
JANUARY 29, 2010
TOKYO—Toyota Motor Corp.’s massive recall comes at a time when Japanese manufacturers across the board, known for their attention to detail and craftsmanship, are facing a sharp spike in customer complaints, accident reports and product recalls at home.
The number of incidents rose dramatically after the introduction of a new law in 2007 requiring Japanese companies for...
Seeing Light Through the Gloom in Davos
Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010
Seeing Light Through the Gloom in Davos By Michael Elliott and Michael Schuman
In late January, the Graubunden, Switzerland’s most easterly canton, is not where you go to see signs of spring. In its high valleys, along whose paths armies trudged from the lowlands of Italy to the German heartland during the Thirty Years’ War, snow lies thick on the ground. Off...
Japan as Number Three
KOJIMA Akira, in Japan Echo Dec.2009
The recent global financial and economic crisis, which had its epicenter in the United States, saw China assume a central role in the coordination of global economic policy. To overcome this “once in a century” crisis, the first-ever summit of the Group of Twenty was convened last fall in Washington, bringing together the leaders of the Group of...
QFD and Kansei Engineering: Can they be...
Source : TheManufacturer.com Published : 24 Nov 2008 15:51
Following a question from one of our readers Rob Thompson explores the compatibility of QFD and Kansei Engineering…
In Japan, Kansei Engineering is often considered as an independent product development philosophy, which typically is carried out in concurrent engineering processes. However, since the methodology is...
“Can Kansei help new products?
Packaging Magazine
| April 10, 2003 |
NEW...”
– Article: Can Kansei help new products? | AccessMyLibrary - Promoting library advocacy
“Chunghwa Telecom and seven other telecos to build Asia Pacific submarine cable...”
– Chunghwa Telecom and seven other telecos to build Asia Pacific submarine cable system
“Japan to account for more than 50% of Asian LTE subscriber base by 2015, says...”
– Japan to account for more than 50% of Asian LTE subscriber base by 2015, says Informa Telecoms and Media
Design Consciousness, Kansei and the Tao part 4
Everything is constantly searching for balance within itself. The act of balancing is a process that attempts to restore harmony into every moment. Change creates imbalance in order to bring attention to those forces that effect us. The qualities of meaning (Kansei) and purpose (Chisei) nourish and support each other in our quest for harmony. This is a natural action that occurs between our...
Design Consciousness, Kansei and the Tao part 3
3. Results and Discussions There are five laws that govern design thinking. These laws are based upon the principle that reality should be described and perceived as a series of design (symbolic) events, situations and experiences we encounter both in our waking and sleeping states. The five laws that govern design thinking are: First, the fact that everything has two opposing aspects present in...
Design Consciousness, Kansei and the Tao part 2
2. Method Now is the time we need to re-examine our understanding and definition of the term “design”. The origin of the word stems from the Latin meaning “to mark or mark out”, which infers that design relates to the process of making signs and/or symbols. As we know, a design may also be described in the form of an artifact, which is the end result of a series of symbolic...
Japan’s Design Policy
Japan’s Design Policy
Since the 1950s, the Japanese government has recognized design’s potential as an economic engine. Legislators’ earliest efforts centered on encouraging originality amid the wave of copycat work that proliferated domes-tically after World War II. One such endeavor was the Good Design Award. Founded in 1957 to honor well-designed consumer goods, the program has since been...
Design Consciousness, Kansei and the Tao part 1
Kansei is an integral part of the phenomenon we’ve come to know and understand as design. Kansei is a term that attempts to describe a subjective event that remains open to interpretation, while simultaneously inferring certain qualities that are generally considered to be emotional in content. But for the most part, Kansei brings attention to only one aspect, or quality, of a multi-dimensional...
Will we bring back manufacturing or outsource...
Saturday, January 2, 2010 at 02:48PM
Innovation must be located near manufacturing because so much of innovation is learning from and improving manufacturing, according to GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt on this CNBC forum, The Future of “Made in the USA.” Others who understand the innovation process have made the same point. I think I first heard it about 30 years ago from Donald Firth after...
