Japan is facing a double whammy: shrinking population and massive labor shortages. For some experts, the solution is simple: unleash the power of women.
Tonight on the BBC’s World Service, Jon Bithrey, host of Business Matters aired my report from Japan and we discussed the enormous challenges the country faces.
Prime Minister Abe’s government has been taking baby steps in Womenomics with some success, but in the longer term, what more needs done to change deeply entrenched cultural norms? In August, Japan’s government passed legislation mandating that Japanese companies with over 300 employees disclose their diversity statistics and goals in 2016. The Prime Minister’s ambitious target is for 30% of leadership positions in business and government to be filled by women by 2020.
What is Womenomics and why could it become a template for other Asian countries? I went to Tokyo to investigate for the BBC World Service…
Alison van Diggelen: I’m here in Tokyo to explore the promise of Womenomics, Prime Minister Abe’s plan to increase the country’s GDP by up to 15% by tapping its most underutilized resource. That is: Japanese women.
What exactly is Womenomics?
The term was coined by Kathy Matsui in a Goldman Sachs report outlining the economic potential of closing the gender gap. Japan faces a time bomb of a rapidly shrinking and ageing population; and a low female labor participation rate (although it has increased recently, many female workers work only part-time). This year, Prime Minister Abe, perhaps in desperation, is rebooting Womenomics and has set a 30% leadership goal for women in business and government.
[Atmos: Tokyo Metro announcements, doors closing, and passenger hubbub]
My first stop was the Gender Equality Bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I asked Rui Matsukawa who’s Director of the Gender Mainstreaming Division: what’s the promise of Womenomics?
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Rui Matsukawa: Womenomics’ essence is unleashing the talents of women in quality and quantity and make that help for the prosperous future of Japan. If Japan can change, that’ll be good prospects for the other countries. My conviction is: Japan will change is a very constructive way…where each individual is given the opportunity to fully express his or her own potential.
She points out that diversity is a great source of innovation.
And that’s one of Japan’s biggest challenges today.
Womenomics policy faces an uphill struggle: Japan’s cultural norms, and its male-centered, long and inflexible working hours.
I met with Elizabeth Handover, a Brit who’s lived in Japan for decades. She’s cofounder of the Women’s Leadership Development Center, in Tokyo.
Elizabeth Handover: Japan is struggling right now…some companies are still stuck in a Victorian hierarchy era…It’s that hierarchy that women get trapped in…
Alison van Diggelen: How do you think the PM’s goals will help?
Elizabeth Handover: One thing that’s really powerful in Japan is that companies don’t like to be “shamed and blamed”, so when the appalling statistics come out about how many female managers they’ve got, I think that’ll be a big influence for them to make changes.
I caught up with the former Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten and he shared a global perspective.
[Atmos: breakfast meeting audio]
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Chris Patten: I think it’s a very good idea that a PM should be so determined to increase the number of women in leadership positions. It’s not just a problem in Japan… I think it’s a big issue everywhere.
van Diggelen: What do you think is the PM’s greatest challenge? Do you think it’s a societal cultural shift that needs to happen?
Patten: Some of the changes that he has to cope with are common to other societies as well, but plainly, the main issue in Japan – as elsewhere – is the attitude of men.
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Yumiko Murakami is Head of the Tokyo Center of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. She cites Akira Matsumoto, the CEO of Calbee, a Japanese snack company, as being a male champion of diversity. She’s hopeful that the mandated release of diversity stats will spur change.
Yumiko Marakami: Japanese society is very a homogeneous society…there is a very strong cultural pressure to follow the herd.
Murakami is concerned about shrinking population and is convinced that Japan’s policy will have global implications.
Yumiko Murakami: Japan is facing this humongous time bomb – companies don’t have enough people to hire, it’s really hurting the bottom line. China is going to face the same future…Korea is exactly the same thing. If we succeed in Japan today, maximizing the talent pool, other countries they are going to get good practice policy lessons.
But some female executives in Japan feel more could be done: like addressing the childcare shortage and changing the existing tax laws, which discourage married women working full time.
[Atmos: Tokyo Metro announcements, doors closing, hubbub]
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Before leaving Tokyo, I took the Metro to meet with Aya Usui, a senior consultant at Lumina Learning, a leadership training business. She’s expecting her third child and commutes 4 hours a day.
Alison van Diggelen: Are you encouraged by PM Abe’s commitment to Womenomics?
Aya Usui: To tell the truth…not really…
Alison van Diggelen: What would you like to see him do?
Aya Usui: I’d ask him to invest more money and time to develop female leadership because many females have a lot of talent and a lot of potential, but they’re not used enough…they’re killing their possibility…If we can achieve full potential it’s really a wonderful world this world becomes…
That’s the promise of Womenomics: a wonderful world where everyone achieves their full potential. The world will be watching in 2016 to see if Prime Minister Abe’s shaming and blaming will work.
