Day 4 - Virtual Summer Program

Day 4 started with Associate Prof. Ryusuke Koyama of NUCB Business School delivering a keynote session about the creation of new business models in the post-COVID-19 society.
Adopting a holistic approach, he began with the examples of fax machines being widely used in Japan and the announcements that are constantly played for the escalators to bring the concept of paternalism and how the Japanese government adopts this approach in its society. Moving on, he used the business model canvas with Toyota as the example to explain the concept of keiretsu (a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings) and brought the students to discuss 2 points:
1 – Can Toyota’s current core business model be maintained after the pandemic?
2 – How will this pandemic change the culture?

This led to his point that the cultural context influences the business model and with culture changing through and after this pandemic, new business models will be generated to adapt and correspond to this new change. When a current structure (focusing on operations) faces unexpected elements, new perspectives and ideas will arise (just like in art) to lead towards a restructure (corresponding to the design factor). As such, the innovation process corresponds to the rise of unexpected elements and the resulting restructure; which will enable the creation of a new business model.

Following up on yesterday’s case on Toyota’s new business model for a sustainable future, students discovered Toyota’s latest project with Woven City, which was unveiled early January of 2020 just before the pandemic started taking over. The session ended with students considering how this would shape up to be under the current circumstances.

The afternoon session saw Prof. Hakeem’s return to tackle a topic much expected by the participants: about the Revision of the Job Market & Workforce in Japan (and to an extent, globally) due to this pandemic. Participants were looking forward to this topic as some of them will be on the job market soon enough while the rest will be experiencing it within 1 or few years. As such, the session started with what makes the Japanese job market different from most of the other developed job markets and how it is being impacted by COVID-19, giving a better idea of how they can better prepare themselves to put most of the opportunities on their side for job hunting.

The remaining of the session focused more on automation in Japan and how it is considered to be one of the country with the most potential to develop and bring automation to numerous sectors. Participants discussed how companies can overcome the challenges that surface when working towards automation and how the next wave of digital innovation will be transforming the workforce, learning about the importance of soft skills and being able to reskill.

Read about the Final Day here.