Through the Eyes of the Consul General of Japan in Detroit

 
It all started with a visit this past February by my close friend, Yotetsu Hayashi, then Chief Executive Director of JETRO San Francisco. Together with Deputy Director Yoshida and Chief Executive Director Nakagawa from JETRO Chicago, he traveled to Detroit to hold a startup meeting at the Newlab, which I also attended. The current CEO of Ford, one of the “Big Three” U.S. automakers, had transformed the abandoned Detroit Central Station into a commercial mall called Michigan Central, and converted the post office into the Newlab for supporting startup entrepreneurs. Hayashi and the JETRO team had long been keeping an eye on Detroit’s emerging startups and venture capital scene. (I had previously misunderstood Hayashi’s trip as merely an excuse to drink together at my residence — for that, I apologize here. Though, of course, we did drink.)
 
It was surprising. Innovation in Detroit?
 
Before coming to Detroit, I had worked in San Francisco for nearly three years and was involved in the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of the work at the various consulates in San Francisco was centered on supporting startups. Japan had been lagging behind, but two years ago, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and JETRO established the Japan Innovation Campus in Palo Alto, seriously beginning to nurture Japanese entrepreneurs. So when I first heard the word “innovation” in Detroit, it didn’t immediately click.
 
However, when Bill Ford appeared on stage at the Mackinac Policy Conference this May (see the Through the Eyes of the Consul General of Japan in Detroit Vol. 6) together with his daughter Alexandra and spoke not about cars but about startups, it resonated deeply with me. At the Newlab, which had also opened two years ago, 131 startups — including entrepreneurs from Norway and other countries — were active, but none were Japanese. From there, I began working with Chief Executive Director Nakagawa of JETRO Chicago to seriously attract Japanese startups.
 
With JETRO’s support, TriOrb, a startup from Kitakyushu, was already considering expansion into the Newlab. I invited CEO Ishida and his team to my residence for a discussion and asked why they were choosing Detroit over Silicon Valley. The answer was, “Silicon Valley is strong in software, but not in manufacturing. The innovative improvements TriOrb aims to achieve with mass-production belt conveyors can only be meaningfully pursued in Detroit, where the manufacturing ecosystem already exists.”
 
Sony, Honda, Toshiba, and Panasonic — Japan has historically been a manufacturing powerhouse, leveraging craftsmanship. Manufacturing rooted in innovation. That, I realized, could become a new common language between Japan and the state of Michigan. It was a sudden spark of insight. (To be continued in Vol. 12.)