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Prof. K. Ohno's Homepage Updated July 26, 2011 GRIPS Office: E410 Email in Japan Email in Vietnam |
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Kaizen is factory improvement technique aimed at mindset change and continuous effort. The idea was imported from the US to Japan in the 1950s where it was further developed. Japan now provides kaizen assistance to many countries across cultures and regions. Introducing Kaizen in Africa
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Lectures
Policy Design and Implementation in Developing
Countries
Economic Development of Japan
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Recent materials Technology transfer of Meiji Japan
ADB Annual Meeting seminars
I discussed how middle income countries can move up further through policy learning based on systematic review of international best policy practices. Reports on policy study missions The GRIPS Development Forum visited three governments to learn how they create industrial policies. All make policies highly effectively but in quite different ways. Also see Taiwan news below.
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Research Topics 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
PM Meles is serious about technology transfer and asked GRIPS to provide English materials on concrete East Asian experiences (we already transmitted them). He requires FDI and ODA industrial projects to offer training, technology learning and maximum local procurement. He is also interested in refining MSE strategy and reviewing Ethiopia's export promotion policy. We will take up concrete issues in which Ethiopia is interested. We may mobilize other East Asian experts, such as Koreans, to participate in this effort. slides
On May 3-6, the Asian Development Bank Annual Meeting was held in Hanoi. I was the keynote speaker for the Vietnam Business Summit co-hosted by ADB and the Ministry of Planning and Investment of Vietnam. I talked about how Vietnam could avoid a middle income trap and sustain growth in the future (slides). As many member countries graduate from poverty reduction and low income, ADB is interested in developing new policy initiatives for middle-income Asia.
I was also a panelist at another ADB-hosted seminar on "Middle-Income Asia: Policy Challenges Ahead "together with Robert Mundell (Columbia U.), Ravi Kanbur (Cornel U.), Dwight Perkins (Harvard U.) and Changyong Rhee (ADB chief economist). I argued that a middle income trap is a special form of developmental trap where growth depends only on given advantages and not continuous effort to upgrade human capital (my speech).
My current research is collection and comparison of international best practices in industrial policy making (content, method, procedure and organization). Whether it is SME promotion, TVET or industrial park development, some countries do much better than others. It is not because of what they do, but how they do it. Concrete details are very important. There are many East Asian governments that manage industrial policy very well but they do it in very different ways. Latecomers should learn systematically from their rich experiences to strengthen state capability to create policy packages most suitable for local context of each country. I call this policy learning and I am writing a book about it. As part of this project, my team consisting of Japanese, Vietnamese and Ethiopian researchers visited Taiwan in late March to study its policy making methods. GRIPS Development Forum and Vietnam Development Forum have already made similar trips to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Korea in the last 1.5 years. taiwan report
I was invited by Asian Development Bank (Manila headquarters) to give a lecture on Vietnam's middle income trap and exchange views with interested ADB officials. As many Asian countries graduate from low income and join the middle income group, traditional aid for poverty reduction, education and health becomes less important and building policy capability to tackle new challenges becomes crucial. ADB is exploring ways to modify its policies, and my talk was the first in ADB's new lecture series on Asian Development Policy. ADB will take up the same issue when it hosts its annual meeting in Hanoi in early May 2011. |
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Kaizen
(June 2011)
In the last two
years, the GRIPS Development Forum and JICA have held quarterly industrial policy dialogue
with the Ethiopian government. Discussions are conducted in three levels (prime
minister, ministers and state ministers, and operational level). This
time, we discussed Ethiopia's five-year plan, JICA's kaizen project phases
1&2, international comparison of national productivity movements, Taiwan's
innovation drive, and possibility of creating a new inter-ministerial
coordination mechanism. The eighth session in May 2011 was supposed to be
our last but PM Meles and Industrial Minister Mekonnen strongly asked
GRIPS and JICA to continue the bilateral policy dialogue - so we cannot
end it. 
The Developmental
Leadership Program (DLP) is a policy-oriented research project headed by
Prof. Adrian Leftwich (York University) and supported by a number of
donors (esp. AusAID) and development NGOs. DLP starts with the premisethat
the World Bank's good governance drive has failed to produce any
results in promoting developmental states. DLP proposes that donors and
international NGOs “work politically.” This does not mean toppling a
dictatorial regime or imposing Western style democracy on latecomers.
Rather, it argues that no aid project can remain neutral to the domestic
politics of developing countries, and donors should behave consciously and
strategically and at the same time subtly and quietly in full recognition
of this influence. The most important goal for donors should be provision
of forum, logic, finance and technology for the expansion of developmental
agenda and players and the elimination of predatory ones. I participated
this meeting near Frankfurt as the only representative from Asia.
In
London, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the School
of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University, co-hosted a
two-day conference on Japan's development assistance approach. The main
topics were capacity building (industrial human resource) and
infrastructure (transport and power). I was invited to discuss what Africa
can learn from East Asian experiences. I argued that it was not individual
policy measures but policy making mindset and method that must be learned.
Another point was that some projects, such as creating a leading
engineering university or comprehensive regional development, take time to
produce results, even up to 40 years, and Japan is usually patient
enough to see and assist their long-term growth instead of monitoring
performance in 2-3 year cycle.