 This is Think Tech Hawai'i, Community Matters here. Aloha and welcome to Hawai'i Together. I'm Kelea Akina and you're on the Think Tech Hawai'i Broadcast Network. Although I'm a trustee in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the president of the Grassroot Institute, the views that I express and my guest expresses today are purely our own and don't represent any organization necessarily. Today my guest is Ray Tsuchiyama. He's a creative, innovation specialist, leader, consultant. I really don't know what to call him because his resume is so long and so diverse. But one thing he does is dream about what Hawai'i could be. He comes from a perspective that gives him the tools and the intellectual capacity to dream big with global perspectives, even the universal perspectives in mind. I love talking with him because when we talk we're able to look at not what we are but what we could become. We're able to look not only at the things that challenge Hawai'i but the solutions to those challenges and that's what we're going to talk about today. What can Hawai'i learn from Google? Our purpose is not so much to talk about Google nor raise time at Google but really to use that as a catalyst for saying what have we thought differently about how we do business, how we run the government, how we solve the problems facing us on the social scene, everything from homelessness through educational needs and so forth. What if we did it the way Google does it? Now that's not to say that Google has all the answers. In fact, Google would have to come here and be here in order to learn what we know and even delve into our history, which Ray has done quite a bit in terms of Hawaiian history. But let's get on with the conversation. It's going to be spontaneous and fun. Ray Tsuchiyama runs a business that consults corporations on the subject of how to be innovative. My guest today, Ray Tsuchiyama. Ray Oloha, welcome. Well, great to be here. It's always good to talk with you. In fact, as you know, I really didn't do any prep with you in advance. I said show up. We were going to talk because you come with brilliance all the time. No, no, no. And I'm really delighted to be here. And I did spend about a year at Google in Tokyo at Mountain View headquarters and really gained insights. Unfortunately, what kind of cut short that time was the great earthquake of March 2011 in Japan. That's right. And that triggered our departure from Japan. And you've had some pretty heavy hitting credentials as well, including a leadership role at MIT. That's right. Technology. I ran the Asia office for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I did a lot of corporate relations, research management with companies like Sony, Parasonic, Fujitsu, Toyota, many others. Asia factors so much into our thinking about the future of Hawaii, especially with the tilt from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I was on the phone just an hour before you and I met today in the studio talking to a colleague in Beijing. And we were discussing, actually, she was actually criticizing me for being an American of believes in free market principles, bragging about cities like Shenzhen that used to be fish ponds. And now today are masters of technology. Or here's a very personal jab. She said where she lives in Chengdu, they just finished a rail system for a multimillion population in a year and a half at less than the cost that we plan to spend here in the city and county of Honolulu. Ouch! And Chengdu is not a big city like Shanghai or Beijing, it's out in Sichuan, as you know. She suggested that we subcontract our real work to them. Now here's my point in all of this. Is she right that China is so far ahead of us in terms of technology and its innovation and application to everyday problems that we really have to be afraid in Hawaii and the United States? That's what she told me. Well, during the last 30 years, they've done tremendous things. And remember, it all started in the early 80s. And I remember doing shopping, looking at what is now Pudong or Shenzhen. Shenzhen. Right across from Hong Kong. Right across from Hong Kong and saying this will be the centerpiece of our new economy. And it was duck farms, it was rice farms, it was communes, you're absolutely right. But what are the bases for the foundations for their growth? First of all, they have a very good public school system and focus on math, even English. They have a very good English language program and sciences. They have excellent universities like Fudan, Beijing University, Jiao Dong, technical universities. And also, they had a lot of state enterprises that converted to private enterprises. I'm going to just stop you there for a moment because as you continue to go down your list, the resources you're talking about seem rather industrial age oriented. That's right, yes. Even education. Education not so much for creativity or thinking about ideas and so forth, but rather being technically proficient to fill certain roles, industrial resources and so forth. Is that enough? Is there something to their growth that will be hindered by perhaps the lack of freedom that we have in our country? Lack of freedom in their country? The lack of freedom in their country. In China. That's a very interesting question because that question even appeared in Japan, which is a capitalist country. It's right. Are the Japanese creative? And this goes back to the 80s and during the bubble years and of course, after early 90s, the Japanese economy kind of declined in the world. And we don't hear about Japanese management. And you're correct. We don't hear about Chinese equivalent to apples and so forth. But there are firms coming up like Alibaba e-commerce, like Lenovo in laptops. JD.com. Right. And there are Xiaomi, which is a handset company that's really emerging. But they did a lot of work as ODMs or