Stanford University

Entrepreneurship

The Outlook for Japanese Startups--Perspectives from a Japanese Firm's CEO

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About the talk
SPRIE's spring seminar series on the emerging environment for entrepreneurship in Japan has examined the state of venture capital (Michael Korver), changes in corporate governance (Robert Eberhart), and the division within Japanese society on the future of the Japanese economy (Yoko Ishikura).

Now, to conclude the series, Brian Nelson will provide his views on the outlook for Japanese startups--a unique perspective from the (non-Japanese) CEO of a Japanese Internet sales and marketing company.

About the speaker
As CEO of ValueCommerce, Brian Nelson negotiated and completed a TOB (Tender Offer Bid) with YAHOO! Japan in 2005. In 2006, he led ValueCommerce to a successful IPO resulting in a market capitalization of more than $300 million.

Prior to ValueCommerce, Nelson was Director of Sales and Marketing for the Gallup Organization in Japan. He also worked in Business Development with a non-life insurer, Tokyo Marine and Fire Insurance, and as a sales executive for Ashisuto, a Japan computer software company. Nelson has a degree in business administration from the University of Southern California. He has been a resident of Japan since 1990 and is a fluent Japanese speaker.

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Philippines Conference Room

Brian Nelson CEO Speaker ValueCommerce
Seminars
Entrepreneurship in Japan: New Patterns After Post-Bubble Reforms

The Evolution of Venture Capital in Japan--A Case Study

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About the talk

Kicking off SPRIE's seminar series on the emerging environment for entrepreneurship in Japan, this presentation will focus on the changing pattern of venture capital (VC) investments there. Michael Korver will address issues related to venture capital, entrepreneurship and innovation in Japan in the context of the experiences of Global Venture Capital and its partners during the last twelve years.

Recently, Japan has seen a rapid evolution of financing for new firms, including rapid changes to its VC industry. Mr. Korver's firm is in the vanguard of that evolution. He will discuss aspects of Japanese VC companies from their earliest inception to the latest trends--from bank subsidiaries to independent funds--and he will share his observations about entrepreneurial startups in Japan.

About the speaker

Michael Korver is a co-founding partner of Global Venture Capital (GVC). He was born and raised in Tokyo and first developed his insider's perspective on Asian business from his experience as an analyst at the Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo from 1983 until 1986, and as an international transactions lawyer with Richards & O'Neil in New York and Tokyo from 1987 until 1993.

Since 1993 Korver has worked as an international business consultant, corporate lawyer, venture capitalist and entrepreneur in Tokyo. He has founded or co-founded several companies and has served on the boards of a number of them. From 1999 until 2002 he was in charge of legal and business affairs at The News Corporation Limited Japan, the Japanese operations of the international media conglomerate. Korver currently serves as professor in the MBA program at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy of Hitotsubashi University where he teaches courses in entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Korver received the BA, the MA in Economics and the JD all from the University of California at Berkeley. He is licensed to practice law in the States of New York and California.

Philippines Conference Room

Michael Korver Managing Partner Speaker Global Venture Capital
Seminars
Entrepreneurship in Japan: New Patterns After Post-Bubble Reforms

Former President of Mexico sees positive economic, social growth for Latin America

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Addressing a packed auditorium on March 5, Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, spoke with intensity about Latin America’s prospects for both social welfare and economic well-being in the coming century. Mexico, which Goldman Sachs recently projected to be the world’s fifth largest economy by 2040, was emblematic of this electrifying future, he said. On the one hand, there is great promise for economic growth, stability, and entrepreneurship; and with this great promise, he was careful to note, comes great responsibility for the reduction of poverty and inequality through a “package of powerful social policies.”

Fox’s lecture was sponsored by FSI as part of the 2008 Robert G. Wesson Lecture Series in International Relations Theory and Practice, and was hosted by the Graduate School of Business. Before being elected president of Mexico, a position he held from 2000-06, Fox was president of Coca-Cola Mexico. Since leaving office, Fox has been involved with a sweeping initiative to construct a social agenda for democracy in Latin America for the next 20 years, launched by Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru from 2001 to 2006. Toledo is a Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Stanford this year.

"It is a pleasure to welcome my friend, former President Vicente Fox, to Stanford, the Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where serious scholars and practitioners are committed to develop democracy that delivers concrete results for the poor and fosters social inclusion," said Toledo.

Fox also discussed issues specific to the relationship between Mexico and the U.S., such as trade, immigration, and NAFTA—all of which benefit both countries, he said. Looking ahead, he hoped that Latin American democracy would not to be taken for granted; “it has to be nourished, it has to be taken care of, it has to be promoted.” But his outlook for Latin America was resoundingly positive, that this is a time for its countries to consolidate democracies and freedoms, consolidate economies, and promote new leadership. After years of military dictatorships, corruption, inefficiency, and poor development, “People decided to go for change,” Fox said, “and change is a magic word. It moves people to action.”

The Wesson Lecture Series provides support for a public address at Stanford by a prominent scholar or practicing professional in the field of international relations. The series is made possible by a gift from the late Robert G. Wesson, a scholar of international affairs, prolific author, and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Previous Wesson Lecturers have included such distinguished speakers as McGeorge Bundy, Willi DeClerq, Condoleezza Rice, Mikhail Gorbachev, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Mary Robinson.

