The Illusion of Democracy: How Morocco's Absolute Monarchy Managed the Arab Spring
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Ahmed Benchemsi is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. His focus is on the democratic grassroots movement that recently burgeoned in Morocco, as in Tunisia and Egypt. Ahmed researches how and under what circumstances a handful of young Facebook activists managed to infuse democratic spirit which eventually inspired hundreds of thousands, leading them to hit the streets in massive protests. He investigates whether this actual trend will pave the way for genuine democratic reform or for the traditional political system's reconfiguration around a new balance of powers - or both.
Before joining Stanford, Ahmed was the publisher and editor of Morocco's two best-selling newsweeklies TelQuel (French) and Nishan (Arabic), which he founded in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Covering politics, business, society and the arts, Ahmed's magazines were repeatedly cited by major media such as CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and more, as strong advocates of democracy and secularism in the Middle East and North Africa.
Ahmed received awards from the European Union and Lebanon's Samir Kassir Foundation, notably for his work on the "Cult of personality" surrounding Morocco's King. He also published op-eds in Le Monde and Newsweek where he completed fellowships.
Ahmed received his M.Phil in Political Science in 1998 from Paris' Institut d'Etudes Politiques (aka "Sciences Po"), his M.A in Development Economics in 1995 from La Sorbonne, and his B.A in Finance in 1994 from Paris VIII University.
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Ahmed Benchemsi
Visiting Scholar Program on Arab Reform and Democracy
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CDDRL
Seminars
9/11 and the makers of history
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After 9/11, the administration of US President George W Bush initiated the era of the global war on terror. For many, this was a misguided response to terror attacks. But before the decade was over, US forces invaded two countries and are now fighting shadow wars in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, while an air war continues in Libya. Pentagon commands cover the entire planet, and US military assistance programmes are active in almost every country.
Wars reorder politics and values. They remake that which is taken to be true and right. They render the world unrecognisable from what it was when the balloon went up. That is why epochs of world history are so often marked off by the dates of wars. How should we understand the era of 9/11? In what historical timeline does it belong?
It is useful to begin by recalling some of what seemed true on September 10, 2001. The US enjoyed the unquestioned global supremacy of the "unipolar moment". The "end of history" beckoned, in which liberal democracy and free markets promised peace and prosperity everywhere for all time. The West and its international organisations managed the world, ultimately for the general good. Globalisation was bringing people closer together.
Today, each of these verities lies broken. The failure to understand the 1990s and the significance of the end of the Cold War has left us unable to understand what has been happening in the decade since 9/11.
Renewed global military commitments have hastened an inevitable US decline. The unrestrained power of finance capital is wrecking economies and societies across the Western world. Europe lies prostrate, bereft of anything approaching serious leadership, mired in the divisive politics of austerity and racist, anti-immigrant populism. The great international institutions have sat on the sidelines of the crises roiling the world. The communications technologies that were supposed to lead to mutual understanding instead assist revolts and terrorism, rioters and financial speculators, when they are not being used by states to spy on their own citizens, or by corporations to increase the number of consumer products people desire.
How is it that the received wisdom about the nature of world politics was so badly wrong? What did we fail to see and why?
The great conceit that blinds us is the idea that the powerful make history just as they please. We are particularly prone to this error when thinking about international politics. Assisted by opinion columnists and think tank gurus, we tend to view the world from the perspective of decision makers in the great powers. What should the West do about Libya? How should the US respond to state failure in Yemen or the Iranian bomb? What should the G-20 do about the debt crisis?
'Like cowboys at the rodeo'
In the domestic politics of our own countries, it is easy for us to see that politicians are like cowboys at the rodeo: hanging on for dear life before a force of nature tramples them underfoot. The "bull" that throws them could be a long-simmering social crisis, a downturn of the business cycle, or some series of events over which no one exercises control. The skill of the politician determines how long they can hang on, but we are left in little doubt as to where the real power lies.
We are forced to confront the underlying social structures, historical legacies, and economic relations that determine our fates. Human agency, too, has its say, but it is not only that of the great leaders that matter. Ordinary people and the social and political movements they create can drive events and force the "policymakers" to respond. But fate usually works against human purposes. Rarely do either the powerful or those who resist them achieve quite what they intended.