making consumer items for like TVs and handsets for American and Japanese companies. And they haven't really made that next leap into their own products. Now there's a certain fascination that Chinese have of course with Google. Even Alibaba is trying to become a Google. What is it that they admire about Google? Well, the ability to really create new products and make them really technically excellent for a global market like Search, like the maps, Google Maps. And coming out of nowhere with Android, a completely new operating system of handsets that now is number two to the iPhone. So they were able to do things to bring products to a global market in a very excellent way. In fact, you've come up with an analysis of some of the key factors in Google that caused them to be successful even over their peers in the United States. But before we jump into that, let's look at that situation I described when we opened up Honolulu's traffic. Honolulu's rail system, 10 years ago or so, people began to say, we've got to do something about this terrible traffic and came up with a plan to create a mass transit rail system. And you've seen where that's gone. It's gone from an initial estimate of $2.7 billion. Now we're not even halfway through and it's exceeding $10 billion. It's troubled with all kinds of political problems and so forth. I'm not here today to criticize the rail system. But what if we had gone back and thought like a Google did? When we have a different solution possibly today, how might Google have approached the problem 10 years ago of Hawaii's future traffic needs? That's a very fascinating question because I think they would look at the consumers first. How does one drive? How does one get to a place? Are you going? How do you go to a place? And why? The reason is why. I mean, really looking at the motivations and all kinds of engineering tasks surrounding travel, what is travel? Well, they have taken into account the fact that consumers increasingly want to create their own menus, want to have their own apps on an iPhone and so forth. They want to be able to be customized for their entire experience, whether it's at restaurants, hotels, taxis and so forth. Would that have been part of the thinking? Well, I think so. I think so. So that's very, very different from putting them into a big box with 50 people in a box and taking them in one direction. Right, but I think they would also look at where people live and where people work. That's two and where people shop. There are three things that you do in one day. And there's a series of stops you do in order to accomplish tasks. What do you want to do for shopping? Where do you have to go to sit in an office or not in the office or maybe at home? And there's changes, I think, dramatic changes. Well, that's fascinating. How do you travel? Why do you get out of your house and go someplace? And what are the routes that you take? So the paradigm wouldn't have been this is the most feasible route to lay the steel on and put everyone onto and get them there and get them back. Instead, they'd look at first, where do people start? Where do they play? Where do they eat? Where do they work? Where do they recreate? And how do we connect them to those points? That's exactly right. And in fact, the stations, if I was playing it, I'm a real mass transit advocate. I was a master in it every day in Japan, for example. And so the stations themselves must become like micro destinations. One station is where you live, another station is where you work, another station is shut. All you do is go among the stations, right? You don't go anywhere else. So that forces you to live out your life on the line. Forgive me for going back to the metaphor of the iPhone, which is Apple, but there are also Google versions there. It's as if you'd start with the consumer having control over all of the destinations. And that would design the experience. Now, let's take a look at the big bulky cars that we have, the rail cars and so forth. Isn't Google leading the world in terms of coming up with an autonomous car technology, the cars that use the data that comes from our global positioning satellites and virtually drive themselves? That's absolutely right. But you have to look back. Before the car itself, what will make it efficient? AI, artificial intelligence. I think that's the application of artificial intelligence on the routes and what human beings do and give a much more rational way of conducting your journeys through every day. I think that's where you start out. Now, for all of our viewers, would you define for a moment in very practical terms what artificial intelligence is? It is a way to really understand at a higher level how people think and how people communicate, how people map out their existence in the world. And if you can apply a rule or algorithms that computers will make quickly and give results and outcomes, then you have a series of answers to what are the best routes for transit or whatever in a city. So that's a higher level intelligence in a very short amount of time that you can output out results that you can apply to designing systems. So artificial intelligence could create a network and really be the brain that could allow a consumer to get into a shared vehicle that drives itself, goes where they want, keeps pace with other vehicles, and perhaps matches the pace of other vehicles so well that really, with a few number of vehicles, you could actually go very, very quickly, get people to where they want to go and solve the transportation problem. And you're coming to an interesting point. I don't think it's just technology itself. I think it's all about customer service. Uber does not own any taxis. Facebook does not have any content. Airbnb does not own any hotels. But when you look at these apps and so forth, it's about making life a lot more happier, more efficient, and