My quest this year in Japan is to answer the question 'How is Japan approaching the problem of commercial creativity?'
Years ago I worked on the problem for the Japanese Foreign Office. I pointed out (with the prop of a Bell Labs phone book) that the U.S. had the world as its effective population because nearly every great creative genius felt welcome to come to the U.S. and many were invited to immigrate.
Japan couldn't have that so I suggested building research labs in Hawaii.
Japanese companies followed my advice and have many large research labs in Honolulu.
Japan also created....
Japan also created a 'science city' where foreign researchers could live and feel comfortable.
The problem today deals with the fact that American commercial creativity is one of the by-products of new corporations. Roughly half of the top 100 American corporations weren't there fifty years ago. Think everything from Google, EBay, big Pharma, WalMart and Starbucks to Intel.
The only new post war Japanese large companies are Honda, Sony and Kyocera. So where can commercial innovation come from?
So how are the Japanese, who think about these things, planning to do it?
Toyota is one model. Toyota created and virtually owns the world of hybrid autos. Japan is the leader in wind generator technology and solar, closely followed by Germany.What Japan does is select a long term potential market and focus technical energy and capital in that direction. (Remember the mistake of focusing on the third generation of computers?)
The market Japan has been focusing on has been the green market for twenty five years and it is now focusing more than ever. Japan wants light industry in that field and ...(I'll let my readers in on a secret) is planning to build an experimental new green city on their southern island.
Is it a good answer? It doesn't matter. The world still has the U.S. and Japan and a few other scattered homes of commercial genius to share with everyone.