A wonderful example of the impoverished vocabulary with which we think about international politics is the idea that "Reagan won the Cold War". The vast apparatus that is a modern state is reduced to its leader - "Thatcher", "Gorbachev". Agency, the power to shape events, rests firmly in the hands of this leader, who is located in the global North. A range of violent struggles, fought almost entirely in the global South, are subsumed under one term which denies there was even a war at all. Most of all, a tidy end - 1989 - is imagined in which, needless to say, the good guys won.
Epoch-defining dates like 1989 or 9/11 invoke various imagined histories and geographies. But too often the dates with which we order world politics are curiously Eurocentric. It is European exploration, the French revolution, a Congress in Vienna, and German invasions, for example, which mark out the globe's historical eras: 1492, 1789, 1815, 1914, 1939.
We are thus singularly unable to grasp the global histories and social relations that delivered us to 9/11. Within the conventional terms of analysis of international relations, it is almost impossible to see the great social, political and economic struggles between the global North and South that have driven modern world politics. European imperialism and the prodigious efforts to incorporate ever more peoples and places, ever more domains of life, into the capitalist world system lie at the origins of these global histories.
It is crucial to underscore that imperialism, capitalism and the modern world they together did not simply emanate from Europe. They were joint productions with the non-European world, albeit amid unequal power relations. Imperialism requires collaborators, while capital needs labour. The first factories were not built in England, but in the Caribbean, producing sugar with African slaves.
The World Wars gutted European imperial power and unleashed struggles for independence across the global South, led almost everywhere by the anti-imperialist left. For over forty years revolutionaries and insurgents, death squads and soldiers, carried on a deadly combat.
The fall of the left
The global significance of 1989, broadly speaking, was the defeat in both the North and the South of the political left, of those political movements that sought to replace, contain, or redirect the expansive energies of capital in accordance with humane values.
During the Cold War, Western powers had to maintain social welfare systems at home lest communism begin to look attractive. The Soviets, meanwhile, tried and failed to demonstrate that they too could produce washing machines, refrigerators and other consumer items. With the collapse of the USSR, neoliberalism was unleashed and could begin in earnest to do away with welfare states in the West. "Shock therapy" was delivered to the former Soviet bloc countries, while the debt crisis was used to control many economies in the global South. No longer did the West have to secure Third World allies with lavish aid.
The defeat of the left produced two outcomes which have defined the last twenty years and will continue to make history over the next twenty.
The end of the Cold War did not mean the end of the dire social consequences of unrestrained capitalism. The grievances, the injustices, the poverty, the anger, the continued reduction of everything human to the bottom line, to something that can be bought or sold, all this remained, even intensified. But now it was not the left that would make political lemonade out of these lemons, but the right; not communists, but religious fundamentalists, both Christian and Islamic. This is where the Tea Party belongs, feeding on the misdirected resentments of those devastated by unregulated capitalism.
The second outcome of 1989 is a dramatic increase in the political power of capital. Across the Western world, but most especially in the US, politicians are in hock to Big Money, while corporate media fundamentally shapes political debate.
Blinkered worldview
The problem with this, as Karl Marx would have told us, is that while capitalists know what is in the interest of their specific business, they are unable to cooperate for the good of the system as a whole. To maintain a capitalist society of a kind anyone would want to live in requires tremendous public investment and infrastructure; a neutral, professional and active civil service; and a strong framework of effective, lawful regulation.
Few capitalists want to pay taxes for all this, or subject their industries to significant regulation. Give capitalists as a class too much political power, and they will enfeeble government with their special interests, lobbyists, and kept politicians. The consequence is the drama currently on display: the self-destruction of the West and its economies. It is plainly obvious that Western societies are in dire need of modernisation, investment, and strategies for growth and employment. But the political forces that might fight for these have long since been vanquished. Anguished experts like Paul Krugman are left accurately to foretell a doom that the political systems of the West willfully do nothing to avoid.
