The first day of Davos began in deep snow. My day began with meeting with WEF staff to prepare for private dinner tonight on Talent Mobility for Economic Growth. We plan to explain our report on Good Practices which just came out & discuss how to make the best of our activities. We are very excited about the report & also the launch of the repository of Good Practices which is available & accessible for everybody.
I hope we will have good discussion to move forward so that we can make an impact on the important topic of Employment & Growth, which is one of sub themes of Annual Meeting 2012.
The official opening will start in the evening, but there have been many interesting sessions held. I went to the session on “Europe beyond crisis” & also the session on the “Role of CEO in the future enterprise”. Comparison of business & political leaders was very interesting, as I heard comments such as that they can learn from each other, political leaders are trying outdated model of CEO, Chinese political leaders have done very well learning from business leaders,etc.
Yoko Ishikura is a Professor at Hitotsubashi University ICS in the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy in Japan. She has held positions as a professor at the School of International Politics, Economics and Business of Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, as a consultant at McKinsey and Company Inc. Japan and a visiting professor at Darden School.
Professor Ishikura is a consultant to a number of multinational companies and has been a frequent speaker at management conferences, seminars, and workshops throughout the world. She was a member of the Regulatory Reform Committee for the Japanese government and the International Competitiveness Commission for METI. She is currently a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum.
She is the author of Strategic Shift from OR choices to AND paradigm, Building Core Skills of Organization , and the co-author of the following publications: Managing Diversity in the 21st Century, Strategy for Cluster Initiatives in Japan , and Building a Career to the World Class Professionals – all in Japanese. Her books in English include: Asian Advantage, Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management and Trust and Antitrust in Asian Business Alliances.
Professor Ishikura’s current research interests are focused on global competition, innovation, and knowledge management. She received her BA from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan; MBA from Darden School, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia; and DBA from Harvard Business School.