Joint industry/university efforts target regional innovations as international students bridge countries and regions

A campus that reflects the enthusiasm of its instructors for nurturing international students

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Thanong For two years, from 1968, I was enrolled in the Department of Economics, Yokohama National University, eventually earning my degree. My dream was to study economics and become a professor, so I chose this university, which has first-rate researchers in economics. After graduating, I left Japan for postgraduate studies. In 2007, I returned and had the privilege of teaching for one semester under the university’s Master’s Degree Program in Infrastructure Management (IMP), a program coadministered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Today, I visited the campus once again and I was impressed by the enhanced facilities, including the spacious library and sophisticated campus design. With its expanded graduate schools and large number of international students, the campus seems even more sophisticated and global. Yokohama National University projects an image of continuing progress.

Hasebe Back in those days, you must have studied many topics at our university under distinguished economists, including Dr. Yoshikazu Miyazaki. What impact did that have on your life?

Thanong Dr. Miyazaki was a person of deep knowledge. He didn’t use the standard textbooks. Instead, he showed us slides of various statistical data during his lectures. That impressed me. I remember the slides were about the Japanese economy and economic development. He also introduced some of the literature in English. I’m grateful to him for providing us with a deep and fundamental knowledge of economics, something we could get only here at this university.

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Hasebe After graduating, you went on to graduate school in the United States. Why?

Thanong I wanted to teach economics in my home country of Thailand in the future, so my goal was to complete my doctoral program. That wasn’t possible in Japan at the time, so I went to Northwestern University in the United States, where I finished my PhD.
Since I wanted to teach in academia, the experience of studying in Japan, a country that had achieved such remarkable growth in postwar Asia, gave me an opportunity to examine a model for Thailand’s own economic growth. Ten other students who studied in Japan with me have all become professors in the medical or engineering fields.

Hasebe Yokohama National University has a tradition of actively accepting government–sponsored overseas students, not just for the Department of Economics, but at the Department of Business Administration and College of Engineering Science. Those who complete the courses here and go back to their own countries are active in various areas and encourage students in the next generation to study at Yokohama. I think this virtuous cycle is already established.
Also, thanks to the enthusiastic instruction of our teaching staff, almost 1,000 international students currently study on this campus each year. I’m glad that you, Dr. Thanong, appear to perceive our enthusiastic outlook.

Thanong In America, they have quarterly exams and different teachers teach each quarter. This makes for a fast pace of learning. In Japan, on the other hand, learning occurs in a style in which students learn on their own through interactions with professors. At Yokohama National University, this style gave me the opportunity to enjoy warm interactions with various people, including my classmates. I think the experience of studying at a Japanese university was extremely helpful for me as a young person.

Hasebe All the departments of our university traditionally provide student-teacher interactions in small groups, with each lab, class, or seminar serving as a unit.
Japanese universities emphasize the basics. What role should Japanese universities play right now?

I’m grateful to him for providing us with a deep and fundamental knowledge of economics, something we could get only here at this university.

I’m grateful to him for providing us with a deep and fundamental knowledge of economics, something we could get only here at this university.

I’m grateful to him for providing us with a deep and fundamental knowledge of economics, something we could get only here at this university.

Japanese universities emphasize the basics. What role should Japanese universities play right now?

Hasebe Currently, the center of economic growth has been shifting from China to emerging countries, like those in Southeast Asia. Direct investment by Japanese companies is growing in these countries. So students willing to accept a challenge are beginning to take a positive interest in countries like Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Thailand is one of the countries with which our university engages in the most energetic exchange, but it’s still not where we want to be.

Thanong Japan currently invests more in Thailand than any other ASEAN country. Development here appears to be advancing in the eyes of many Japanese tourists and business people. I think that makes Thailand a very comfortable environment to live in, even for Japanese people. The main obstacle seems to be language. Thai is difficult. It’s an independent language that’s not closely related to either English or Japanese. But if you’re in an international class at university, you have the option to learn it in English. And students from countries like Cambodia and Myanmar visit Thailand to study, which creates opportunities for interactions with people from these neighboring Asian countries as well.

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Hasebe Dr. Thanong, you gained invaluable experiences in what was for you the unknown country of Japan. As it was for you, I think it will be a good experience for Japanese students to view Japan and the world from Thailand, the center of Southeast Asia.
Again, Dr. Thanong, what do you feel about the difference between Japanese universities and American universities?

Thanong Many of the Japanese universities’ curricula are extremely basic, and some might think theory at that level is useless in the real world. But I think otherwise. The way I learned in Japan satisfied my hunger for intellectual growth.
In America, on the other hand, I had a lot of research material to read and analyze. I also had a lot of homework to do. Yet, once the exams were over, I forgot everything. Although I think I acquired the analytical ability needed to write papers, I have doubts about whether I could actually acquire the essential skill, the capacity to think.