It is this self-inflicted crisis that drives the timing of the scale-down of the global war on terror currently underway. After all, nation-building at home or abroad requires taxes. Rather than occupying countries in a "forward strategy for freedom", as Bush termed the invasion of Iraq, the war on terror will transform into the police, spy and special operations war Western liberals had originally called for in 2001.
Unifying the eras of the Cold War, the 1990s, and the decade following 9/11, are reinvigorated efforts to control the politics, economies and populations of the global South in the wake of the collapse of formal empire in 1945. Wars of tremendous folly and human cost have marked this entire period, in Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Mozambique, and across Central and Latin America, among others. Bush's travesties in Iraq and Afghanistan will likely bring this series to an historical close. The tentative approach to Libya is a transition to a future of reduced Western ambition in the global South.
The retreat of the West from extensive and effective political and military efforts to control the global South - a history which began in the 16th century - rings the death knell of Western world power. The decade since 9/11 is the penultimate chapter in this history.
Tarak Barkawi is a senior lecturer in War Studies at the Centre of International Studies in the University of Cambridge. He also authored the book Globalization and War (Rowman and Littlefield). He has held fellowships at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University; the Department of War Studies, King’s College London; the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University; and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Ohio State University.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
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Kavita Ramdas joins CDDRL's new program on social entrepreneurship
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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University announced today that Kavita N. Ramdas will assume the position of executive director of the newly launched Program on Social Entrepreneurship. Ramdas is widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of global development, gender justice, and philanthropy working for over 20 years to advance the rights of marginalized and excluded communities worldwide.
As President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women from 1996 to 2010, Ramdas led the largest public grant-making organization in the world supporting women's human rights in over 170 countries. During her tenure at the Global Fund for Women, Ramdas more than tripled the Fund's assets allowing grant-making to increase 12 percent annually, and expanded the Fund's portfolio of investees threefold. Harnessing her exceptional skills and networks to lead this new program, Ramdas will bring social entrepreneurs, academics, and students together at Stanford to advance research and accelerate social change.
"Kavita Ramdas is one of the world's most respected international development practitioners, social justice advocates, and thinkers in the emerging field of social entrepreneurship," said CDDRL deputy director and co-investigator for this project, Kathryn Stoner. "At Stanford, Kavita recognized the need to bring a practitioner's perspective into the classroom and infuse our research agenda with a first-hand account of the challenges confronting the developing world. The Program on Social Entrepreneurship will bring global practitioners to Stanford to engage our students, faculty, and researchers in more active exchange and connection to the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century."
The Program on Social Entrepreneurship will be housed at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where interdisciplinary research is conducted by leading faculty, scholars, and students. Deborah L. Rhode the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and director of the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession at the Stanford Law School will serve jointly with Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, as a faculty principle investigator to the program.
"We are thrilled that Kavita Ramdas is joining the ranks at CDDRL to advance our research on global under-development, poverty reduction, and economic growth," said CDDRL Director Larry Diamond. "She will bring to the Center a wealth of practical experience and a passionate commitment to supporting grassroots initiatives and leaders who are pioneering new approaches to intractable problems worldwide, all of which will be a wonderful asset to our center and students, the Freeman Spogli Institute, and to Stanford."
The Program on Social Entrepreneurship will join four other core research programs at CDDRL, which probe the most urgent issues in the field of democracy and development today, including; information and communication technology's impact on political development, how human rights can best be deployed to advance social justice, the state of poverty and governance in Latin America, and the prospects for democratic reform in the Arab world. Working in partnership with other institutes on campus, the program will benefit from the guidance and active engagement of a cross-disciplinary faculty advisory committee at the Haas Center for Public Service, the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford Law School, Stanford Medical School, and the Center for Social Innovation at the Graduate School of Business.
The hallmark of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship is an eight-week "entrepreneur in residence" initiative that will bring four rising leaders to Stanford twice a year to expose researchers, students, and the local philanthropic community to the ideas, visions, and strategies they are using to transform their societies. These social entrepreneurs drawn from the U.S. and abroad will have the opportunity to reflect on their work, engage the scholarly community to advance research on this emerging field, and galvanize international support for their innovative work. Visiting entrepreneurs will be featured in seminars, courses, and special events across the larger university and the Silicon Valley during their residency at Stanford to reach as broad an audience as possible.
