Today, we will discuss the future of DX (Digital Transformation) in the post-COVID-19 society, in the context of “Beyond Fusion.” “Beyond Fusion,” or “CHO YU GO” in Japanese, is the theme of this Open Research Forum 2020.
The reason why we have this concept, is since the establishment of SFC, we have played an important role in the interdisciplinary studies. Beyond that, we have had an important role for “Fusion.” President West, now in 2020, in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, what do you imagine the term “Beyond Fusion” means from Cisco's point of view?
It really is about how we leverage the power of partnership across businesses, government, industry, and academia to help solve tomorrow's most important problems, to bring together really diverse thinking, creativity, expertise and capabilities to create new possibilities, and to drive possibly a new era of innovation and growth starting from and in Japan in helping to create truly an inclusive future for everybody. Through all of this, and through this partnership, we bring to bear the full power of technology to help companies, communities, and the entire country thrive.
Professor Murai, how about at Keio University? What do you imagine with the term “Beyond Fusion?”
SFC was created in 1990 as the very first attempt from Keio University to have an interdisciplinary study. Most universities, including Keio University had multiple separate disciplinary departments, which was the most common structure of universities at the time. Keio’s attempt in 1990 was a little bit earlier than any other universities all over the world. The point was interdisciplinary studies. The important thing is this is exactly about the fusion. Right? That's what SFC has been aiming at.
It’s about how we can work together for the new era, to come up with solutions for the new issues and dynamic changes. So, the fusion of the studies in terms of academics was very important, and I think we successfully achieved that inside the campus. You mentioned the collaboration among the academic, business and the public sectors. That's exactly what we've been working on. From the SFC point of view, Cisco is the business sector, but then we're also working together for the public sectors. That is also a kind of fusion that exists.
So now COVID-19.
There are two things: one is digital technology. This is very much a key for creating this fusion. Beyond any kind of silos in existing society, connecting them is digital data, digital information, and digital network. That has been the expertise and the basics of SFC for more than 30 years. This is where we're going to be discussing about DX, but the digital technology is a key for this fusion. The second thing is that during COVID-19, we are leapfrogging how the digital fusion could be created. Therefore, it is a really important historical time for the future as well.
From the viewpoint of business, and from the viewpoint of the university, education or academia, we would like to discuss the changes we experienced.
President West, what are the changes you experienced at Cisco during this COVID-19?
I mean, if you look at where I am right now, I'm working from home and that would have never happened quite honestly for a session like this before COVID-19. We've seen changes in everything. 90% of our workforce, if not more, is working from home. Although we allowed that beforehand, it didn't happen often. And now, for the last year, the majority of our workforce is working remotely.
Our whole cyber security thought processes are changed because now the threat landscape is so much different. People are working at home on their own devices and interacting day in and day out on projects, initiatives, engineering, design, and all of that.
So, things have changed dramatically on how we work, and we've also seen changes in our customers, especially in Japan. Before I was the president for Asia, I was the president for Japan. So, I got to spend 3 years in Japan, and I've seen digitization move at an accelerated pace over the last year. I think I've seen 5, possibly 10 years’ worth of digitization happen in a year where customers are trying to figure out how they use new technologies, how to support workers remotely and still drive the productivity that they need, how they secure their workloads, how they move workloads to the cloud because they're looking for more dynamic and agile ways of working. All of this has happened through the pandemic.
Especially for many of you on the call and watching this video, you probably had to take classes remotely and do remote learning and figure out how to interact with each other and collaborate on projects using technology, when beforehand you were probably in the classroom together. You went out for a drink afterwards. You brainstormed. In terms of the work that you're doing now, you're having to do all of it through technology and digital mechanisms. We've seen health care providers providing telehealth and doing remote assessments for COVID testing.
We've seen financial institutes use technologies and services to be able to interact with their customers differently than they ever have before. So, I think this pandemic in regard to digitization has transformed everything that we do. Every aspect of our life, even our social interactions, are much different today than they were yesterday. I have seen just massive changes in my business, my customer's business, and our partners business and even in my children's lives. I've seen massive changes, taking cello lessons online, tutors online, doing homework and collaborating using digital technologies with students all over the place. The lifestyle, the interaction, and everything has changed over the last year as a result of this pandemic.
Taken at Mita Campus
Thank you very much.
COVID-19 is testing us equally. No matter what kind of job you have ? whether we are students, professors, workers, self-employed. Digital technology is a new opportunity, or a new tool to innovate our life and to evolve our life to fit that kind of a requirement.
