How Japan Can Get Her Innovation Mojo Back – Sorato Ijichi

Japan was once home to some of the most innovative companies on the planet, but those companies lost their innovate edge a long time ago. Today, many are betting on startups to change the course of the Japanese economy and to some extent, that’s already starting to happen. Ijichi Sorato of Creww, however, is betting on a different approach to win out, that of Open Innovation. The future Ijichi envisions, involves not large, old companies being pushed aside and replaced by newer, more innovative firms, but that of innovative smaller firms being co-opted and absorbed into larger firms, either via M&A or via exclusive partnerships and supply chain integration. We talk a lot about the challenges large Japanese companies face in working with startups and why hackathons rarely produce value for either sponsor or participant in Japan, and the one thing that needs to change before Japanese enterprises can work conformable with startups. It’s a great discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it.