During the 2010-11 academic year, Ramdas was in residence at Stanford University as a visiting scholar and fellow at CDDRL and the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. During that time she co-taught a course at the School of Education examining the aspects of gender, education, and development. In spring 2011, she served as practitioner-in-residence at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Prior to her time at the Global Fund for Women, Ramdas developed and implemented grant-making programs to combat poverty and inequality in inner cities across the United States and to advance women’s reproductive health on a global scale as a program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Ramdas's extensive experience in the fields of global development, human rights, women's leadership, and philanthropy extend to her array of prestigious affiliations and awards. At present, she serves on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University and Mount Holyoke College, both of which are her alma maters. Ramdas's leadership skills were recognized early in her tenure at the Global Fund for Women when she was selected to the prestigious Henry Crown Fellowship at the Aspen Institute.
Her accomplishments in the nonprofit field have led her to serve as an advisor and board member to a number of leading foundations and organizations, including; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Advisory Council of the University of Chicago’s Global Health Initiative, the Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Advisory Council of the Asian University for Women, PAX World Management, and the Council of Advisors on Gender Equity of the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. She has just been invited by the United States Department of State to chair their new initiative on Women and Public Service, an effort spearheaded by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Melanne Verveer. Ramdas also chairs the Expert Working Group of the Council of Global Leaders for Reproductive Health, an initiative of the Aspen Institute led by Mary Robinson former President of Ireland. Ramdas continues to provide strategic oversight and guidance to the Global Fund for Women in her capacity as a member of the Global Fund’s Council of Advisors.
Ramdas received academic training from Delhi University, a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations from Mount Holyoke College, and a master's degree in public affairs with a focus on international economic development from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
"I look forward to launching this new program and joining the dynamic community at CDDRL and Stanford University," said incoming executive director of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship, Kavita Ramdas. "There is so much potential to catalyze the energy and expertise of the practitioner community and enhance the research of faculty and everyday learning experience of the student. I am confident that together we will transform ripples into waves of long-term transformational change across the developing world through this program."
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Re-examining the State of Japanese Entrepreneurship
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Event Overview:
In the US, entrepreneurship is the engine that drives economic growth. Especially in Silicon Valley, people understand how this engine works: how entrepreneurs behave, how they view risk, where they get their funding, how their successes are rewarded, and what happens when their ventures fail. What about their Japanese counterparts? The conventional wisdom in the US is that Japanese entrepreneurship is not only different from the American variety but is also less vibrant, less well-funded, more risk-averse, and generally a less important "engine" for overall economic growth. Is this conventional wisdom generally correct? Or are the perceived shortcomings of the Japanese entrepreneurial system (for example, the vastly lower venture capital investment figures routinely quoted) just that -- "perceived" rather than real? What business and cultural factors could explain such misperceptions, and what are the implications for cross-border entrepreneurial opportunities? Join our panelists, Robert Eberhart, Kenji Kushida, and Lisa Katayama, as they discuss the myths, reality and promise of Japanese entrepreneurship and its impact on the overall Japanese economy.
Keizai Society’s theme for the remainder of 2011 is “Recovery and Renewal – Toward a New Japan of Compassion and Growth.” Going forward, all 2011 programs of Keizai Society will be dedicated to building awareness of the crisis in Japan and sustaining Japan’s recovery efforts. Also proceeds from these programs shall be donated to Keizai’s Japan Relief Fund. Please come and find out what the real impact of the disaster is and where we go from here to recover, renew and grow again.
Panelist Bio:
Mr. Robert Eberhart is a researcher at Stanford’s Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship where he leads the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship. His research focuses on comparative corporate governance of growth companies with special emphasis on Japan and the role of Japanese institutions in fostering entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Academy of Management, the International Society for New Institutional Economics, on the board of advisors to Japan’s Global Entrepreneurship Week, and an advisor to Japan’s Board of Director’s Training Institute. He serves as an academic advisor to the American Chamber of Commerce’s Task Force on New Growth Strategies and is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer in various programs at Stanford and Japan. Mr. Eberhart received a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Michigan after undergraduate studies in Finance at Michigan State University. He is a doctoral candidate in Stanford’s department of Management Science and Engineering.