June 24 marked the 13th annual SDForum Visionary Awards, a celebration of the innovators and chutzpah that make Silicon Valley unique. Although the four visionaries come from diverse backgrounds, Silicon Valley was the common theme for the evening. The visionaries gave a revealing glimpse into the Silicon Valley State of Mind. What exactly is Silicon Valley? What’s its role in the world?
This week, we look at Reid Hoffman’s viewpoint. He’s co-founder of LinkedIn and a renowned innovator in Silicon Valley. He had some strong words to say about the power of entrepreneurship and its ability to jumpstart the economy.
Jeff Weinerof LinkedIn introduced Reid Hoffman as someone with a brilliant strategic mind and ability to invent the future. As well as being Executive Chairman of LinkedIn, Hoffman is also a partner with venture capitalists, Graylock Partners. Pointing to his colleague’s multidisciplinary background (Hoffman studied symbolic systems and philosophy at Stanford and Oxford respectively), Weiner concluded that education provided the building blocks to create an outstanding public thinker and social networking pioneer. Weiner reminded the audience that Hoffman understood the ability of technology to inform and connect people, inspiring him to launch Socialnet (a precursor to LinkedIn) before Facebook and MySpace existed.
Hoffman walked to the podium with some reluctance, saying that listening to the introduction made him “want to run and hide”; yet he started his speech off by grounding us in time and place.
“It’s an enormous privilege to be at this center fulcrum of how we change the world, that we call Silicon Valley,” he said, and posed the powerful question, “What more should we do with that?”
Talking like a true Silicon Valley techie, he suggested not two “answers,” but two “vectors” to his question. And, the visionary he is, Hoffman thinks BIG. First, he recommended leveraging entrepreneurship as a powerful way to get the world economy back on track. Drawing from author, Tom Friedman’s thesis, Hoffman said,
“We live in a world that is increasingly flat and increasingly accelerating. When you have challenges like economic turbulence and uncertainty… entrepreneurship is a really good pattern…we need to make it more available globally.”
Provoking wry laughter from the crowd, he pointed out that there is no entrepreneurs’ lobby in Washington DC, and implied there should be one to encourage entrepreneurship as part of the stimulus package, both here in the U.S. and around the world.
His second “vector” or call to action was: how can we take business models to the non-profit sector? Drawing from his work at Kiva.org and Endeavor.org, he suggested hybrid models of self-sustaining nonprofits that can help spread entrepreneurship and create high impact change.
“I love to play at the heart of what we do best in Silicon Valley,” said Hoffman. “To take risks, develop technologies and use financing and inspire entrepreneurship to create a lever by which we move the world.”
As delegates gather in Copenhagen this week to thrash out a global treaty on climate change, the shrill from skeptics intensifies. It’s useful to listen to wisdom from Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman. In a recent interview, I asked Paul the question on many lips: Will climate legislation kill the economy?
“If history is any guide… it’s just not a big deal,” says Krugman, citing the example of acid rain legislationwhich many people also said would kill the economy. “Dealing with it was cheaper than most estimates had suggested,” he says. “Given the incentives; the private sector found ways to generate a whole lot less acid rain.”
Krugman thinks the same will be true of carbon limits and has already explained his preference for cap and trade in a previous Fresh Dialogues segment.
We also discuss the power of his New York Timescolumn and his influence on the Obama Administration. “We’re speaking across the transom…when I argue with them in my column this is a serious discussion…people in the administration do call me…it’s no longer this sort of Cold War as it was during the Bush years.”
And how does he view his role? “I’m trying to make this progressive moment in American history a success,” says Krugman.
But why not take a position within the administration to be more effective?
“I’m never going to be an insider type. You have to do bureaucratic maneuvering, be pretty good at being polite… reasonably organized…,” says the Pulitzer prize- winning columnist. “I’m none of those things. I can move into a pristine office and within three days it will look like a grenade went off.”
This exclusive interview with Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman was recorded in Silicon Valley. Dr. Krugman was in town to deliver a lecture as part of the Foothill College Celebrity Forum Series. This segment is titled: Will Climate Legislation Kill the Economy? Click here for video
Alison van Diggelen: Paul thank you very much for joining me today on Fresh Dialogues.
Paul Krugman: OK. Good to be doing this.
Alison: Now some people are saying, climate legislation is going to kill the economy. What do you say to that Paul?
