Haegwan Kim (HK); This interview is a Q&A with Dr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, who is a professor at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. Let’s talk about global issues which you may be familiar with. In the 21st Century what is required for young people to ‘survive’ in this globalized world?
Kiyoshi Kurokawa (KK); That’s a very good question. Perhaps we are very much aware of that the major issues have been pretty much global. A word ‘Global’ has replaced over ‘international’ in the past decade or so. What that means is at the end of the 20th century, when the Cold War ended and world-wide web was introduced, the paradigm shift began. Most of the entity was based on national rather than ‘global’ until then. Even corporations had a national identity. Financial institutions also had a national identity, and taxation as well. But the Internet came along in 1992, the financial institutions become fairly global. Because of the Internet, all the money moves and business transactions then follow, everything became global.
Governing bodies are also fairly multinationals. They couldn’t care less about where the headquarters may be. Certain countries have a certain legacy. Let’s say General Motors and Samsung, Toyota, they have headquarters in their own country because they are a part on national icons. But today many corporate headquarters could move around, often following social infrastructure, government regulations, tax incentives, and other factors. It’s a planning process to do business. Now new emerging major business entities, energy, water, food, and many other driving forces of economy.
Another issue is that many universities began to become global because when a leading university want to be a leading university they want to attract many bright kids from all over the world. That makes a value of university, because institutions become a likely place for future global leaders to emerge. Further, the world judge universities by what kind of education and what kind of graduates you produce to the world. University ranking has become a very popular.
Very important thing particularly for the young people, is that through this process of studying together, even maybe a year or two, you get many friends, or ‘connecting dots’ in the future, and I believe that is a very important element of the meaning of higher education. Because you begin to see and feel by spending sometime abroad, what the challenges of the future career may be, let’s say climate change, environment, technology and what kinds of new social values you could create – I define this ‘Innovation’, often with your ‘connecting dots’. To do that you have to know what kinds of demands are existing in particular locale and region. But if you live throughout your young life in one country, eg, Japan, Korea and study subjects of your interest, you really don’t see what kinds of demands there may be, for example, in India, Mongolia, China or America, because that your endeavor may often require some intuition rather than theory and practice
HK; To communicate with people from other countries, language is quite important thing. Many people say English is the universal language, also many say Chinese will be lingua franca. What is your opinion?
KK; Well everybody think English is a global language, but I think this is absolutely wrong because even in the United States, only a fraction of people speak ‘English’. Many are Spanish speaking, for example. If you talk to many people like this interview, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Singaporean, they speak English but you can tell where they’re from. So it’s not English. The common language is ‘broken English’.
HK; I can see your point.
KK: So like broken English, the most important thing is you speak and then you become better. You don’t need to imitate the British English . It’s not English, broken English.
HK; Ok, we talked about the young. What about old people? what they should do? Can they understand the young people?
KK; Well I think even 40 or 50 years ago I think all the younger generation always revolted to the old establishment, right? But somehow I don’t see that much revolting spirit now particularly in affluent countries.
HK; You mean the young is now powerless?
KK; No, not powerless, but they are not revolting with the frustration. All paradigms of industrial countries since the industrial revolution has been more like vertical integrations. So if we come here and just manufacture and finance in the global market, that’s fairly hierarchical. The young became frustrated, but now actually the world has become ‘flat’. For example, Silicon Valley which has a very unique history with a legacy such as Hewlett Packard and all other companies, with unique ecosystem. This ecosystem fit to nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs encouraging taking risks. Many people and policy makers in the world talk about ‘let’s make Silicon Valley’ but it does not work. Because Silicon Valley has a unique legacy and ecosystem filled with entrepreneurship. When you want to try to start new thing, people in Silicon Valle say, “Yeah just do it, fine.” You fail, that’s fine. If you don’t fail nobody trusts you. That is a culture of entrepreneurs and innovation.
HK; As we are witnessing today, the rise of Asia is remarkable. Not only China, India and Japan, but Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, and so on so forth. Can I ask your perspective on the future of Asia for the coming decade?
KK; But here, there is another dimension, going abroad would give you a lot of perspective in global issues. Today whatever you do the issue is global. Like climate change, for example it is not only matter of China and India. CO2 emission in China and India is growing fast, and their population counts for 40% of the entire population. But their leaders are not stupid and have been really tried to reduce CO2 emissions as their GDP grows. They are trying to build more efficient infrastructure, as much as they can. No question about that. I think the dynamism of this world order is really shifting to the East. The reason relates in part economic growth with opportunity for investment and creation of wealth.
HK; Talking about the currency, as European people made the Euro, there was a plan Chiang Mai Initiative to create the common currency in Asia. Can I ask your opinion whether there is a possibility that the Asian currency will be made?
KK; I think it takes a long time because of diverse background of the nations of the region, and also in part, recent history in 20th century of Japan in Asia. Actually European and America managed better through the 20th century despite their Imperial dominance in Asia-Pacific. USA had Spanish War in 1898 and took Cuba and the Philippines, colonies of Spain. America used to be an inward-looking country through the19th century. They didn’t want to get involved with world affairs. But since they got Philippines, they played role in the Pacific. They captured Hawaii. That’s the history of imperialism.