Dr. Kenji Kushida is a research associate at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. He is also an affiliated researcher with the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE) at the University of California Berkeley. He completed his PhD in Political Science at the University of California Berkeley, and holds Masters and Bachelors Degrees from Stanford University in East Asian Studies and Economics. Dr. Kushida’s ongoing research interests are focused on politics, institutions, and markets, mainly in Japan, Korea, and the United States. His publications include analyses of how Information Technologies are transforming services activities, understanding the emerging Cloud Computing markets, and the political economies of broadband and mobile in Japan and South Korea. He recently completed a study on entrepreneurship in Japan’s ICT sector, and plays an active role in facilitating exchange between Japanese startups and Silicon Valley. He has also authored two books in Japanese: “Baikaruchaa to nihonjin [Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities]” and “International school nyumon [International Schools, an Introduction]”.
Ms. Lisa Katayama is a San Francisco-based journalist who writes about Japanese culture, technology, and entrepreneurship for Wired, Popular Science, Fast Company, and The New York Times Magazine. She is also the founder of The Tofu Project, a highly curated boutique program that will bring 10 of the most successful, innovative young entrepreneurs from Japan to SF for a 7-day design and out of the box thinking crash course at the end of October.
She is also a producer for PRI's Studio360 radio show, the author of a book called Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan, and a correspondent for Boing Boing, one of Time Magazine's five most essential blogs of 2010, and has spoken about Japanese web culture to the BBC, CNN, ABC, Martha Stewart Radio, and at venues like O'Reilly's ETech conference and the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. Her personal web site, TokyoMango, was a runner up for the Weblog Awards in 2009. She has a BA in International Relations and French from Tufts University and a MA in Human Rights from Columbia University. When she's not working, she rock climbs, does triathlons, and plays the ukulele to her two dogs.
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Robert Eberhart
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Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship
Kenji E. Kushida
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Former Research Scholar, Japan Program
Kenji E. Kushida was a research scholar with the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center from 2014 through January 2022. Prior to that at APARC, he was a Takahashi Research Associate in Japanese Studies (2011-14) and a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow (2010-11).
Kushida’s research and projects are focused on the following streams: 1) how politics and regulations shape the development and diffusion of Information Technology such as AI; 2) institutional underpinnings of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, 2) Japan's transforming political economy, 3) Japan's startup ecosystem, 4) the role of foreign multinational firms in Japan, 4) Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster. He spearheaded the Silicon Valley - New Japan project that brought together large Japanese firms and the Silicon Valley ecosystem.
He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams, including “The Politics of Commoditization in Global ICT Industries,” “Japan’s Startup Ecosystem,” "How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan’s Domestic 'Galapagos' Telecommunications Sector," “Cloud Computing: From Scarcity to Abundance,” and others. His latest business book in Japanese is “The Algorithmic Revolution’s Disruption: a Silicon Valley Vantage on IoT, Fintech, Cloud, and AI” (Asahi Shimbun Shuppan 2016).
Kushida has appeared in media including The New York Times, Washington Post, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei Business, Diamond Harvard Business Review, NHK, PBS NewsHour, and NPR. He is also a trustee of the Japan ICU Foundation, alumni of the Trilateral Commission David Rockefeller Fellows, and a member of the Mansfield Foundation Network for the Future. Kushida has written two general audience books in Japanese, entitled Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities (Chuko Shinsho, 2006) and International Schools, an Introduction (Fusosha, 2008).
Kushida holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his MA in East Asian Studies and BAs in economics and East Asian Studies with Honors, all from Stanford University.
Lisa Katayama
Journalist and Founder of the Tofu Project
Panelist
Panel Discussions
U.S.-Japan VC Cooperation and the "Fly Over Phenomenon"
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Organized by the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship (STAJE) at SPRIE, Stanford Graduate School of Business, this panel discussion will talk about the Japanese government, METI's and U.S. Embassy's efforts to promote cross border investments between U.S. and Japan.