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The Shape of Things to Come: A Global Perspective on Regional Innovation Indicators

In the pursuit to assess high-tech regions' performance in and capability for innovation and entrepreneurship, a bewildering variety of data is published, including:

  • employment
  • total corporate sales
  • wages
  • venture capital funding
  • new company formation and growth of small firms
  • R&D spending
  • patents, and many more

However, on the basis of such heterogeneous indicators, it can be difficult or even impossible to compare regions. Some of this is inevitable given different perceived data needs in each region. However, perhaps a common core of data might be supplied.

To this end, the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship is bringing together scholars and researchers from the United States, Europe and Asia to present data from their own regions that would help with comparisons between regions and linkages among them, and to make the case for what they consider the most useful set of indicators.

There will be four workshop sessions: the first will be devoted to discussing a framework for looking at entrepreneurship and innovation regional indicators, and the remaining three will take a regional focus, proposing indicators closely related to innovative regions in the United States, Europe and Asia.

This event is part of the "The Shape of Things to Come" conference at the Fisher Conference Center at Stanford University, January 17-18, 2007.

» Presentations/Papers from the event

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Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center

Workshops

Beyond Borders: Global Entrepreneurship

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Up-and-coming Stanford entrepreneurs must think and act globally. Critical resources, markets and opportunities are around the world. Come meet three global entrepreneurs and hear how they got started, challenges they are wrestling with right now, and their best advice on going global.

SPRIE Co-Director Dr. William F. Miller will moderate a panel discussion featuring William A. Chen, Dr. Robert P. Lee, and Gadi Maier.

After the panel discussion there will be a question and answer period, followed by Chinese appetizers and networking.

This event, co-sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society (ASES), is open to students, the Stanford community and the general public and is part of Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University.

You can see the entire Entrepreneurship Week agenda at eweek.stanford.edu, including information about the Innovation Tournament for student teams.

About the panelists
William Chen: A General Partner with DT Capital Partners, Chen has been involved in technology companies and startups in Silicon Valley and China, most recently as Founder and CEO of Accelergy Corporation, a R&D technology company with operations in the US and Shanghai. Prior to Accelergy, Chen was Founder and CEO of OnePage, Inc., an enterprise software company that developed a suite of portal products and management tools for the corporate market (acquired by Sybase, Inc.). Before starting OnePage, he was one of the Founders of Billpoint, Inc., which pioneered the concept of online person to person payments. Chen has a BS from the University of Florida and a MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Robert P. Lee: Lee, a 30-year veteran of the computer industry, is Chairman and CEO of Achievo Corporation, which he co-founded in 2002 while he served as president and CEO of Accela, Inc., a leading government automation software company. He was president and CEO of Inxight Software, Inc. before joining Achievo. Prior to that, he was Chairman, President and CEO of Insignia Solutions plc, a software company he took public in 1995. Dr. Lee has served as Executive VP at Symantec Corporation, and was Senior VP at Shared Medical Systems Corporation (now merged with Siemens). He received a BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and MS and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, all in computer science.

Gadi Maier: Most recently, Maier was CEO and President of Israel-based FraudSciences Corporation, (recently purchased by eBay), and prior to that he spent a year as Venture Partner at Pinnacle Ventures and Benchmark Capital. He was a co-founder and CEO of Scalent Systems (advanced datacenter virtualization software) and he co-founded Currenex, (a marketplace for buyers and sellers of foreign currency, sold to State Street Bank). Preceding Currenex, Maier was CEO, President and Chairman of GetThere, (on-line travel technology to corporations and airlines), leading GetThere's IPO as well as its sale in 2000 to Sabre Corporation. He has served as CEO for Memco Software, Inc., VP & General Manager for Cisco Systems' Internet Business Unit and held senior-level management positions at Oracle. Gadi holds a BS and MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Bechtel Conference Center

William F. Miller Moderator
William Chen General Partner Panelist DT Capital Partners
Dr. Robert P. Lee Chairman and CEO Panelist Achievo Corporation
Gadi Maier CEO and President Panelist FraudSciences Corporation
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John Hagel and Henry Chesbrough deliver keynote addresses at "The Shape of Things to Come" conference

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George Krompacky
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"The Shape of Things to Come," a conference presented by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship on January 17-18, 2008, featured keynotes by John Hagel, co-author of The Only Sustainable Edge and Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation, and Dr. Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director of the Center for Open Innovation at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and author of Open Innovation.

The keynotes bookended Thursday's forum, "New Patterns and Paradigms in Global Innovation Networks," and were a prelude to Friday's academic workshop, "A Global Perspective on Regional Innovation Indicators." Hagel's talk focused on the need for a more explicit taxonomy of innovative collaboration and discussed the "huge need to define pragmatic migration paths"--routes that the average manager and company can take to reach the opportunities that normally are only accessible to cutting-edge companies.