Japan was fortunate that it had to fight and won the war with Russia in 1905. That time Russia also tried to come to Pacific. After 1905, Japan went to Korea and China to fight. But that was a bad judgment. I think they were very ecstatic by winning Russia. But what Japan made as its next step was wrong. Japan lost the war in 1945, and 2010 is the 100th anniversary of the Japanese occupation of Korea. I will give a keynote lecture on August 14th in a meeting in the Seoul National University. That’s why I describe some of the historical perspective of this region, and I think Japan has to make more effort to the reconciliation process with China and Korea. The stabilization of the Korean Peninsula and North Eastern Asia is one of the critical, vital importance for the stability of the Asia Pacific and the world, in addition to the economic growth of Asia.
I personally think Japan has to make continuous effort for the reconciliation process with a mutually beneficial manners. I have been always saying this because the world has become global, the economic growth engine is shifting more to the Asia. Also Japan has to become more open for the future generation to become partners of global world. To this end, higher education like university is a very good place to encourage exchange programs for students; more and more Japanese universities should be open and accept more Asian students. That is very important to nurture more and more connected individuals across the region. Germany and France had fought at the end of the 19th century, and World War One, World War Two. Thus, unless they make some reconciliation proves, creation of European Union could not be possible. Among many programs for this efforts, France and Germany began, in 1963, a new exchange program, in which young students of the two countries study its counterpart in a wide variety of disciplines. The number of the exchange students who went through this program exceed now six million over 40 years. That means there is little reason to fight each other. This was possible because of a long term vision of the leaders of the two countries for the future of their nations and the creation of European Union. Particularly in this ever-flattening global world, I think that university is a great place to encourage exchange students, even one year or two years. One example is the Erasmus Program of the European Union.
HK; To think about higher education, tuition fee is quite controversial.
KK; Oh tuition, yes.. If you do bi-lateral agreement, each student pay tuition in your university of country, thus in the exchange program, their tuition will be waived. Living expenses could be an issue, but there must be a variety of ways to handle this matter.
HK; But unlike exchange programmes, let’say, the Ivy League in the United States have a huge tuition fee for students. UK universities have also expensive fees for international students. What do you think about these issues? Do we better to make a reasonable price to get into university?
KK; Let’s consider why their tuition fee is high.
HK; Because their quality is good?
KK; The quality here (UK) is high, that means they are willing to pay for the quality, Thus values students get could be come more significant. That is the reason. But to make that quality of university education, it takes time, that’s a part of history to build such legacy. For instance Cambridge is now in the 801st year of its establishment. Thus, 800 years of tradition and legacy. Harvard is about 380 years. It was a small school and Harvard became the premier university around the beginning of the 20th century under President Eliot.
HK; How about other Asian universities at the moment?
KK; What do you think?
HK; I’m just wondering how Chinese or Taiwanese universities are going to do. Their growth is absolutely remarkable.
KK; Many universities there are good. The University of Tokyo is pretty good internationally and there are a number of Korean universities, In particular, KAIST of Korea has transformed rapidly to the world premier research institution especially in the field of science, technology and engineering. I believe one weakness of the University of Tokyo, my alma matar, is the fact their student body are just Japanese so are most of the faculty. In some graduate studies many foreign students come. Nonetheless, if we look for the future, the role of ‘leading’ university has changed to become a place to nurture future global leaders. I am saying the world is changing and becoming global and inter-connected and many university leadership now focuses more on implementing various programs and projects encouraging undergraduate students to experience studies and work abroad to see and feel the wide world. The processes are at undergraduate, that is to provide opportunities in the four years for students to find out what each wants to do. Many of my colleagues are really encouraging students to spend some time to go abroad. Maybe at least two months or so. There are many programs of this nature. The students tend to see and find what they want to do, for example, in Africa or somewhere not in your own country, but in the whole world. Such experiences will also give students to see themselves and also their own identity and country.
HK; That’s one of ways to change the world.
KK; Yes, exactly. You are exposed to different things and then you decide what kind of expertise you need to achieve your goal. In this further inter-connected world with many global challenges.
HK; Let’s talk about innovation. Can I ask at first what is innovation about?
KK; Whenever people talk about ‘innovation’, I think everybody has a bit different thing in their mind. To many Japanese, innovation seems to be technological invention and improvement. But I would say it is wrong. I think innovation, in my definition, is creation of new social values. That means not only technological invention, but social reform, deregulation so that your deliver some new values to the society. Sometimes you have to nurture the people who think and behave ‘out-of-the-box’, because it is pretty much comfortable for most people to stay in the status quo, particularly when people are not in that much terrible living condition. But there are always those who have an internal drive and passion to make something happen for the common good, and then I think that is ‘entrepreneurship’.
HK; So to be innovative, we don’t have to dare to make a production?
