HONOLULU – John Naisbitt previewed material
from his soon to be published book, The Elephant in
the Boa Constrictor,
at the Naisbitt/JAIMS
executive roundtable and public forum held January 19-21
in Honolulu.
The “Evolutionary Trends and Future Mindsets” event
invited leaders in education, government, business, and
the community to listen and pose questions to the renowned
author of Megatrends.
Among many of his perspectives, Naisbitt
discussed his insights into the globalization and decentralization
of
the global economy and culture. “Simultaneous globalization
and decentralization,” he said, “are the twin
paths of the world’s future and that is where the
world is headed.”
Panel members of the public forum – Frances
Hesselbein, chairman of the Leader to Leader Institute;
Floyd Takeuchi,
president and COO of aio Group; and Shunji Yanai, former
Japan ambassador to the United States – provided
their own reflections on Naisbitt’s ideas.
“For so many of us, globalization has
been hard to grasp…” said
Hesselbein. “We weren’t sure how this would
affect us, and when [Naisbitt said] we have to see well
with our hearts as well as our heads, it connected to us
in a very powerful way.”
After the public forum, select attendees
adjourned to a roundtable discussion to share their own
reflections on
Naisbitt’s perspectives on education, offshore outsourcing,
global domains, and Americanization. Naisbitt joined the
roundtable participants the next day to field questions
and expound further on his insights.
James Reed, executive managing director
and head of the equity division for Mizuho Securities USA
Inc. said, “Of
all the seminars and roundtables I have attended through
the years, this was the most educational. I learned that
an exchange of ideas has no boundaries.”
Roundtable participants also attended informal
luncheons and dinners with performances by entertainers
from Japan
and Hawai‘i.
More than two hundred Hawai'i business and
community leaders attended the public forum on January
20; and more than
forty senior management executives from Hawai'i, the U.S.
Mainland, Japan, South Korea, and Australia attended the
executive roundtable from January 20 to 21.
Naisbitt and his wife, Doris, expressed
their appreciation for the event. “I’ve just enjoyed this so much…” he
said at the final roundtable session, “It was such
a rich human experience.”
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