more choices that you can choose. So it's driven by the customer needs. I think that's the route in anything that's very highly successful. What makes an app sticky? You return over and over and over again to do. And that's how companies really understand. That's why Facebook and Google and others are trying to understand what your interests are. So what do you buy? Antithesis of the phrase, if you build it, they will come, which seems to be touted quite a bit in terms of our rail system. I think that is a very, very good question. But again, we're with a population now, like we know on Oahu, 950,000 people. One line won't address everybody. How can you address as great people? We're going to take a break. This is a great segue, because we've talked about various elements without naming them so far, customer-driven technology, artificial intelligence, and so forth. When we come back from the break, let's talk about what you've learned at Google and explicitly so that we could apply it here at Hawaii. My guest, Ray Tsuchiyama, today talking about technology and creativity as it can improve our situation in Hawaii. I'm Kay Lee Akeena on the Think Tech of Hawaii Broadcast Network. Don't go away. We'll be right back for the rest of our fascinating conversation. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Planning all week for the day of the big game. Watching at home just doesn't feel the same. The one on the list is who's going to drive. It's nice to know you're going to get home alive. Plan for fun and responsibility to the DD. Captain of our team is the DD. For every game day, assign a designated driver. Lucian, how to make a mod. Welcome back to Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kay Lee Akeena. Why do we call this program Hawaii Together? It's because when we work together, we will be able to accomplish things that we can't accomplish if we don't work together. Our vision at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, where I work, is building a better Hawaii through a better economy, government, and society. And the only way to do that is to work together. What I like to say, ehana kakou, let's work together. My guest today is an expert at collaboration on a global scale that improves localities. And that's one of the reasons I've invited him here, because that's one of the things Hawaii needs. More than that, Ray takes from a very rich background in working in technology companies lessons that can be applied here and now. And so back to our conversation with Ray Tsuchiyama. Ray, I think the break time conversation is just as fascinating as the on air conversation. So I'll invite our viewers to come to the studio sometime in downtown Honolulu. But you've been going around the country and around town sharing some ideas that you learned in Google. And one of the first of them is this whole concept upon which hiring and advancement is based at the Google culture called meritocracy. What do you mean by meritocracy? Google believes that we all should, in any organization, that people are at the heart of the organization. But hiring has to be done blind. You have to really judge a person on his or her merits, on the background. And in fact, interviews are done by numbers. When you talk about blind hiring, you're saying hiring is not done on the basis that someone is a brother-in-law or a friend or offers a bribe or has a family or a friend or whatever. Well, it's trying to seek the best person for the role. And the reason these factors are excluded is precisely what you said. It's a belief that there has to be excellence in the people we hire. And also they have to score very high or at the top for working with other people in a team. And you've also seen the same thing in terms of advancement within the organization, that it's based upon meritocracy. Correct. And again, how well they work in a team and really move ahead and develop the best products. Well, here in Hawaii, we have some very rich and long-standing work cultures, whether they are in government, corporate world, or the unions per se. How would you assess the quality of meritocracy as a factor in advancement in hiring? I think we have to really take a look where we want to go as a society or business or government looking outwards. What kind of skills do we need for a government of the 21st century or a business that has to survive and compete globally or a union that really wants to create better and more higher-paying jobs for younger people? I mean, those are the critical questions as we move ahead. This is a very progressive vision, which requires an ability to think about the future and where we're going and map that into who gets hired and who stays and longevity. But we seem to value tenure a great deal, whether we're in the university world or the union world and so forth. How can tenure, which creates some kind of value and security, work against meritocracy? Yes, you're correct. That tenure, say, in the university has issues. But large universities, like at MIT or many others, have a flourishing culture. But the way they hire, and it goes back to hiring, is that tenure at some departments at MIT where I was, is like barely 20%. So that among five young professors coming into the first year, by the third or fifth year, only one remains. And that's how challenging it is to remain and teach at a prestigious university like at MIT. You know, that filtering process allows the best to rise to the top, which is a competitive factor. Meritocracy, by its very nature, is competitive. But you know, I pick up here in Hawaii that that's not so much our culture. We have more of a culture of cooperation as the explicit value. Kokoa, let's work together, let's get along, which can easily become, I'll scratch your back if you scratch my back and so forth, which, and I use the word culture deliberately here, which creates a