Tokyo FinTech Meetup #2 - Open Innovation & Design Thinking

"Innovation is more an art than a science." Is that true? What are the techniques that both incumbents and FinTech challengers can apply to direct the process of innovation? For our second Tokyo FinTech Meetup, we are pleased to welcome Tim Denley, KPMG Partner, and a seasoned veteran in helping his financial services clients transform through Open Innovation and Design Thinking.

Agenda

6:30pm Registration & Welcome

6:45pm Presentation: Open Innovation & Design Thinking

7:30pm Fireside Chat, Q&A

8:00pm Closing

Language for this meetup will be ENGLISH.

Background

It is a question that is very interesting to discuss: Are Japanese creative? Here are three viewpoints:

An Adobe study in 2012 found that globally, Japan is regarded the most creative country, except by the Japanese themselves

https://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pdfs/Adobe_State_of_Create_Global_Benchmark_Study.pdf

A blogger found equally that Japanese people do not consider themselves creative, and offered the following explanations:

• There is probably a bit humility distorting the results

• It used to be Sony that was offering new products to the world. The past ten-so years have seen Silicon Valley leading and Japan playing catch-up

• Japan’s software side remains weak. Japanese websites are a prime example. Games are the exception. But games aside, I cannot think of a widely-used Japanese software of app that has gained traction outside of Japan besides LINE

• Entrepreneurial culture remains small (but it certainly exists and is growing). Some have called the situation in Japan an “entrepreneurship vacuum” and notes that it had the lowest rate of new enterprises appearing in the whole OECD

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-creativity/

Organizations like the highly recognized and successful Canvas are focused on bringing creativity into the Japanese school curriculum, or augment it.

http://canvas.ws/

There is lots to discuss!

Tim Denley

Tim is the Partner at KPMG Japan leading the disruptive innovation and digital practice with almost 20 years of creative innovation across technology and business in Japan, the US and Australia. Tim’s career spans video games, IT infrastructure, finance, business consulting, digital transformation and innovation, with a wide range of skills and experiences. For the last ten years, Tim has been entirely focused on advising and supporting clients in the financial services industry, especially insurance and capital markets clients operating in Japan and globally.