I think we're learning too. In some cases, we're also learning where we like, and where we don't like digital technologies. I think people have learned that maybe there's no real substitution. We’re human beings, and we're social by nature and people like to socialize and interact with one another. The serendipitous conversation to ad hoc conversations that happen, especially for research, creativity and innovation ? people miss that, and they need it in their lives. So, it's a matter of how do you do both? How do you embrace both digital and the traditional face to face interactions and capabilities?
I remember Cisco was introducing the first video conferencing system at the Cisco headquarters. They showed me how to use it. It was, a little bit of course, expensive. I mean, it was a high-end equipment. I remember my discussion with Cisco at that time was on how to convince people to use it.
But now, as they said, it's for everybody. My parents are in the elderly care facility. To protect the elderly people, there’s almost no way to meet them during COVID-19. Amazingly, they started to use the video conferencing system, so the family member can meet with those elderly people in the facility. Even those super elderly people can access the video conferencing system. I mean, everybody is going to be participating in Internet communications and they are benefitting from the digital technology. That kind of thing has been discussed for a long time.
We discussed these topics in 2019, because 2019 was UNIX’s 50th anniversary, the ARPANET’s 50th anniversary, and the web’s 30th anniversary. That's three anniversaries for the internet grated technology in 2019. So, from two years ago, we've been talking about the world 30 years from now, and 50 years from now. In Japan, the IT strategy started in the year 2000. Therefore, 2020, is the 20th anniversary for this country’s Internet strategy policies.
It's a very important time, and that we have been prepared for the kind of next future design before COVID-19. Then suddenly, COVID-19 came and had a very strong impact. If you can ask anybody, “can you imagine the COVID-19 life without the Internet,” nobody will be able to imagine it. This is a very natural platform for the society now. Because of this situation, every single person on this planet started to care about how digital technology can be used for the better, and what the issue with it is.
So, this is great. Not only was there change, but diverse amount of people started to think about what's going to be the future of digital technology.
I totally agree. You've been an advocate for decades for Internet technology: the growth and the development, the advancement of Internet technologies, as well as security around Internet technologies.
I think we are just starting to see how we can really start to embrace and use Internet technologies through digital and social interactions today, and I think it's going to continue to accelerate. It’s amazing how we develop these technologies and these services to allow incredible digital interaction, but also augment real interactions in terms of when we come together face to face.
Our University grad students are graduates that have come to Cisco but have never been to the Cisco office. So, they graduated from university last year and their entire engagement and interaction as a new Cisco employee has been through digital technologies. What they tell me all the time is that they can't wait to go to the office. These are recent graduates who know technology, who have created their own digital social profiles and are now telling me at the same time, “I love the digital technology, I love the capabilities, we have to work productively from anywhere, but I can't wait to go see people and meet our employees and visit the office.” I think as we evolve this model of digital plus physical and the combination of both and integrate both into life, work, school, industry, research, science, all of it, it's going to be really critical to figure out that balance of how you evolve and grow digital, and also the social interactions that people want to have in real time, face to face together.
Dave, I want to make sure that the audience in here of the Open Research Forum, understand, Cisco's contribution in this time during COVID-19. I was impressed about the high quality of a video images coming from home to the Internet bound, rather than the Internet to home bound, which is very much a change of the traffic of the Internet. Many people said that it was not expected.
All family members are generating high-quality of a video streams to the Internet. This was a kind of amazing change from the traffic engineering point of view. But then in this country, almost nobody complains about the video streaming situation. They suddenly started it, and it worked! A complaint I hear often, is that the digital society in this country is far behind the other countries. The infrastructure level is so good. I want everybody to understand that this country went through a digital transformation of the basic infrastructure from a telephone system, based to the Internet, especially the kind of fiber infrastructure, and IPv6. Then NTT decided to work with Cisco to have the fiber infrastructure for the next generation. This benefit of the good infrastructure during the COVID 19. I think the Cisco collaboration with this country, for the infrastructure of the Internet, has been very successful. I would like to congratulate Cisco. This is a basics of a new startup.
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Thank you so much. I agree with you completely. You know, the world did change overnight. Instead of downloading videos and streaming videos from Netflix and others, now you're uploading real time video, in high definition. It has completely changed the flow of traffic of the Internet. Instead of bringing it down and pulling it down to the home, now, you're moving it from the home to many different locations across Japan.
The one thing that has been very, very interesting is, sometimes Japan gets rated low on digital.
