Research Presentations (session 3 of 5) - Akai, Inoshita, and Chen
The formate of this presentation is each of the three speakers will have approximately 15 minutes to present their research. This will be followed by a short period of 5-10 minutes for any questions or comments from the audience.
In this session of the Corporate Affiliates Research Presentations, the following will be presented:
Hiroto Akai, Ministry of Finance, Japan, "New Trends of Corporate Finance in Japan and the Role of Corporate Governance"
Takahito Inoshita, Kozo Keikaku Engineering, "How Can Cities Identify Policy Needs by Using Natural Language Data"
Obtaining intelligence from large amount of data is getting more and more common in a variety of domains as information technology evolves and everyone has access. Particularly in commercial sectors, many companies try to capture their customers' thoughts. In public sectors, it is also important to know what their citizens think, prefer, want and need in order to improve their communities. In his research, Inoshita examines how to make sure of information technology in the public policy domain, with a focus on extracting intelligence from natural language data generated by humans.
Michelle Chen, Yongjin Group, "Chinese Fintech Market Research — Balance Transfer Business"
Due to the shift in Chinese economic structure from an investment-driven model towards a consumption-driven model, an increase in outstanding balance of China personal consumption loan, more digital adoption, and innovation through technology development, the Chinese Fintech market is booming in recent years. It presents immense opportunities for financial players. New business models are observed across the key areas in the financial services industry in China, such as online asset trading, online consumer finance, P2P, online investment, etc. In her own experience, Chen has the opportunity to observe various Chinese Fintech start-up companies and do some research and investment. One of her own investments, Samoyed Financial, provides online credit card repayment service in China. In this research presentation, Chen shares her knowledge gained regarding the Chinese online credit card repayment market based on due diligence and first-hand observation.
Population decline has been a major issue for Japan. In the near future, this problem will cause a labor shortage and weaken local economies. In order to overcome these, economic growth is an important key, and improvement of labor productivity is an essential element. Labor productivity = GDP / Working hours, so we need to improve GDP by innovation and reduce working hours by work-style reform. Morishige intends to propose approaches to realize regional revitalization in his hometown of Shizuoka by linking a bridge of innovation between Silicon Valley and Shizuoka.
Silicon Valley continues to attract attention as the center of tech start-ups and innovation. A growing proportion of the most valuable companies in the U.S. are tech companies such as Silicon Valley based tech giants -- Apple, Alphabet, and Facebook. Therefore, many large Japanese enterprises have recently been sending people to accelerate internal innovation, utilizing the Silicon Valley ecosystem. However, many of these Japanese enterprises face common difficulties due to the cultural gap and complicated decision-making processes. In his research, Nishinaka will share some insights into how large Japanese enterprises collaborate with start-ups to accelerate innovation effectively. 
Korea is considered a country with an advanced venture capital industry. In 2017, the amount of newly arranged venture funds was over $4.4 billion USD and the total investment amount is $2.4 billion USD, each setting the highest record respectively. Although, the total size of venture capital investment is rapidly increasing each year along with the support of policy-based funds, it should be noted that the supply of venture capital to start-ups is still not sufficient compared to Korea's market size. In her research Ryou investigates the virtuous cycle of the venture capital ecosystem in the U.S., which has mainly been driven by the private sector. Ryou will present some of her observations of key findings and current issues about the U.S. venture capital ecosystem. 