"Kao-Ya" Innovation and Chinese VAS Market –...
“Kao-Ya”, as they say it in Chinese, or “Peking Duck”, is a beautiful and delicious dish, a roasted duck with especially tender and crispy skin. The legends trace its history to the Qing Dynasty in China. To prepare “Kao-Ya” you need a full duck with its head attached. Then, if you are strong enough, you need to inflate it through a straw (that’s how they did it centuries ago) or use a pump to...
Challenging Mindsets: From Reverse Innovation to...
Views on innovation in developing economies are evolving rapidly, yet they still do not capture the full significance of what is going on. Executives in the West are still prisoners of a mindset that equates innovation with technology and product innovation. This blinds them to significant alternative forms of innovation that can profoundly disrupt their businesses in the years ahead.
Early view...
Asia and the elements of innovation
By Eric Drexler 6 August 2009
Asia has strengths that promise to make it a leading center of technological innovation in the 21st century. These strengths are substantial, fundamental, and durable. At their base lie aspects of culture, on both a civilizational and generational time scale. Human capital and the capacity for mobilization build on these cultural advantages.
The term “Asia” is of...
Vision 2020
For the first issue of the new decade, Nature asked a selection of leading researchers and policy-makers where their fields will be ten years from now. We invited them to identify the key questions their disciplines face, the major roadblocks and the pressing next steps.
Contributions include: Peter Norvig on search, David A. Relman on the microbiome, David B. Goldstein on personalized medicine,...
A Superfluous Touch
Denis Dutton is a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and author of “The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution.”
While preparing attractive bento box lunches is an honorable and inventive craft, the traveling lunch box is not unique to Japan.
Lisa Poole/Associated Press Hopalong Cassidy lunch box.
Take a look at the history of the lunch...
Beauty in Fast Food
Nick Currie, a.k.a., Momus, has recorded 20 albums, written about culture for various publications and participated in The Whitney Biennial. He is the author of “The Book of Scotlands” and “The Book of Jokes,” both published this year. He lives in Berlin.
As a Scot who’s lived in the U.S., Europe and Japan, I’m convinced that Japan is far ahead when it comes to the aesthetics of everyday life. Of...
Doing More With Less
John Maeda is the president of the Rhode Island School of Design and author of “The Laws of Simplicity.”
I would say that Japanese culture is particularly attuned to the appreciation of beauty because it springs from an island nation with limited natural resources. Japan has always had to get by with less wood, metal, fuel and so on, so its culture has evolved around how to make less into...
Kenya Hara On Japanese Aesthetics
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
What makes Japanese design so special? Basically, it’s a matter of simplicity; a particular notion of simplicity, different from what simplicity means in the West. So are things in general better designed in Japan? Well, actually, it’s not that simple…
The New York Times asked us to get them in touch with Kenya Hara, creative director of MUJI and professor at the...
How Japanese Culture influences their Designs
I stumbled over a really interesting interview of Kenya Hara by Oliver Reichenstein from iA or information architects. This interview was part of a New York Times feature on a new fad in the US, making Japanese Bento boxes. Kenya explains that Japanese culture has a craftsman inspired sense of aesthetic that is so focused that they miss the impact of the bigger picture.
The craftman’s spirit, I...
Made in Japan - The culture behind the brand
Historically, in a simpler time before the jet age, Japan was geographically isolated, surrounded by treacherous seas and formidable fault lines. Mountains cover three-quarters of Japan. Earthquakes and challenging terrain are constant reminders of nature’s strength and have contributed to the importance Japanese people place on having a dependable, manageable social system. Japanese people value...
December 2009
3 posts
Why the Shift of Economic Gravity to Asia Is Not a...
By Wendy Dobson | Wednesday, October 21, 2009
While China’s and India’s sheer size and ability to maintain economic momentum seem to only strengthen predictions of the United States’ decline, such zero-sum thinking is not credible, argues Wendy Dobson. Analyzing the significant domestic challenges the Asian giants must confront, she explains why the gravity...
