Day8: Shuji Nakamura

The reason: The innovation with anger

Shuji Nakamura will be awarded the Novel prize 2014 for physics with Isamu AkasakiPreview and Hiroshi Amano for having invented energy efficient and environment friendly lighting source.  He was born in Ikata, Japan. He got a Ph.D from University of Tokushima, Japan. Now, he is a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA. He did great commitment to make blue LED (light-emitting diode). Since the red and green LED had been made already, the blue LED was needed to make the new white light source.

• The speed of innovation

There are great inspirations by knowing his ways to study. One point I would like to make here is his speed of innovation. Why has he succeeded faster than anyone and any company else? For the study, he has to make single crystal by using so called FZ (Floating zone) method. The machine for the FZ method is commercial so that everyone can do that. But, the point is he did everything remodeling, repairing, maintenance, using by himself. He remodeled the machine in the morning and tried to grow the single crystal in the afternoon. Since many people tried to remodel with the makers it took one or two months to finish, however he did everything by himself. That’s why he innovate anyone and any company else. This is good hint for me, I should not give up learning how to fix the machine I am in charge of otherwise I cannot innovate faster than anyone else.

• Innovation with anger

On the interview right after Novel community announced, he said “The anger was my incentive. I can’t do anything without anger”

One of surprising events for him is about his compensation of his invention. He was researcher Nichia Chemical at that time. Nichia paid him just $200 for this invention. Can you believe that? He was furious because the company had earned worth $600 million by using his invention. He went to litigate against Nichia. People said that if you go to a trial for this invention you will not be able to be nominated at Novel Prize. Why don’t you stop meaningless fight? But he did. Firstly a district court approve his claiming $200 million for his invention though, the high court rejected. Since the money matter cannot be argued at the Supreme Court, Nichia and he had finally agreement which Nichia pays around $8 million to Nakamura. He said “This is devastating failure, the juridical system in Japan is just sucks” and also said “This is the defeat of all engineers and scientists who is working at company in Japan” And then, unfortunately, he chose to go to the U.S. to get freedom to study. This event is very important to me.

• Read and Do better than what you read.

One of important person for him is Ogawa who gave him to opportunity to study even though company might lose a lot of money. There is an important quote from him from the book “Brilliant” by Bob Johnstone.

Book learning was no good: country boys like him were more practical. “If you study books, you only believe what is written in them, and you can’t go on to the next step. Just reading books and copying what’s in them is no good. Read the books, then stop and think, and you’ll be able to do something better than what’s in the book.” Asked how he came up with his own inventions, Ogawa replied, “By thinking hard and working hard. Everybody used to do it by the book, without thinking. But that way, you can’t make any improvements.” Bob Johnstone. Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology (Kindle Locations 237-240). Kindle Edition.

This is kind of warning to me, I am scholar who is professional of study. But reading is not job but just the part of job. Only when we create something new or beyond, the study means something to us. For the scientist like me, the goal is creating papers. What we have to do is contributing for the society and the world by producing new knowledge.

• The entrepreneurship

 I believe that Japanese have to focus more on the entrepreneurship. I am not sure that this is because cultural background though, Japanese are not taking risk so much lately. The young college graduations want to big companies, like Toyota, Sony. It seems that they are afraid of something to be failure.  Japanese used to have great entrepreneurships. However we might lose it sometime or somewhere. I did not have the entrepreneurships when I was in college. I just wanted to be a scientist. But, I would like young people to have more entrepreneurship in Japan. I would like to contribute to make the pave way of getting the entrepreneurship back in Japan by encouraging, investing, or however I come up with for young people. The following quote is also the book “Brilliant” by Bob Johnstone.

Japanese should ask themselves why, despite the facts that the bright blue light emitting diode originated in Japan and that two of the “Big Five”* manufacturers of gallium nitride LEDs are Japanese, essentially none of the huge surge of related entrepreneurial activity has taken place in Japan. Almost all the solid-state lighting start-ups that have popped up over the past few years have been American, Asian, or, interestingly enough, Canadian. Though the regulatory environment in Japan is no longer as hostile to entrepreneurs as it once was, the Japanese still have much to learn about how to foster risk taking and wealth creation. (Bob Johnstone. Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology (Kindle Locations 119-123). Kindle Edition.)