Hasebe The global economy has been changing dramatically, and technology is making rapid progress. I believe what today’s universities need to do to prepare their students for future society is to instill the capacity for critical thought and the ability to discover problems on their own, to investigate problems in their own way, and to draw their own conclusions—and based on this training, to be able to think for themselves and speak in their own words.

Thanong The skill that matters in an age when vast stores of knowledge can be retrieved from the Internet at any time you want is the ability to apply the knowledge effectively. In other words, how and when this knowledge should be used and how you should act based on that. To this end, it’s important for teachers to question themselves and to give answers to questions in their own words, rather than writing based on copied knowledge. I think an approach like that will lead to innovation.

I believe what today’s universities need to do to prepare their students for future society is to instill the capacity for critical thought and the ability to discover problems on their own

I believe what today’s universities need to do to prepare their students for future society is to instill the capacity for critical thought and the ability to discover problems on their own

I believe what today’s universities need to do to prepare their students for future society is to instill the capacity for critical thought and the ability to discover problems on their own

A useful correct understanding of the concept of innovation and
industry/government/academia partnership to achieve success

Thanong In my opinion, three factors are essential for innovation. The first is visualizing my thoughts through design. The second is the technology needed to turn visualized designs into commercial reality. The third is the presence of markets. The goal of innovation is business creation and product commercialization. If you provide something that exceeds consumer expectations, markets will jump at it.

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Hasebe  I agree with Dr. Thanong. If I may, I’d like to add two more things. The first is “entrepreneurship”—an outlook willing to accept the challenge of starting some kind of business in any part of the world should be nurtured in the young through experiences like internships at overseas enterprises. The second is knowledge in the humanities, including philosophy and psychology. I think this kind of knowledge is also important in determining the future direction of innovation. That’s because we need to think about what values we humans should cherish. Take medical practice, for example. Is a person whose entire body is hooked up to tubes to maintain his or her life actually happy? What does it mean to die as a human? These are extremely difficult questions, but I think it’s important to confront and consider these problems squarely.
In that sense as well, Yokohama National University, as a well-balanced university composed of departments specializing in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, seeks to promote innovation by making the most of this campus-wide cooperation among the departments.

Thanong To create models that can compete and win, there needs to be a university/entrepreneur market. If companies and universities work together, they can create competitive models. The United States trailed Japan in the 1980s. Since they couldn’t win in terms of product competitiveness, they thought about how they could improve their competitiveness. Their answer was that they needed a cooperative framework for new innovations. In many cases, partnerships with research organizations like universities enhanced competitiveness in terms of new technology and tools. I believe Asia’s future development lies in that direction.

Hasebe Regional innovations, in which local governments work with universities in their region and generate local specialties side by side, is also in demand in Japan. Yokohama here in Kanagawa Prefecture hosts many global companies, and the area also has many small and mid-sized companies that are globally competitive in the area of molding and other technologies. In partnership with these local companies, we’d like to promote regional innovation even more—for example, by assuming a vigorous role as a hub in the fields of life care and IT. Our goal is to be a university that grows with the region.

Thanong I think involving students in these activities, including international students, will be truly wonderful.

Hasebe  When I assumed the post of president, the message I delivered was that we wanted to deepen education and research to contribute to the sustainable development of the world and Japan while paying more attention to China and the emerging/developing countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America. I’ve been in the post for a year and a half now, and I don’t think that direction was misguided. From this point forward, we want to promote joint industry/government/academia efforts between various places in Thailand and here in Kanagawa Prefecture by encouraging direct interactions with Thailand, not just between universities, but between industries. That’s how we’d like to establish a system for achieving regional innovation.

Thanong I think that’s a truly wonderful thing to do. Thailand is currently facing competition from both India and China. Thai companies offer advanced technological prowess, but they need new technologies and ideas for products. I believe this process will be inevitable if Thailand wants to develop its automotive and machine industries. For this reason, we look to Yokohama National University for cooperation.

Hasebe Advancing into overseas markets is important for Japan, too. I look forward to our continuing partnership. Thanks very much for your time today.

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Yuichi Hasebe

Yuichi Hasebe

President, Yokohama National University
M.A. in Economics, Hitotsubashi University(1981),
Specialization: Comparative economic systems, industry analysis

Thanong Bidaya

Thanong Bidaya

Chairman of Board of Directors,TTW Public Company Limited
B.A. in Economics, Yokohama National University,(1970),
M.A. in Economics, Northwestern University,(1971),
Ph.D. in Management, Northwestern University, (1978),
Thailand’s former Finance Minister and Commerce Minister.
Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun, Japan(2004)