It is very high on Internet access, mobile broadband and it shows because when the country needed to work from home and change work style overnight, the infrastructure was able to support all of it. When you go to many countries around the world that did not happen. In fact, the infrastructure was overwhelmed, and people's experience and productivity dropped dramatically when they had to work from home. In Japan, that’s not the case. For the majority of us that have had to work and interact remotely, sometimes, maybe you'll see latency issues or there'll be some congestion, but for the most part, everyone could connect, everyone could interact, everyone could do their job, everyone could learn regardless of whether they were doing it from home, at the Starbucks, or on 4G in their car. It didn't matter. They were able to work and communicate, and it speaks so highly of the investment and infrastructure and the importance of it to drive digital transformation. That's why I am so excited about Japan's digital transformation and the opportunity.
Infrastructure and technology aren’t in the way. It is more around culture processes, operations, even leadership in some aspect about how we embrace digital technology.
The reality is the foundation is incredibly strong across this country.
You are responsible for the other Pacific countries as well. Right? What do you think about Japan's role and relationship to the other part of the Asia?
I'm checking the Internet population, and the Americas has 80% to 90% and Europe as well. Asia has just 56% of the population participating on the Internet at this time. The world population has more than 65% participation. Therefore, from the people participating on the Internet, the room for growth of the Internet operation as a part of the Internet inclusion, is in Asia Pacific, right? What is the role specially, making you different from the other regions and so that can regional view?
Digital inclusion is different across all the countries in Asia, and I think that's why you see the disparities in numbers across so many of the Asian countries.
At the same time, COVID19 has forced massive investment around infrastructure, broadband access and digital inclusion across most of societies across Asia. I think Japan can innovate and help others be much more successful in using and embracing digital technologies. Japan does an incredible job around innovation, around technology, services, quality, reliability, all of those things in terms of the development of next generation products, such as robotics.
I would love, as we see digital inclusion increase across Asian countries and society, to see Japan help.
And I think Japan can help and play a massive role in helping countries evolve, helping them, digitize their practices, developing and delivering the next wave of innovation and capabilities to address sustainability, water shortages, or anything in terms of what we talk about in regard to society 5.0, right here in Japan, how we can deliver technologies and capabilities to all the regions across Asia. I think Japan can play a much bigger role and should play a much bigger role. I think it's absolutely going to be needed because Asia will be the economic center of the world in the next 10 to 20 years. You receive a shift happening. Clearly it's going to lead the world in population, but as this region continues to grow, it's going to be our responsibility to ensure digital inclusion, innovation capabilities, and as it becomes the economic center of the entire world, Japan should, and will play a big role in that.
Let me share some of the activities at SFC and the 5-year plan for the future contingency. When I was the Dean of the SFC campus, we started short term visits from the Asian students to visit SFC. Usually, the university system sponsors long term students from abroad, but we kind of changed the university wide rule, so that we can issue students visas for even a short period of time, such as 3 month or 6 months.
We had a program called the EBA (Evidence-Based Approach) at SFC so that the student can visit and study for a short period of time. At the same time, they can participate in internships in a Japanese company. We prepared survival Japanese language classes, so that they can quickly learn Japanese, go work and study, and bring it all back to their own universities.
We did that for 5 years in the past, and it was very successful. We're going to be funded for another 5 years starting from the year 2021 to collect and move the students to any place in Asia hosted by the local university, in the field of work, internship, and short stay. They will work together and try to solve the common issues about the environment, health, and issues in Asia.
That's very important but the Asian university partners are going to be very important as well. The reason is the time zone. If you share a time zone, the real time discussion can be shared. So, this is a kind of a time zone issue. Take 5 hours for example: 5 PM and noon, or 10 AM and 3 PM. 5 hours means the East Coast of Africa to Hawaii. That's 5 hours of time. SFC thinks that the time zones are going to be very important in inter-university collaborations, in Japan, Australia or the entire Asia.
We can share the real time activities using this technology, right? We’re going to invite you to participate in our planning starting from 2021 this year in April. We probably have to start with the online version of that EBA program, but we're going to move the students around Asia as well.
Home in Japan
I think it's fantastic, Professor Murai.
The interesting thing about that is, I think, the way that you import talents, bringing talent in from others and educating them, in some cases, they'll stay, which is never a bad thing. You see that other cases, they'll go back, and they'll help others grow, and then when you are able to reach out virtually and share the experience of going through education in Japan, even if you're in Australia, Thailand, or in Singapore. I think many of tomorrow's problems are going to be solved through the University education process. The entrepreneurial spirit will arise as people grow through education. The ideas and creativity that they come up with the collaboration between countries and individuals bringing in rich diverse cultures and understanding solve tomorrow's problems.