The forum closed with a presentation by Dr. Henry Chesbrough, who provided an overview on the globalization of innovation in the Chinese semiconductor industry, which he sees as split into a "globally oriented, globally competitive" industry segment and a domestically-oriented segment with "backward technologies" and lacking access to capital. The question, he explained, is how China will shift its resources, now entrenched in the latter, to the former, competitive segment.

Chesbrough finished with a discussion of intellectual property rights (IPR) in China, looking at flows of knowledge and current IPR challenges; he mentioned some surprising developments--the rise of businesses to "promote the legal exchange of IP" and the growth of a domestic constituency for stronger IPR--and discussed future implications for IPR in China.

In between the keynotes, the forum featured sessions on innovation in internet services in China, the role of venture capital as a network builder, and discussions on two rapidly moving industries: cleantech and thin film transistor LCD displays.

Conference materials, including presentations and audio files, will be made available on the SPRIE website.

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Reliably Detecting Nuclear Weapons in Transit

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We examine two interrelated questions. How and where do we need to deploy nuclear detection portals in the real world? On the basis of which physical techniques should we design the technology to use in these portals? Today's national initiatives like the 9/11 Commission Act for scanning 100% of cargo at foreign ports of origin may be useful for interception of smuggled materials that are already assumed to be in transit -- by simply creating a roadblock for smuggling on high traffic routes, this does not get us any closer to dissuading adversaries from attacking by other means. Today's programs ignore the options (loopholes) within reach of the adversary that use alternative routes or countermeasures the attacker can employ against the detection technology. Loopholes can come as technical countermeasures usable against today's technology like passive gamma detection (shielding, fractionation) or against future technology like cosmic muon detection (dispersion, spreading). Loopholes may also be present in the form of transportation pathways not secured by any detection technology (private jets, sailboats, luxury cruise ships, and so on). In this talk, we discuss transportation loopholes and technical countermeasures in planned US initiatives using drive-thru nuclear detection portals for intercepting uranium. In addition to well-known countermeasures like shielding, we identify a novel countermeasure to cosmic muon detection based on horizontal spreading or dispersion. We show how to integrate passive gamma, neutron, muon, and active neutron detection techniques to make reliable detection portals (RDPs) invulnerable to simple countermeasures. We show where RDPs would need to be deployed around metropolitan areas and military bases to complement the national border, quantify how many RDPs would be required based on traffic flows, and define RDP specifications.

Devabhaktuni Srikrishna’s publications and patents have spanned quantum computing, parallel computing, wireless data communications, and nuclear detection. He holds a BS in Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was formerly Chief Technology Officer and a Founder of Tropos Networks (2000-2007). Tropos develops and manufactures wireless mesh routers for creating Wi-Fi service across metro areas currently operating in over 500 cities worldwide.

Thomas A. Tisch is a private high tech investor with operating and venture capital experience. In his career, he served as a partner at Portola Venture Fund, an initial investor in 3Com, and Software Publishing Corp and later at MBW Management where his investments included Netrix, Stratacom and Stac Electronics. Among operating roles, he was I instrumental in Etrade pioneering Internet brokerage as Vice President of Trade*Plus as it was known then. Mr. Tisch holds a BS in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (1961), an MS EE from Stanford University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Narasimha Chari is the Founder and Chief Architect of Tropos Networks where he has been responsible for developing Tropos Networks' core intellectual property, including the design and development of the company's wireless networking and routing protocols. Among other honors, Mr. Chari was recognized by MIT Technology Review magazine in 2005 as one of the Top 35 Innovators under the age of 35. He has performed research, published papers and disclosed patents in a variety of areas of mathematics, physics, wireless networking and nuclear detection. Mr. Chari holds a BS in Mathematics and Economics from the California Institute of Technology and an AM in Physics from Harvard University.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Devabhaktuni Srikrishna Speaker
Thomas A. Tisch Speaker
Narasimha Chari Speaker
Seminars

The Shape of Things to Come: New Patterns and Paradigms in Global Innovation Networks

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Patterns and paradigms for innovation are fundamentally changing--they are becoming more global, multidisciplinary, collaborative and complex. At the same time, innovation is extending far beyond disruptive technologies which lead to new products. Increasingly, innovation is being found in services, processes, business models and policies. At the center of these changes are global innovation networks.

The Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) is bringing together thinkers, investigators and practitioners from the U.S., Asia and Europe for a two-day international, cross-disciplinary discussion and debate on the understanding of innovation networks.

You are invited to attend the first day of this conference, a forum entitled, "The Shape of Things to Come: New Patterns and Paradigms in Global Innovation Networks." It will take place at the Arrillaga Alumni Center at Stanford University on Thursday, January 17.

The event will feature two keynote speakers:

John Hagel, Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for Strategy and Technology, co-author of The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization (with John Seely Brown)

Dr. Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director of the Center for Open Innovation, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley and author of Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology.

Planned forum sessions include:

"Shifting Innovation Networks in China" with a focus on Internet services;

"Venture Capital as Network Builder," how venture capital enables innovation networks;

"Perspectives on Rapidly Moving Technologies," like cleantech and flat panels.

A continental breakfast and lunch will be served, and the day will conclude with a networking reception.

» Presentations/Papers from the event

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Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center

Workshops
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