In 2009, I started the G1 Summit as the Japanese version of the Davos Forum. The concept was to change Japan by bringing together next generation of Japanese leaders from various sectors whom would become prime ministers, Nobel laureates, billionaires, and top business executives.

This meeting has produced three Cabinet members already: Seiji Maehara, Motohisa Furukawa, and Goshi Hosono. Another participant, Shinya Yamanaka is nominated for a Nobel Prize every year. From venture and other business circles, young billionaires like Hiroshi Mikitani and Yoshikazu Tanaka have attended this meeting.

GLOBIS’ 2009 survey of creativity in leading countries revealed something very interesting. Instead of such traditional bastions of creativity as France and Italy, we found that the world considers Japan to be the most creative country on par with the United States.*

Japan is home to a unique culture and many creative products and services. These include anime, manga, computer games, music, movies, drama and other forms of creative content, the young people’s “cute” fashion of Shibuya and Harajuku, healthy Japanese cuisine and diet, safe and delicious food products, and the high-performance consumer electronics of Akihabara. The world looks to these components as “Cool Japan” with fascination and admiration.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun headline warned, “China’s High-Speed Train: Preparations Underway for Patent Application in the US—New Conflict May Emerge in Japan-China Relations.” More recently, Google made the news by paying top price to acquire Motorola’s mobile terminals business. It was reported that Google was not after Motorola’s hardware or software, but simply wanted to acquire Motorola’s cache of patents and intellectual property.

More than eleven years have already passed since the news flash that sounded like a bad joke. “Prime Minister Mori refers to IT as ‘it.’”

The following year, the Basic Act on the Formation of an Advanced Information and Telecommunications Network Society came into force in January 2001. Article 20 of this law states that necessary action shall be “taken to actively promote IT in administration, such as increased use of the Internet and other advanced information and telecommunications networks in the Government of Japan and in local public entities, in order to increase convenience for citizens and to help improve simplicity, efficiency and transparency of administrative operations.”

I am pleased to announce that some panels at the G1 Global will be streamed LIVE at GLOBIS.JP. The following is a description of the G1 Global Conference and a list of the panels that will be shown live. Although some of you may not be able to participate this year, we do hope that you will be able to get an idea of what top global leaders will discuss by viewing some of the panels live online.

“Why don’t we have more entrepreneurial companies in Japan?”, I am frequently asked. My response is a very simple one, as is my prescription for solving this problem. 1) Create an environment in which everyone wants to become entrepreneurs, and 2) appropriately educate the entrepreneurial wannabes. Nothing could be simpler than this.

In the past, the Ministry of the Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency have implemented various support and assistance programs for encouraging entrepreneurs. But the whole approach of “assisting” entrepreneurs will not give rise to entrepreneurs. Even when something is born of these programs, frequently they are weak and lacking in dynamism and strength, and seldom do they grow into large entities. What is important is to have a concept of “nurturing” such an environment where entrepreneurs will naturally appear in large numbers without any outside assistance.

In launching “100 Actions” Creating a Vision of Japan, I first presented a list of Basic Principles, the second of which was “Economic Growth through Creativity and Change.” We should be reminded that national power is founded on a strong economy. Without a strong economy, it is not possible to successfully manage the affairs of the nation in a sustainable fashion.

Weakening of the economy sets off a vicious cycle in which industries decline, jobs are lost, tax revenues drop, government finances collapse, and investment in R&D and human resources are reduced.

At the 2011 ASKA Conference, Mr. Hirokazu Kiuchi, Representative Director of Wagoen, an agricultural union corporation operating in Chiba Prefecture, said “Japan’s agriculture will be strengthened if Japan joins the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, and it is necessary to join TPP in order to improve the competitiveness of Japanese agriculture”.

Japan is undergoing population decline (lower birth rates and aging society). These demographic changes will push the Japanese economy into the realm of low or negative growth. Consequently, Japan’s relative position in the world will inevitably decline over the medium to long terms. In the early 1990s, the Japanese economy accounted for nearly 20 percent of global GDP. However, during fiscal 2011, this ratio will drop below the 10-percent mark. It is estimated that this ratio will stand at around 5 percent in 2020.

On August 5, 2011, Masayoshi Son and I had a head-to-head debate on the subject of Japan’s energy policies. In the past Japan has gone to war (the World War II) because of energy(oil) blockade. As the debate concerned this very important issue of energy, it attracted a large audience via the Internet.

Japan has an energy self-sufficiency ratio of 4 percent (2006). Even if nuclear power is added to domestic energy, self-sufficiency amounts to only 19 percent. This is the lowest among all leading industrialized countries. Moreover, this is extremely low even compared to Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio of 40 percent. Japan faces serious geopolitical risks because it is highly dependent on a particular region of the world for its energy supplies. The most fundamental principle in minimizing the risk to the nation’s energy security is diversification. This is the lesson that must be learned from Japan’s past error of entering World War II and from the defeat in this war. Diversifying our sources of imported natural resources and energy is an absolute must for Japan.

It has taken mankind several hundred years to develop what we call the “mass media.” During this time, the volume of available information has increased explosively and real-time access to information has been enhanced through the development of newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Today, mass media is undergoing dramatic changes with the emergence of the Internet and social media (Internet and social media are intentionally separated here).

The Internet and social media, such as SNS and twitter have been the cause of truly dynamic innovations due to their low cost, two-way, realtime, and viral nature of transmission. With the evolution of social media, large numbers of people can directly access information without the intermediation of the mass media. Moreover, messages can be directly transmitted and delivered to an unlimited number of people.