For more than ten years the Keizai Koho Center has invited American business school educators to Japan for a study tour.   Participants visit Japanese corporations, meet with top management and representatives of the business community, hold seminars with Japanese academics, and have numerous opportunities to engage directly with government officials and university faculty.

The purpose of the program is to stimulate curricular development of Japan-related education in American business schools and to provide participants with opportunities to pursue comparative research activities.

2006 Program.  Six professors of leading U.S. business schools were invited to Japan for one week to explore this year's theme, "Management and Innovation to Create Corporate Value."  The business school educators met with opinion leaders in Japan's government, business, and academic circles, and exchanged views on global strategies of Japanese corporations, corporate governance, financial issues, aging society and Japan-China economic relations.

The 2006 participants included:

Roger Noll, Professor of Stanford Graduate School of Business
W. Carl Kester, Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs, Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School
Richard Roll, Japan Alumni Chair in International Finance, Professor of The UCLA Anderson School
Edward E. Leamer, Professor of UCLA Anderson School of Management
Heather A. Haveman, Professor of Columbia University Graduate School of Business
Charles Wolf, Jr., Senior Economic Adviser and Corporate Fellow in International Economics, TAND Corp

On the final day of the program, participants took part in a symposium held at Keidanren. Prof. Leamer noted that Japan should start to create values in the postindustrial intellectual service activities. Prof. Kester pointed out that M&As can be an effective means of implementing a growth strategy and an important point is that an M&A needs to be executed successfully. A total of 130 people attended the symposium

For more information, please see:
http://www.kkc.or.jp/english/activities/index.html