| Shuji Nakamura |
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And concerning universities, there are huge differences between the United States' and Japanese universities. In Japan it is quite unusual for professors in universities to talk about money. And it is also unusual for students to talk about money. In the United States professors who can get money are estimated to be excellent professors. As I have said many times, most of the professors in the engineering faculties in the United States do consultancy for corporations. They are in the faculty of engineering. They get money privately from consulting corporations. They get the money privately - it is their own money. There is no limit on how much they can receive because it is private business. A highly capable professor might consult for 5 to 10 companies. The fees for the consultations add up to a huge amount of money. The amount may be in the region of ten million yen, and all of it is private income. In Japan a professor in a faculty of medicine consults to some drug manufacturing company and get consultation fee, and has to go to jail because of getting illegal gratuities. He is just consulting, but in Japan consulting lands you in jail. The professor is a very capable person, and so the company sends some money as a consultation fee (seen as a bribe in Japan) and asks for his help. Were he an incapable professor no company would asks for consultation. For only capable professors are asked to consultant. In the United States such capable professors are respected, but in Japan they are sent to jail. In this situation professors have no incentive. Even though professors have no incentive themselves, they ask the students to study hard - the students aren't interested. In the United state which professors do students want to study under? The professors who can earn a great number of consulting fee 'bribes' attract the most students. A capable professor gets lots of consulting fees, performs good research and he establishes a venture company. And then he earns huge amount of money by succeeding this venture. Students in the United States can watch and learn naturally how their professors get consultant fees and how their professors establish venture companies. Students learn what is the best way to establish and manage a venture or learn about the venture capital system. After that the students naturally dream of establishing venture company for real, and realizing their 'American Dream.' On the other hand, if Japanese professors do the same as American professors, they go to jail. They do only academic research. Only academic research.
As I am on this tangentc I spoke at a student venturec BLS or something like thatc in the University of Tokyo. A group of people, mainly students of the University of Tokyo, made an organization which would help create venture businesses. I gave a lecture to that group and afterward talked with the students. They are hell bent on establish a venture, but their professor at the University of Tokyo got extremely angry to hear that students were to take part in such an organization. He says that university is a place for academic research and not the place to earn money. He says that to take part in that organization is not permitted. He went as far as saying that if a student in his laboratory takes part in the organization, he would be ordered to leave. So it looks like the students take part in the organization in secret and continue to look into venture businesses. On the other hand, the Japanese government is starting to promote a venture system centered on the University of Tokyo, but the words and the actual intention are not the same. Therefore students get frustrated that whilst the Japanese government promotes venture activity, and students want to create ventures through their organization, the professors themselves are much too conservative and think that such venture activity is not necessary.
In venture company, as I have often said, creative new products can be developed because you can extremely challenging things without any hesitation. The reason why I succeeded in developing the blue LED was simply that I was in such a small enterprise. I didn't enter a big mainstream company - by chance I entered a small enterprise, situated in the countryside around Anan city in Tokushima prefecture, which was just like a venture company. This small company was just like a venture company, and so I could start on an extremely challenging theme simply by getting the permission of the president. So a venture business, where you can attempt research that goes against accepted wisdom, is a good thing. As you know well, Microsoft and such other companies are all venture companies started by students, because, in such venture companies, people can try extremely challenging things and creative new products can be developed. In big enterprises, it is something that is difficult to do. Of course it is not impossible start unconventional research in a big enterprise, but a big company is principally a manufacturing company. And in such a big enterprise, when the company starts working on a blue LED, or similar new theme, people will without fail hold a big meeting and set up a project team for it. In big enterprises many groups were researching the blue LED. After I succeeded in making a blue LED, I had the chance to talk with people from these big enterprises. They told me that they formed project teams, with about 10 researchers, in order to achieve a blue LED, and then firstly they discussed what was the best material for it. Typically at those meetings nine out of ten of the researchers would propose that ZnSe was the best material for blue LED. This ZnSe could produce very good crystals at that time and so common sense said that ZnSe was the most suitable material for it. If one foolish individual suggested selecting GaN, he would be told he was talking nonsense. He would be asked, angrily, whether he knew how difficult this crystal was to produce - how rough it was, and would be told that he should go back to university to study again. Accordingly such a person naturally adopted the common view. Moreover the hanko (signature stamp) of many senior managers was necessary to permit a new project to start and so the concept of a new project was pushed toward accepted wisdom. Therefore, though this is perhaps extreme, I think that creative new products can succeed only in a venture company where an individual can concentrate on the new project without any censure. I think that big enterprises are about everybody cooperating to manufacture things, and so the creativity of venture companies must be cultivated more and more. I have digressed a lot from my original topic, but at this point I would like to conclude my talk. Thank you.
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