Category: Uncategorized

TOKYO IS A BUSY, VIBRANT CITY, honest, polite, clean and friendly. I accidentally left my wallet on a coffee table and a client ran down the street to return it to me. The memorable intense rail commute where people are crushed together relies on the absence of pick-pockets. A society that has 1,500 seismic trembles a year naturally seeks safety and predictability in rigid complex social rules. During the day modest, quiet and orderly, they let their hair down in bars at night in large boozy male groups, bonding and rebonding the important societal glue, month after month, year after year. View in LinkedIn

PHOTON THERAPY IS JUST EMERGING AS A GOOD CANCER TREATMENT, after many years of investigation at Harvard Medical School, Mass General Hospital and other places. Unlike other particle therapy, it can be focused and does not burn through the skin on the way in, nor travel beyond the target tumor, leading to much less side effects. The capital investment is enormous because it needs a Synchrotron to generate the beam which is rotated completely around the patient to hit the 3D image of the tumor. In 2010 several centers worldwide came online. View in LinkedIn

CONSUMER BEWARE: MANY PROCESSED FOOD COMPANIES HAVE YOUR POCKET NOT YOUR BACK. This article on the slight of hand around labeling is a good read. http://lnkd.in/UV_z4P View in LinkedIn

TOKYO'S TSUKIJI FISH MARKET IS THE MOST FAMOUS IN THE WORLD. It starts at 5am with shipments of fish from all over the world going under auction. Housed in an area of many football fields, crammed with stalls and dealers and fast moving gas powered trolleys, within 4 hours the entire catch is bagged, priced, iced and in styrofoam crates to distribute through Japan. Venerable institutions like Daiqa-Zushi with the red curtains attract long lines of tourists after fatty tuna belly (chu toro) while the dealers eat meat curries in tiny crowded stalls. A must-experience place! View in LinkedIn

NEAR KAGOSHIMA IN JAPAN IS THE KAMIKAZI MUSEUM, which I visited a few days ago. In this somber place are the letters and personal stories of over 1,000 teenage pilots who died for a cause they were told to believe in. They had wives, children, mothers, and faced certain death. Their last letters were poignant: regrets about not showing enough love, sadness on leaving, joy to be serving, and a strong sense of an afterlife and being present after death. It was deeply moving, and I left feeling very sad for their brave losses. View in LinkedIn

THE JAPANESE AND CATALAN CULTURES HAVE MANY SIMILARITIES. Personally deeply honest and sincere, making friends for life, family-centric and value-centric, with respect for elders; locked both in deep old past traditions and moving into modern worlds; having invested in the Knowledge Revolution, waiting for the Tipping Point from one tech success; struggling with the equation that ambition = greed, and The Nail That Sticks Up Gets Hammered Down; and how to attract and retain experienced entrepreneurs from abroad. And did I mention superlative hosts and dedicated foodies? View in LinkedIn

SAKE, SHOCHU AND BEER ARE JAPANESE STAPLES. It is normal for Japanese people to go to great lengths to entertain their hosts with meals, visits to key sightseeing events, and often involving all senior managers remotely involved in the project. In the West we have consistently done a dreadful job of reciprocating, and poor Japanese visitors often feel slighted and abandoned by our lazy hospitality. This is a missed opportunity to bond and create superb working relationships. View in LinkedIn

WORKING WITH JAPANESE COMPANIES REQUIRES SPECIAL EFFORT. If you go to the trouble to bond with them, really be hospitable, involve senior management, they will invariably make superb partners. They often have life-long jobs, so the champion is unlikely to rotate out like the American counterparts, and this stability gives for long-term relations. Gifts and correct dress and correct manners are essential. Do your homework and understand how to work with your new partner, and it will pay off both ways. View in LinkedIn

WHERE IS THE LOGJAM FOR GOOD CANCER TREATMENTS? Research has been coming up with increasing new ways to treat individual types of cancer, and the FDA has been doing a good job of approval recently. The delivery of care appears very variable, with some centers being very innovative and others not. Our friends in the insurance and public health sectors, the payors, may be more skeptical about innovation than they should be, and thus contribute to the very patchy healthcare picture. View in LinkedIn

THE CURRENT CANCER TREATMENT PARADIGM IS CLEARLY CHANGING, but not fast enough for some. The waste of money is less important than the very personal and immense human tragedy of treatment failures. Dr. Charlie Hsiao, the famous founder of Ivax Pharma and Impax Labs was a good friend, but died after numerous bone marrow transplants. Rational personalized medicine may have changed this outcome, had it been ready then. View in LinkedIn