A particular interest in the discussion will be the "fly over phenomenon", which is the tendency of U.S. based venture capital firms to fly from Silicon Valley, over Japan, and land into China.
The panel will consist an elite group of experts, Michael Alfant, CEO of Fusion Systems, Martin Kenney, Professor at UC Davis, Allen Miner, CEO of SunBridge Corporation, and a venture capitalist to be named.
About the speakers
Mr. Robert Eberhart is a researcher at Stanford’s Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship where he leads the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship. His research focuses on comparative corporate governance of growth companies with special emphasis on Japan and the role of Japanese institutions in fostering entrepreneurship. Mr. Eberhart received a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Michigan after undergraduate studies in Finance at Michigan State University. He is a doctoral candidate in Stanford’s department of Management Science and Engineering.
Michael Alfant is the Group President and CEO of Fusions Systems Co., Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, with offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. Fusion Systems is one of Asia's fastest growing leaders in Business Technology and Systems Consulting. Michael started an IT solutions company named Fusion Systems Japan in 1992. Mr. Alfant is the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, a frequent speaker at US and Japanese Universities, and a member of the Board of Directors of listed firms in both America and Japan. Michael Alfant graduated from the City University of NY with a BS in Computer Science.
Martin Kenney is a Professor in the Department of Human and Community Development at University of California, Davis and Senior Project Director of Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE) at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author and/or editor of five books and 120 articles examining venture capital, high technology and regional development, and university-industry relations. He is an editor at Research Policy and for a Stanford University Press book series on innovation in the global economy. Martin has also been a visiting researcher at the Copenhagen Business School, and Cambridge Hitotsubashi, Kobe, Stanford, and Tokyo Universities.
Allen Miner is a founder/General Partner of SunBridge Partners and the founder/CEO of SunBridge Corporation. Allen has significant experience in Internet, enterprise and open-source software, entrepreneurship, and international technology transfer. Allen has been actively involved in each of the firm’s investments resulting in numerous successful IPOs, including Salesforce.com, MacroMill, ITMedia and G-Mode, among others. Allen is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Salesforce Japan.
Scott Ellman is CEO and Co-Founder of USAsia Venture Partners. He has over twenty years of experience in strategic alliances, marketing, and business development. Scott has held senior positions at high technology pioneers Silicon Graphics (SGI) and VMware where, among other things, he managed some of the companies' most important alliances such as those with Hitachi, Toshiba, Oracle, NEC, Dell, IBM, and HP. Scott is a strategic advisor to several technology companies as well as the Keizai Society and a member of the Japan-US Innovation in Business and Technology Advisory Council. He holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Brown University.
Quaeed "Q" Motiwala joined JAIC US in 2008 and brings 14 years of product and business development experience, working extensively across US, Japan, South Korea and India. At DFJ JAIC, he specializes in Mobile, B2B Software and Cleantech sectors in the US. Prior to JAIC, Q spent 11 years at Qualcomm in various ASIC product development and business leadership roles that included deploying 3G EV-DO in Korea, Japan and U.S, leading the initiative to embed wireless in notebooks and automobiles and leading business efforts at the Indian wireless carriers. He was also part of two mobile software startups - SKY MobileMedia and Azteq Mobile. Q holds 5 patents in wireless telecom, has an MBA from Anderson School of Management, UCLA, an M.S.E.E from Virginia Tech and a B.E. (Electronics) from University of Bombay. Q serves as a Board of Director at Tradescape, Innopath Software, and Vitriflex.
William F. Miller is Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management Emeritus; Professor of Computer Science Emeritus; President Emeritus, SRI International; Chairman Emeritus, Borland Software Corporation; and Chairman/Founder of Nanostellar, Inc. Professor Miller has carried out research on atomic and nuclear physics, computer graphic systems and languages, computer systems architecture, and the computer industry. His current research interests are on industrial development with special interest in local and regional industrial development, the evolution of regions of innovation and entrepreneurship, the “habitat” for entrepreneurship, and the globalization of R&D. His international industrial development studies have focused on Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Malaysia.
