Random Talks

Masashi Kawamura has an idea lab. In that lab, called PARTY, he and several fellow creatives perform the advertising equivalent of alchemy, fusing raw

Here’s Dave McCaughan in 1986, interviewing at ad giant McCann. Interviewer: So, Mr. McCaughan, I see you’ve been a children’s storyteller . . . a yog

Sometimes a single unlikely idea can have massive impact across the world. Sir Harold Evans, the author of They Made America, describes how frustratio

Few Westerners have delved deeper into the Japanese consumer’s psyche than Bill Hall. Bill started one of Japan’s first specialist healthcare market r

Beth Carroll, an Instructor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Purdue University, highlights the importance of shopping from small local business o

Every well-run NPO needs caring, dynamic and versatile executives like Miho Walker and Amy Moyers. Before joining Living Dreams, Amy spent ten years h

You can think of Toshi Nakamura’s NGO, Kopernik, as an online marketplace offering low tech with a higher purpose. Since 2009, Kopernik—a member of th

Ken Okuyama has spent a lifetime fashioning exotic yet practical things of surpassing beauty. The prizewinning car designer has shaped models for Gene

Suppleness and steely toughness—two seemingly incompatible attributes—describe a supermaterial many have dreamed of. Now Kazuhide Sekiyama and Spiber

Eisuke Tachikawa launched his Wiki web project OLIVE just forty hours after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. The crowdsourcing database gathere

It is estimated that Johnson & Johnson have made an astounding 100 billion Band-Aids since they were invented in 1920. But where did the idea come

If Tetsuya Kaida has his way, we’ll soon be driving ultralight cars built of kelp and transparent vehicles featuring “mood training” dashboards that m

Yoko Ishikura is reinvigorating education and Japan’s economy through various channels to foster creativity, innovation, and learning. With a fo

Inspired by the world renowned annual arts event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, Burning Man has become a global cultural movement with more than

Morinosuke Kawaguchi loves geeks. What’s more, he fashions solid notions for tweaking technology and other products from his close observations of Jap

Corporations and governments regularly ask Chandran Nair how to do business the right way in Asia. Chandran—who built Asia’s top environmental consult