way of working here in Hawaii that actually works against excellence. Well, is Canada society have a higher goal than familial or friendships? That's what I think you're saying. In the post-war period, there was a burst of creativity and people coming together in the late 50s and 60s based on a goal of a new state, you know, after 59. I think people did work together, but they saw something in the future that they wanted education, the public education or UH or the private sector all reaching for a higher goal. Well, during that period of time, there was a dream that was shared by a large number of people here in the state of Hawaii or the territory of Hawaii and in the state of Hawaii. A dream of what we collectively could become in terms of the economy, in terms of the government, in terms of society, in terms of opportunity for everyone, it gave birth to the unions, it gave birth to the largest party that we have politically, the Democrats. There was so much aspiration. Do you think that the lack of aspiration today may be a reason that we settle for mediocrity rather than merit? Well, I think if you go back in the past, people look at a world that was black and white in a plantation, haves and have nots. And I think that really was a propelling foundation or mythology or just drive for people to escape all that and establish a new order, a new state that was much more fair. And we reached that in the 60s and into the 70s, but we didn't plan out for the next level where we're gonna go as a state. And remember, other states began to work with Asia. Other states began to become technologically higher like California and other. We didn't think about going further, but in 1970, 71, there was the Hawaii 2000 goal. I mean, people were thinking 30 years ahead. They were. Unbelievable at that time. And we had leaders who cast vision. We had John Burns, Dan Inouye, George Ariyoshi, kind of like JFK saying, you know, ask about the dream that we can all become. Now, there's something else that you've been talking about as you discuss the lessons from Google. And that is the actual work culture. You see that they hire people and sustain a work culture that is roughly half engineers, the geeks, the nerds, and half market development. The liberal arts people. Product development. Product development and so forth. And that there's some kind of synergy between having serious hires on both sides. That's correct. And the engineers, of course, have to be excellent engineers. Product managers have to look at anything and say, can I make this better? Can I make a pen better, a cup, or a Google Maps, or search, how do one make it better features for the consumer so that the consumer really wants to use that over another? So that's where we have a product-obsessed culture at Google. And there seems to be a balance as well as a tension between these two kinds of cultures, the engineering culture and the product development culture. That's correct. And it's also a global market. There are global products used from Africa, Latin America, Europe, North America, throughout Asia Pacific. So they're looking at a global market. How do you think we can infuse that kind of synergy into our own processes, whether they be in government employment or corporate employment here in the state of Hawaii? That is from creating programs to really develop a new leadership style. And I think there are some parts in the old Big Five, and I know this is funny to you, but I work for Castle and Cook also. And there was a lot of things dealing with Castle and Cook that I found an ohana kind of spirit. But that spirit could not be sustained in the 21st century with competition and new products and so forth. So I think there has to be a program to develop a new type of leader in Hawaii that has language skills, has technical skills, organizational skills, product skills, and the way to make people work together. This goes to another point you make about the culture of Google. You say there's high expectation. The bar is set very high as to what to achieve, and people are inspired to pursue that. That's correct. And how you have the best minds in the world together and to have them working together and coming up with products of such a major, I think, revolutionary in many ways, yeah. We often self-describe ourselves when talking about our large institutions here in Hawaii with the little of praise, the nail that stands up gets pounded down. Do you think there's a culture here that works against excellence? You know, in the past, in the territory of Hawaii, I think it was a reverse. I think public education teachers, especially from leading institutions from the mainland came in and wanted to make people into the new citizen, the new statehood citizen. Today, I think we do not have expectations and to infuse people that they can do great things and contribute to society. You know, well, that's a good point to stop on today. And our time has gone already. This has been so fascinating. We could talk about many more lessons to learn and the fact that you're not saying that there's something negative about Hawaii. But indeed, if we could have another half hour with you, you'd talk about how the kingdom of Hawaii actually demonstrated many of the values that Google does today in terms of moving us into a world-class status. The kingdom is far more progressive and compared to Japan, South Korea and China, they were coming at a medieval age. Hawaii was much more progressive. I hope we can recapture that. Ray, great having you on the program today. Thank you very much. My guest today, Ray Tsuchiyama, a consultant in innovation and technology talking about how global lessons from Google can make a difference here in the state of Hawaii. I'm Kayleigh Ikeena. You're watching Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii broadcast network. We'll see you next time. Aloha.