Announcements

Keynote Speakers

CHIHIRO WATANABE

CHIHIRO WATANABE A leading scientist of technology and innovation management and the chair of the International Committee of the Japan Society for Research Policy and Innovation Management, Professor Chihiro Watanabe plays a prominent role in advancing research into how innovation and institutional systems evolve together in a global society. Watanabe taught at Tokyo Institute of Technology and has held leading positions in the Japanese government’s initiative of the 21st Century Center of Excellence Program, aimed at creating world-standard research and education bases in Japan and carried out by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Watanabe was a leader of the initiative’s “Science of Institutional Management of Technology” program (2004-2009) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Currently, he is a Professor Emeritus of that Institute and manages the university’s Watanabe Laboratory, named in his honor. In addition to his current positions, Watanabe is a guest research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna. He was a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore and University of Jyvaskyla in Finland (where he held a research professorship).Prior to joining the academia, he worked for 26 years at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in the Japanese government. With his research and policy making experiences, he is focusing his studies on the intersection of technology management, industrial policy and society, and institutional innovation. Watanabe has authored or co-authored eight books and nearly 200 scientific articles. His most recent book, co-authored with Yuji Tou and Pekka Neittaanmaki, is entitled Transforming the Socio Economy with Digital Innovation, published by Elsevier in May. Recipient of seven honorary awards, Watanabe was selected as one of the world’s top seven researchers in the field of management of technology and innovation by the International Association of Management of Technology (IAMOT) in April 2009, and was also identified as one of the world’s top researchers in the field of innovation analysis in management of technology by IEEE IEEM (Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management section of IEEE) in December 2009. Watanabe holds a bachelor of engineering degree in urban planning and a Ph.D. in arts and science (with a dissertation on “An Empirical Analysis of the Inducing Factor of Japanese Technological Innovation”), both from the University of Tokyo.