The third day at Davos began with the facilitation of the community Japan breakfast at the hotel at the farthest end of Davos from the hotel I am staying. We tried to develop some action items to fill the gap between the facts about Japan and the perception, as well as the status of the globalization of the Japanese companies particularly in terms of the human capital development. We had so much discrepancy in understanding among the participants about the status that we could not develop action items.
I then walked with two young Japanese staff working for the WEF to the Congress Center to listen to Prime Minister David Cameron of the UK. It was the first time I heard him in person and I was struck by his youth, high energy level and the dedication to implement the tough reform. He conducted his own Q& A session, walking around and taking questions. I have never seen any head of the state do this, as most do Q & A with Prof. Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the WEF.
We also joined the members of the Talent Mobility group in the private meeting with the EC Commissioner for Employment to discuss our specific action items from the Group. We found the room for collaboration and sharing reports, ideas etc. and agreed that we would have another round of meeting for the follow-up.
In the afternoon, I attended the panel (which was open to media) entitled “Confronting New Realities: the Nordic Experience”. The heads of states from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland had a very interesting panel discussing how the Nordics were able to maintain high competitiveness ranking and to recover from the financial crisis quickly. I was struck not only by the content of their remarks (quite a few interesting policy and institutional ideas) but also by their witty comments, quickness in thinking on the spot and the sense of humor. It was very helpful as I was scheduled to facilitate the workshop Saturday morning to follow up this panel.
Later, I participated in the panel entitled “New Mobile Reality” with panelists from Google, News corporation, Vodafone and Fonkozo, Haiti. The positive tone of the panel pointing out that mobile empowers individuals and the enormous potential for mobile to resolve global issues such as poverty, education and health etc.was encouraging. Eric Schmidt’s comment ”With mobile, I am never alone.” was so true, I felt.
The last plenary was the panel entitled “Future of the Enterprise”. Panelists included Michael E. Porter who wrote a seminal paper entitled “Creating Shared Value”, Paul Bulcke, CEO of Nestle, Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico, among others. Indra Nooyi of Pepsico was very inspiring as her message is so clear and her story is always vivid. Panel was quite heated, showing the recent distrust of the business community by the public and the challenges to implement shared value creation. “Creating shared value”, and not “Sharing created value” by Paul Bulcke was good to distinguish the two and to indicate the meaning of shared value.
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.