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Presented by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship-Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship (SPRIE-STAJE) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Parking on the Stanford University campus can be challenging, so please consider arriving early. Parking is free after 4PM. Parking spaces may be available at the new Knight Management Center, Stanford Graduate School of Business:
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Robert Eberhart
Researcher
Moderator
SPRIE, Stanford University
Michael Alfant
CEO
Panelist
Fusion Systems
Martin Kenney
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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mfkenney@stanford.edu
Visiting Scholar, 2008-09
Allen Miner
CEO
Panelist
SunBridge Corp.
Scott Ellman
CEO
Panelist
USAsia Venture Partners
Quaeed ‘Q’ Motiwala
Managing Director
Panelist
DFJ JAIC
William F. Miller
Faculty and Co-director
Panelist
SPRIE, Stanford University
Panel Discussions
China 2.0: Transforming Media and Commerce
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The SPRIE conference on "China 2.0: Transforming Media and Commerce" was held at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley, on Friday, September 30, 2011. The conference focused on the driving forces and global implications of the rapid growth of China's internet industry.
China is home to nearly half a billion internet users, twice the online population in the US. Already home to two of the world’s top five internet firms by market valuation, China is giving birth to innovative start-ups and powerhouse billion dollar firms in social networking, games, media, and e-commerce. These companies thriving in China are increasingly impacting the global digital economy. Fueling the rise of China’s internet firms are venture capitalists who are leading new investment models and strategies which are shaping the VC industry and the most dynamic—and profitable—internet sectors in China.
Featured speakers included internet pioneers, trailblazer investors across the Pacific, and young entrepreneurs who are shaping the rise of China 2.0.
Keynotes
Jack Ma - Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, delivered the closing keynote address. Alibaba Group includes online marketplace Alibaba ($4.8 billion market cap,ticker 1688:HK), retail and payment platforms (Taobao, Alipay), cloud computing services, China Yahoo, etc. In 2009, Jack Ma was recognized as one of the "TIME 100: The World's Most Influential People" by TIME, one of "China's Most Powerful People" by BusinessWeek and one of the "Top 10 Most Respected Entrepreneurs in China" by Forbes Chinese edition.
Jack Ma, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba GroupContent-Disposition: form-data; name="imgcredit16"
Jack Ma, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group
Joseph Chen (MBA '99) - Chairman and CEO of Renren Inc. offered a keynote speech. Renren.com is one of China’s leading social networking sites, which completed its IPO on the NYSE (ticker: RENN) in May 2011 and now has a market cap of $2.6 billion. Joseph Chen is a pioneer of China's internet industry. Before founding Renren Inc., he was the co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of ChinaRen.com, a first-generation SNS in China and one of China's most visited websites in 1999.
Joseph Chen (MBA '99), Chairman and CEO of Renren Inc.
Joseph Chen (MBA '99), Chairman and CEO of Renren Inc.
China 2.0 Conference Co-Chairs shared sprie's research preview:
Duncan Clark is Senior Advisor for the China 2.0 Project at SPRIE and Chairman of BDA China, a company he founded in Beijing in 1994. An expert on the Internet, e-commerce and telecom sectors in China, he has guided BDA to become the leading technology and media advisory firm in China, with a team of 70 in Beijing serving financial institutions and corporations investing in high-growth sectors in China and neighboring markets.
Duncan Clark, Chairman of BDA China; SPRIE Special Advisor for China 2.0 Project
Duncan Clark, Chairman of BDA China; SPRIE Special Advisor for China 2.0 Project
Duncan Clark, Chairman of BDA China; SPRIE Special Advisor for China 2.0 Project
Duncan Clark, Chairman of BDA China; SPRIE Special Advisor for China 2.0 Project
Marguerite Gong Hancock is the Associate Director of SPRIE where co-leads overall programs and also directs research initiatives on "China 2.0" and "Smart Green Cities". Since joining Stanford in 1987, she has led international research programs at the intersection of business, technology, and policy at the Graduate School of Business and the Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center. She is an expert on innovation and entrepreneurship for high technology regional development and has co-edited four books and co-directs an executive education program for international policymakers.
