Message from Director General of RISTEX
The Government’s fourth Science and Technology Basic Plan will be starting in April 2011, after nearly two years of study. Its major feature is the shift from science and technology policy to science and technology and innovation policy. Since the establishment of the Basic Act on Science and Technology in 1995, the Basic Plan has been set every five years, focusing on strategic scientific and technological fields such as information, biotechnology and nanotechnology. However, the fourth Plan brings a shift in policy with the highly ambitious aim of mobilizing the knowledge and systems of science and technology for solving the problems of society.
Since the Second World War, Japan has consistently followed a hardware-oriented line that if products are good technically, they will sell, achieving economic growth through manufacturing. However, with the rapid shift from an industrial to an information society since the 1990s and globalization, there is heavy pressure to shift away from this model. Recently we seem to have entered an age when design thinking, system thinking, networks that cross sector, organizational, generational and national borders and the global circulation of intellectual capacity are constantly talked about in global society and markets.
In fiscal 2010, the Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX) started the Service Science, Solutions and Foundation Integrated Research Program. This can be said to be a new approach to responding to the shift in government science and technology policy and the shift in distribution process from worldwide knowledge production and value creation. It aims to forecast and discern the specific or latent needs and problems of society, and using actual data and case studies, develop technologies and methodologies for solving problems based on a multidisciplinary approach, which will also feed into the development of a new academic field. In this program it is important to create practical value for society through the cooperation and involvement of researchers and stakeholders in different fields. The key theme of this program is “Value Co-creation”, on both the supplying and receiving sides.
Innovation has been the focus of industry, academia and government worldwide. I believe that its essence, in addition to reductionistic analysis, is shifting towards conceptual ability, the various forms of design, and management, areas in which Japan has tended to be weak. I hope that this program will take the lead in this change and will play a major role in developing the human resources involved.
Tateo ARIMOTO
Director-General, RISTEX/JST
