I will be going back to Okinawa shortly for another workshop in support of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology’s goal of developing an R&D cluster in Okinawa.
I really enjoy the opportunity to contribute to this initiative — Okinawa is a technologically-underdeveloped prefecture within a very technological developed country (Japan), so the expectations and available levels of support are far greater than those in other similarly underdeveloped regions. But, advancing Okinawa’s R&D capacity is not a simple matter of cash infusions or simple policy changes. Interventions must be directed at the unique challenges and opportunities within Okinawa, and must be tempered to Okinawa’s capacity to absorb them — you cannot create an R&D cluster overnight.
A summary of public portion of the first workshop is available on OIST’s site, and my thoughts were posted in the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology.
I look forward to this next workshop, and to sharing my perspectives on it.