Marguerite Gong Hancock, SPRIE Associate Director
Marguerite Gong Hancock, SPRIE Associate Director
Marguerite Gong Hancock, SPRIE Associate Director
Marguerite Gong Hancock, SPRIE Associate Director
Panel discussion on "china new media & E-commerce investment outlook"
Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield FundTim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund
Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund
Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund
Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund
Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund
Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund
Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund
David Chao (MBA '93), Co-Founder and General Partner of DCM. He has been active in the information technology industry since the 1980s, participating in the fastest growing sectors of computers, communication and the Internet. David serves on the Boards of 51job, 99Bill, BitTorrent, Lumi, Renren.com, RockYou and Translattice. He is also responsible for the investments in Clearwire, eDreams, Fortinet, kabu.com and Sling Media.
David Chao, Co-Founder and General Partner of DCM
David Chao, Co-Founder and General Partner of DCM
David Chao, Co-Founder and General Partner of DCM
David Chao, Co-Founder and General Partner of DCM
Paul Kwan, Managing Director, Morgan StanleyPaul Kwan, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley
Richard Lim (MBA '88), Managing director and co-founder of GSR Ventures, the premier early-stage venture capital firm in China. Mr. Lim focuses on investments in the Internet, digital media and green technology sectors. In the Internet sector, some of the boards where Mr. Lim serves are AdChina, Baihe, Lashou, LightInTheBox and Qunar.
Richard Lim, managing director and co-founder of GSR Ventures.
Richard Lim, managing director and co-founder of GSR Ventures.
Panel discussion on "China internet entrepreneurs"
Fritz Demopoulos, Co-Founder and Former CEO of Qunar.com. Fritz Demopoulos has been involved in the Chinese internet and media industries for over a decade. He was recently the co-founder and CEO of Qunar.com, China's largest travel website and venture backed by GSR, Mayfield, Granite and Tenaya. Qunar sold a majority stake to Baidu earlier this year, which was the largest trade sale in the history of the Chinese internet space.
Fritz Demopoulos, Founder of Queens Road Capital, Qunar, Shawei
Grace Huang, Founder and CEO of iPinYou Interactive Advertising Co. She started her career at P&G as brand manager and was an ex-McKinsey consultant focusing on marketing. She obtained her MBA degree from ULCA business school. She has profound knowledge in brand marketing and internet advertising, especially targeting advertising.
Grace Huang, Founder and CEO of iPinYou.com
Grace Huang, Founder and CEO of iPinYou.com
Grace Huang, Founder and CEO of iPinYou.com
Grace Huang, Founder and CEO of iPinYou.com
Jianshuo Wang, Founder and CEO of Baixing.comJianshuo Wang, Founder and CEO of Baixing.com
Jianshuo Wang, Founder and CEO of Baixing.com
Jianshuo Wang, Founder and CEO of Baixing.com
Nick Yang (MS '99), Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Co-Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong. He is one of China's most successful digital media entrepreneurs. He started his third venture Wukong in 2008, a mobile internet operation support company for telecom operators and mobile internet distribution network. Mr. Yang is an active Angel investor and involved in many internet and media companies in China. He graduated from Stanford University, master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1999.
Nick Yang, Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong
Nick Yang, Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong
Nick Yang, Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong
Nick Yang, Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong
Nick Yang, Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong
Nick Yang, Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong
Nick Yang, Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong
Nick Yang, Founder and CEO, Wukong.com; Founder, ChinaRen.com and KongZhong
Presentation and Discussion Topics
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How are internet entrepreneurs transforming China’s technology sectors? Are there any lessons from firms in China for the Valley beyond? What is the future for US-based internet firms in China?
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Is China giving birth to truly innovative technologies, processes or business models? If so, are any of these innovations exportable?
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How is the Venture Capital /Private Equity industry evolving in China? What patterns, strategies and practices distinguish the most active (and successful) investors?
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What are the most interesting new developments that will impact the future of China’s internet? Who comprise the next generation of 2.0 start-ups in China?
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How is the landscape changing? What are the current key challenges and opportunities?
Conference sponsors
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GSR Ventures logo
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Cypress River Advisors logo
CEMEX Auditorium
Knight Management Center
Stanford Graduate School of Business
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