Paul: Well, a lot of people have done serious work in trying to figure this out. Now, to some extent it will be unknown territory: we don’t know what happens when you set the price of carbon significantly higher than it is now, but the economy has got a lot of flexibility. We have precedent. We had the problem of acid rain and we introduced a cap and trade system – SO2 permits – and a lot of people said it was going to kill the economy…terrible stuff. In fact it turned out that dealing with it was cheaper than most estimates had suggested before hand. Given the incentives, the private sector found ways to generate a whole lot less acid rain.
So current estimates are that if we did something like the legislation that the House has already passed, that ten years from now it would be maybe one third of a percentage point off GDP. And 40 years from now, when the constraints would be much stiffer, it would be something like 2% off GDP, relative to what it would otherwise have been. So if you think about what it would do to the growth rate, it’s minimal. We don ‘t know if these numbers are right, but if history is any guide, they’re probably too pessimistic. It’s just not a big deal.
Alison: Let’s talk about your column, Paul… Now you didn’t pull any punches with the Bush administration. You talked last night about the Bush White House being evil and stupid. What is your characterization of the Obama White House?
Paul: Oh, they’re good guys and they’re smart but just not as forceful as I’d like. It’s a world of difference. When I argue with them in my column this is a serious discussion. We really are in effect speaking across the transom here…
Alison: Is it really a dialogue, are you hearing back from them?
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Paul: Ben Bernanke doesn’t call me up but is aware of what I’m writing… people in the administration do call me. I’m never going to be an insider type but at this point I do have genuine contact with both the White House and with congressional leadership. It’s no longer this sort of Cold War as it was during the Bush Years.
Alison: Some people describe your writing as having a missionary zeal. Where does that come from Paul. Can you trace that back?
Paul: Oh. Gosh…I have to say that during the Bush Years, if you didn’t feel passionate that we had to change things, there was something wrong with you…
Alison: You didn’t have a pulse?
Paul: Right. So..before that, I was in fact a pretty cool…uh…
Alison: A cool dude…?
Paul: A pretty cool technocratic sort of writer. I had some fun but I wasn’t crusading. So that is what changed it. And now, I’m trying to make this progressive moment in American history a success. So that’s where I’m pushing.
Alison: So you feel the missionary zeal is gone now, or is it just redirected?
Paul: It’s not the same. There was the sheer.. OMG what a horrible thing…we need to alert people as to what’s going on…I’m still trying to get stuff to happen…it’s less doom laden maybe than it was in the Bush years. But stuff has to happen….I’m still pretty passionate about the column.
Alison: And do you feel you’re more effective as a columnist than inside the government?
Paul: Oh yeah! That’s a personal….you have to know who you are…know what you’re good at. I’m not a…being an effective government official, you have to do bureaucratic maneuvering, be pretty good at being polite at the appropriate moment… you have to be reasonably organized…I’m none of those things.
Alison: An honest man.
Paul: I can move into a pristine office and within three days it will look like a grenade went off.
Alison: [laughter]
Paul: You really don’t want me doing that sort of thing.
Alison: Right. Paul Krugman, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.
Paul: Thank you so much.
For more exclusive interviews with leaders, such as Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd and Charlie Roseclick here
If we need any more evidence that clean tech is hot in Silicon Valley, this is it. Last Wednesday, I attended a lecture on Clean Tech Entrepreneurshipby Andres Wydlerat Stanford University. Originally planned for 20 to 30 students, the class was heavily oversubscribed and extended to 80 students. As of this writing, there are still 30 on the waiting list.
The class was packed with energetic people and ideas: a woman from National Geographic, just back from the Antarctic who’d witnessed the scale of the ice melting; a “green” executive from WallMart; entrepreneurs working in the solar, wind, and batteries sectors, and at least one VC. According to Andres’s questionnaire, two key factors are motivating attendees: making a living and making a difference. Several attendees are “between jobs” so the down economy is providing opportunities for some efficient reallocation of capital and labor.
Andres, founder of smartgrid company, BPL Global, wants to equip cleantech entrepreneurs with the tools they need to leverage their skills and ideas; and is bullish about Silicon Valley’s role in the world of clean tech. Admitting that the U.S. currently lags the rest of the world, he anticipates that we will be in the forefront of clean tech in certain sectors within the next 3-5 years.
“When Silicon Valley puts its mind to something, it’s a fantastic environment to pursue a cause,” he says.
The regulatory enviroment is moving in the right direction
Encumbant energy companies are motivated to change
FDR’s motivation: “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” (heard again by President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel most recently )
VC fundingfor clean tech is at record levels. Although 2008 Q4 showed a marked reduction in VC funding, Andres points out that it’s still attractive and alternative clean tech funding sources are available
Coming Soon: After his last class in February, I will interview Andres at length to find out what hot clean tech entrepreneurs he discovered, and get an overview of his conclusions and predictions for clean tech in Silicon Valley.
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