Innovators Network
Program Highlights
Improvisation, Creativity, Collaboration: Fueling Innovation in the 21st Century
March 28, 2008
Replicating the May 24th event for a Pittsburgh crowd at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, this event looked at jazz and "right brain" qualities like empathy, playfulness, improvisation and collaboration. Innovators Network participants Marty Ashby, Daniel H. Pink, Hiroshi Tasaka and Alan Webber, along with musician Anthony Brown discussed a wide range of topics including music, joy and creative problem-solving, necessary for innovation in the 21st century.
Changemakers: Make the Impossible Possible
February 27, 2008
Keying off his new book, Make the Impossible Possible (January 2008, Currency/Doubleday), Bill Strickland shared his inspirational story from growing up in a Pittsburgh ghetto to running a nationally-recognized organization that successfully balances social action, artistic creativity and entrepreneurial acumen. Nana Watanabe, an award-winning photographer and author of Changemakers II: Working as a Social Entrepreneur (in Japanese), which includes Mr. Strickland, presided. For a summary of the event, please read Changemakers: Make the Impossible Possible (PDF).
For Profit, For Good: Integrating Social Value into the Bottom Line
February 6, 2008
The U.S.-Japan Innovators Network and Nikkei co-sponsored this symposium to explore next-generation business models that more effectively blend social value into the bottom line as well as the need for nonprofits and social entrepreneurs to adopt the best practices of business to maximize their impact. Held at Nikkei Hall of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun Head Office in Tokyo, things were kicked off with a keynote address by Martin Coles, Chief Operating Officer, Starbucks Corporation & President, Starbucks Coffee International, and included Mari Hayashi, Darren Huston, Jacqueline Novogratz, Hiroshi Tasaka and Keith Yamashita. For a summary of the event, please read the English version (PDF), by Katherine Hyde, or the Japanese version (PDF), Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
Invigorating Communities, Designing for Inclusion
November, 2007Kyoto, a city of 1.5 million people and Japan’s traditional seat of culture, faces challenges familiar to many American cities. At the top of the list are the revival of downtown commercial districts and the inclusion of economically depressed “outsider” groups. So it was natural that Japan Society’s U.S.-Japan Innovators Network should hold a two-day retreat in Kyoto, bringing together architects, urban planners, and leaders in culture and civil society from the United States and Japan. For more details, please read Invigorating Communities, Designing for Inclusion (PDF).
The U.S.-Japan Innovators Project Becomes the U.S.-Japan Innovators Network
June, 2007What’s in a name? Although the name has changed slightly, our mission remains the same: Connect people and ideas to create a better world.
Improvisation, Creativity, Collaboration: Fueling Innovation in the 21st Century
May 24, 2007This event explored the importance of jazz and "right brain" qualities like empathy, improvisation and playfulness in collaboration and innovation in the 21st century. Participants Marty Ashby, Daniel H. Pink, Hiroshi Tasaka and moderator Alan Webber covered topics ranging from jazz in the boardroom to Japanese manga. For more details about the symposium please read this summary by Katherine Hyde. Improvisation, Creativity, Collaboration: Fueling Innovation in the 21st Century (PDF).
Affecting Change Through Social Innovation: Design, Scalability, and Financing
January 23, 2007This international symposium held at Keio University followed (IN)SIGHT: Bridging Gaps and focusing on new directions in social innovation in Japan and the United States. Last September, Keio University and the Japan Society signed a comprehensive partnership agreement and this symposium was the first jointly held event to commemorate the Japan Society’s 100th anniversary in 2007 and Keio University’s 150th anniversary in 2008. Prominent social entrepreneurs from both Japan and the United States delivered fascinating lectures in each of the three sessions: Design, Scaling Out and Social Finance.
More detailed information about the symposium (English).
More detailed information about the symposium (Japanese).