KK; That’s good, let’s look at why innovation becomes such a ‘buzz-word’ more recently, particularly in the last decade or so. ‘Innovation’ was a word generated since Professor Schumpeter rose the controversy. He says it’s a new combination, a new combination of available technologies, a better system, often provides is a new and different value, which often is associated economic gain. Often when you begin to see things differently, you may begin to notice different combinations to make something new and of value.
But compared to the 19th and 20th century, in this century things become global and more and more inter-connected and challenges are global and beyond national borders. That is the reason innovation became more and more needed and ‘open’ and ‘demand-driven’. Because throughout the 19th and 20th century since industrial revolution, the economic growth engine has been, in principle, manufacturing based on mass production of standardized and quality products with consumerism.
It is not going to work any more with a rapid increase in human population and connectedness; in three words as Thomas Friedman indicated in his book ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’, thus, massive increases in demands for energy, foods, water, natural resources, more population in big cities, and many other new emerging risks, which are an essence of global issues. Now we need to create something unimaginable to overcome such global challenges. It may not necessarily be a patent of something. It’s not necessarily an economic value, but locally relevant social values, but eventually some will lead to economic value.
I’ll give you a few examples. One is the Internet. The Internet has made our world more and more connected. Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web, at that time he was a physicist. Everybody was using computers, different files and documents. But they didn’t know what your friend at the next desk was doing, so they started working on exchanging their data in the lab This resulted eventually to the World Wide Web and they are using it in the lab. With improvements incorporating various technologies, the system started to connect each computers and spread out to the world. This was implemented into service in 1991. The system has began to change the world and many new businesses and services began popping up. In 1994, Amazon, eBay and Yahoo appeared. Many new businesses appeared, and many failed. But these new businesses utilized new networking infrastructure connecting computers. With this connected world people can reach out many people fast. You can impact upon the world much faster before.
Another example is Google. Two guys were graduate students at Stanford took a leave in 1998 and founded their company Google. This was a new adventure for them and Google has been growing upward. Now many many people in the world use Google. It’s now a very big business. So only two people and this new entity became really big in less than 10 years.
HK; Can you tell me how human beings can be creative to make the destruction?
KK; We better consider Apple. Have you heard the speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford commencement of 2005? He could not go to college because he was very poor, but he made four big things. In 1970s, IBM was dominant for the computing machine, even Bill Gates thought that a small lap top computer could be in every household (now almost everyone has one as a smart phone). But Steve Jobs just created the table top computer and delivered as commercial products in early 80s. That changed the access to computers because then everybody started buying the table top computer. Now everybody has two or three. But, 30 years ago even Bill Gates might not have imagined that could happen.
But Steve Jobs was fired from Apple due to differences in the opinion of direction with board members of Apple. But after Apple started to lose its power, it bought companies Jobs founded, NeXT and Pixar. He became a CEO of Apple again. Apple was really ready to go bankrupt and he delivered iMac, a table top computer with completely different concept; a beautiful design and handle on the top. When you open the package, everybody just intuitively picks it up. Once they pick it up, there appear a mouse and a keyboard. Thus, with little instruction, one can just follow intuition and start the machine. That was his style. That’s the great thing about Steve Jobs. Then he revitalized; he started ITunes which changed destructively the recording business, then iPod, then iPhone which was destructive innovation in telecommunication. Now iPad, which could become destructive innovation in the printing thing.
One guy did so many things. You may say there are three Apple which changed our way of life; one is Adam’s apple, second is Newton’s apple, and third is Apple of Steve Jobs.
HK; Interesting.
KK; Now innovation. It is as I said creation of new social value of the world, filled with many, many global and shared challenges such as climate crisis, further increasing human population, environmental destruction, demands for natural resources, food and water, poverty and many conflicts based on various factors. We must realize the facts that values of your knowledge and proper technologies can do so much. For example people in remote village of Africa. Have you thought about that? Unless you have friends and you lived there at least a month or so, you may not know and feel what kind of things they need and what kind of things you can do to help develop possible solutions. Often then ever, distinction could be an asset. I am sure you have your own unique value. You have grown up in Japan, you have Korean background and now studying in the UK. You can see many things differently compared with many Japanese, Korean and British. That means you have your own uniqueness. That will become your asset. So now I think you have to think about utilizing your uniqueness and you have to find out what you really want to do in this ever ‘flattening’ world. Do you know what you want to do?
HK; Make the world a better place.
KK; How is it important to you? What do you wish to do?
HK; To change the world, as we discussed when we talked about innovation, I think we don’t have to make a production. I’m very impressed by President Barack Obama saying that, when he tried to tackle with the health care service, it’s not a reform of health care, it’s a reform of common sense. I agree with this; we can change our common sense, especially in the 21st century we can share our ideas, we can share our knowledge, we can share our information. That’s what I’m going to try to do. Fortunately, I have really trustworthy friends around the world, they push my back forward.
As a final question, can you give me your advice to be successful in general?
KK; You have to have a fulfilling life in your own value and judgments, not necessarily the values set by others. That means you have a certain sense of mission, of vision you want to do and be happy.
Haegwan Kim is a writer who was born in Osaka, Japan in 1989 and grew up near Tokyo where went to a Korean school for 12 years.