Designomics
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on December 13
Here is the speech I gave at the Design Korea 2009 International Conference from December 3-4 in Incheon. There were some great talks by Continuum’s co-founder Gianfranco Zaccai, SeymourPowell’s Nick Talbot, Frog’s President, Doreen Lorenzo, Core77’s Stu Constantine and others. The Mayor of Incheon, Ang-soo AHN, showed us his plans for a 20-million person...
Unification of Asia: Collection of Voices
Chun Go-eun [1] Yoon Yo-tam [2] Friday, December 11th, 2009 [3]
Dr. Kim Hak-su, chairman of the Asia Economic Community (AEC) Foundation and Former ESCAP Executive Secretary
Asia takes up 40% of the world’s land area, and 60% of the world’s total population. Although...
November 2009
2 posts
Technology’s Galapagos: Mobile in Japan →
William Gibson is known mainly for science fiction work, but these days he is more often referenced as the man who wrote the line “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. When it comes to mobile marketing, the future clearly is here in Japan. The future is also found in Korea, but unlike Japan’s mobile market, it has two levels to its mobile business; the first is very advanced and...
Jim Rogers Vs Nouriel Roubini, Can The Commodities...
Investing 2009 Nov 06, 2009 - 09:46 AM
By: Andrew_McKillop
Battle Of The Titans - The debate is now open. Commodities, like equities have enjoyed fantastic and fantastically volatile price growth since around March 2009, growing about 60%, like equities, to date. The global ‘real economy’ trails far behind, with perhaps 2% or 3% growth in the same period, and much less inside the...
October 2009
3 posts
China's Economy: Behind All the Hype
October 22, 2009, 5:00PM EST
espite an impressive rebound, an innovation shortfall may hobble sustainable growth
By Dexter Roberts and Pete Engardio
At the parade marking the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, tanks and missiles trundled past the Forbidden City and down Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue. Battalions of soldiers goose-stepped in perfect unison. Overhead,...
Two daunting challenges for Asia's economy
Thu, 10/08/2009 - 12:50pm
By Clyde Prestowitz
In his new book, The Next Asia, Stephen Roach demonstrates yet again why he is the best economic analyst out there, not only on Asia but on the structure and underlying dynamics of the globalization that is revolutionizing our world and dramatically shifting the balance of international power.
The Next Asia, a collection of Roach’s columns...
The Next Asia
Review by David Pilling
Published: October 11 2009 18:38 | Last updated: October 11 2009 18:38
The Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalisation By Stephen Roach Wiley $39.95 (£26.99)
Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley’s perennial bear, had long predicted a terrible reckoning for a supercharged US economy, hopped up on private consumption and propped up by...
September 2009
1 post
Why Asia Wins
Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, says Minxin Pei underestimates the significance of Asia’s growth in “Think Again: Asia’s Rise.” Economic Strategy Institute President Clyde Prestowitz suggests authoritarian leadership helped drive the region’s success.
AUGUST 24, 2009
While I have great...
August 2009
3 posts
Asia’s Place in 21st Century Global Governance...
By Jean-Pierre Lehmann | Monday, August 03, 2009
With so many economic and political differences, is it possible that the interests of Asia’s major players can ever coincide? In the second of a two-part series, Jean-Pierre Lehmann describes possible scenarios for the future of the international system.
South Korea, India, Indonesia and China — as is the case for the rest of the continent —...
Asia’s Place in 21st Century Global Governance...
With ever greater economic power, how will Asian countries influence international politics? In the first of a two-part series, Jean-Pierre Lehmann describes the importance of the diverging cultural and political scenarios in major Asian players such as India, China, South Korea and Indonesia.
he global center of economic gravity has been moving steadily towards Asia for the last three...
When China Rules the World
The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World by Martin Jacques London, Allen Lane, 2009.
“When you’re alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go: downtown.” So warbled the British singer, Petula Clark in the 1960s. However, today if solitude is your constant companion, I would suggest that you purchase a copy of this riveting book and read it on the bus and in...