(IN)SIGHT: Bridging Gaps
January 19-21, 2007Intent on finding innovative ways to solve multiple issues affecting society the retreat participants discovered that retreats just like this one were filling a crucial unmet need for them: Japan Society provided a place for people to reach out of their insulated world, make unique connections and exchange and disseminate innovative ideas that really improve the overall quality of life all over the world. By bringing different innovators together around specific topics The U.S.-Japan Innovators Project challenges people to step outside their own world and reframe problems in order to come up with new, exciting solutions. More detailed information about the retreat (PDF).
(IN)SPIRE: Connecting Communities
June 14-16, 2007This was the first in a series of retreats that involved American and Japanese innovators from a range of disciplines. (IN)SPIRE was designed to explore problem-solving and areas of potential U.S.-Japan collaboration. The theme of the retreat, (IN)SPIRE: Connecting Communities, reflects the unprecedented challenges communities in the 21st century face and the need for problem-solvers to collaborate across borders and across categories of expertise. How well a community innovates and connects with other networks is crucial to how successfully it will adapt and evolve. A publication on the retreat, On Innovation and Community: A U.S.-Japan Dialogue, was produced in cooperation with Stone Yamashita Partners. More detailed information about the retreat (PDF).
Small Spaces + Big Imagination = Life in the Modern City
June 12, 2006On the evening of June 12, Japan Society hosted an Innovators Series panel discussion entitled Small Spaces + Big Imagination = Life in the Modern City. The panel featured Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, founder of the Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow, and Limbon, Professor of Urban Planning at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. More detailed information about the panel discussion (PDF).
Japanese Innovators Visit New York City
June 12, 2006 On the morning of June 12, 2006, a group of seven Japanese Innovators came to Japan Society in New York City to kick off a two-day program of site visits to three of New York’s most exciting development projects. The site visits varied in terms of scope, visibility, budget, emotional resonance, and degree of completion; however all three were important ongoing projects with valuable lessons on preserving, protecting, and promoting community in a modern city. More detailed information about the two-day program (PDF).
Japan Society Welcomes Japanese Innovators
October – November, 2005In October and November of 2005, the Innovators Project network widened to include six Japanese innovators from a wide range of backgrounds and interest areas. All six were individuals that the Americans had connected with in the spring.
Yoshito Hori, Chairman & CEO of GLOBIS Corporation, met with enterprising businesspeople in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, to discuss how venture capitalists in Japan and the U.S. might learn from each other. Hiroshi Tasaka, President of SophiaBank, a cutting-edge Japanese think-tank, traversed both coasts discussing innovative social entrepreneurship with his American counterparts.
Cultural philosopher and professor Hiroki Azuma met with writers and philosophers to discuss the ebb and flow of a national pop culture. On the creative side, Dai Sato, anime screenwriter and Executive Director of Frognation, met with writers and production executives in the television and film industry to discuss exporting and marketing content to foreign audiences.
On the civil society front, Yasushi Aoyama, former Vice Governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, sat down with urban planners and housing organizations on issues of social inclusion and providing support for minorities and the homeless. Tomoko Fujisaki, former Director of Health and Development Services (HANDS) focused on ways to strengthen the Japanese NPO/NGO sector in terms of its programs, finances, and public relations.
U.S.-Japan Innovators Project Sends First Participants to Japan
April – May 2005Three teams of two American researchers, including three former Japan Society Fellows, traveled to Japan to meet a broad range of innovators, including those established in their fields of expertise, and those who are newly emerging.
The business innovation team, Alan Webber, Founding Editor of Fast Company magazine, and Keith Yamashita, founder and principal of Stone Yamashita, focused on identifying the people in Japan who are creating new ideas, technologies and practices likely to spur the next wave of global business innovation.
The cultural innovation team, Douglas McGray, freelance journalist and author of "Japan's Gross National Cool" (PDF) and Dominic Molon, Pamela Alper Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, met with artists, architects, anime directors, musicians, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, scientists and others who are on the cutting-edge of defining contemporary culture in Japan.
On the social innovation team, Rosanne Haggerty, founder & president of Common Ground Community, and Michael Reich, Taro Takemi Professor of International Health at Harvard University, focused engaging individuals from business, the arts, the nonprofit world and elsewhere, who are advancing and implementing new ideas on how to address a wide range of social and humanitarian problems.