I am convinced it's not industry that will solve tomorrow's problems. The tomorrow's problems and the things that need to be addressed will probably start to be addressed in academia. It will be the diversity of thought, the creativity, many different cultures and beliefs coming together to solve all of tomorrow's problems. I think it's the work that Keio is doing through ORF and everything else that will make this possible. We look at today and we're all living in this pandemic world and it's easy to get down, but when you think about it, we have got so much positive to look forward to in the world and, I firmly believe it's going to be programs like this that are going to solve the hardest, most complicated, most difficult problems to solve in the world. It's going to be the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity and innovation of your students and them working with industry, or going into industry, or working in government or with government that is the answer to all of those difficult problems that we face or will face in the future.
That has been exactly the kind of the educational principle of Shonan Fujisawa Campus for a long time. The most popular format of the class at the SFC, is called “group work,” and instead of the professor teaching some knowledges and the information to the students, the professor just raises a difficult issue. Usually, the professor is facing this issue, and they are kind of just outsourcing the problem to the students. The students have to make a group by themselves, and with the diversity of their talent, and the strengths of each of the students, they are able to attack the issue.
Taking that result is a much better than a professor thinking about the issue himself. This is kind of taking a bow to all the students for their diversity of our talents working together. From the professor’s point of view, that is going to be a good learning opportunity for the students.
This was necessary from the starting point of SFC, because this is an interdisciplinary study.
This is happening on a global scale, beyond the border and beyond the all the silos of society, where they are working together to solve the issues. COVID-19 is an obvious example. Not a single disciplinary study, knowledge or expertise is going to solve the issue, so we need to work together.
Thank you very much for the interesting, inspiring talk. Particularly, I was impressed by the digital inclusion discussion, especially in the entire Asian society with a small range of time zones so that we can collaborate with each other closely.
The last part of this session is that the majority of this audience is actually the younger generation, like high school students, or prospecting SFC students. Why don't we have some messages to those younger generation to encourage not only their research, but also to encourage them through their life during this COVID-19 situation and even post COVID-19 era. So, Dave please.
Thank you so much. We're all making sure that everybody is dealing with this virtual fatigue of being online and some people are alone. So, wellness is absolutely critical and fundamental to us as human beings. For all the students out there, it doesn't matter what age, I think the world is a very positive thing. Life is a very positive thing.
I think it's an incredible opportunity as you look forward to really look at the problems that tomorrow is going to face and figure a career path and an opportunity for you to really have that positive impact on society and to really influence what we do, what we accomplish, what we need to accomplish, and just how to make the world a better place. I do think for those that are thinking about areas like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, we have so many skill shortages in Japan, in cyber security, AI, data science, digital scientist ? an incredible array of skills that are needed for tomorrow and those skills will help not only advance you and the companies you work for, or the institutes that you teach at, but will truly help Japanese society move forward and advance. It's going to be the skills that we bring tomorrow that will really define Japan's future in this global economic landscape that's now moving into Asia. I think for many of you on this call and watching the video, it's your opportunity to really influence and to really drive change and to help Japan truly transform as a country. I'd love to see as many of you as possible, really embrace what the future needs and how we need to address the problems of the future and look towards both technology and the arts, whatever your passion is, to help go solve those problems and I would tell you no matter what field you go into sciences or liberal arts, technology will be at the heart of what you need to do. Thinking about how you use all of those skills, technologies, and the problems that we have to go solve to really get very creative and innovative and to challenge the norm to come up with the new ideas and the concepts to make tomorrow greater. I hope, through this process, you'll aspire to go to Keio university, aspire to be part of this program, aspire to be very diverse and unique in your thinking to really help us address, the challenges that we'll see in the world.
Thank you very much. Professor Murai, your message?
This is a very interesting time in the history truly, like Dave said, the kind that happens once in 50 years, 100 years, or several 100 years. This is a very historical timing, as we suffered through the global pandemic over the year. The message to the people listening to this session, is that now because of this historical time, the existing structure of the world may be changing. We can and need to do a lot of things from scratch. History is telling us that challenges in entrepreneurship is going to be the key for the future. You don't have to believe in the existing values of the society. You can think freely and believe in yourself. You can do whatever you want. Therefore, the important thing is to believe in yourself and enjoy whatever you are doing. It doesn't have to be a study. It doesn't have to be a research, but whatever you like, with your passion. It's a very interesting place, Shonan Fujisawa Campus, and a very interesting time in the history you are living, so I really hope that that the future development creation is going to be in your hand.
Thank you very much, Professor Murai.
We are always in the world that has been changing frequently, especially in this COVID-19 era. We are all encouraged to have a free mind, believe in ourselves and do whatever you want to do. That is the key message of this session. In this session we welcomed President Dave West from Cisco Systems and Professor Jun Murai from Keio University. Thank you very much for your participation.
