At Davos this past weekend, I facilitated a workshop entitled “Key to Competitiveness; Lessons from the Nordics”. It was the workshop (i.e. people discuss few assignments with several discussion leaders and report back), following the plenary panel the day before with the heads of states of the Nordic countries. Though it was the first session on Saturday, (by Saturday, quite a few participants already have left and it is rather difficult to attract many participants as many may have been out partying the night before!), we had some 50 people attend. Jennifer Blanke of the WEF introduced the Global Competitiveness Index and I spent considerable time going over the panel the day before, the Nordics Way prepared for the Annual Meeting !
We then went to hear the Global Economic Outlook session with panelists including Christina Lagarde and Robert Zoellick moderated by Martin Wolf of FT. Special address by Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan immediately followed the session. A CEO lunch followed at one of the hotels with the PM Kan as a special guest which Carlos Ghosn moderated and the ideaslab session with the Technology Pioneers was moderated by Richard Pascale
The last session I attended was the one organized for CNN and entitled “South to South Shift” and panelists included ministers of Kazakhstan, India and Indonesia, together with business people from Saudi Arabia. They touched on food shortage, poverty and the needs for Institutional arrangements in the emerging region.
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.
