The 7th G1 Global Conference, held at the GLOBIS Tokyo campus drew more than 200 global business leaders, politicians, scholars, media members and MBA students from 20 countries who came together to discuss the theme, “Creative Evolution in a Volatile World.”
Global conglomerate, the QI Group, represented by Mr. Zaheer Merchant, Director of Corporate Affairs, attended the two-day event which addressed Global and Regional challenges. The conference was organized by Globis and Yoshito Hori of Globis School of Business which is the premier business school in Japan.
We had workshops for the first time and ended with design thinking and a great dialogue with Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Yoshimasa Hayashi. In the end, despite a “volatile” typhoon, we discovered some great ways to creatively evolve ourselves.
“As Minister Hayashi said, a first step can be to “agree to disagree” and work together to create a culture that embraces a diversity of opinions. This diversity embraces the vision of G1—“Group of One, Globe is One., The discussions were all refreshing, open and worthwhile for the future,” noted Zaheer.
The conference opened with the Plenary Session on “Can Japan be a Role Model for Global Economic Prosperity and Stability?” with extremely distinguished panelists, including the Ambassador and Head of Strategic Studies USA Richard McCormack, and the head of the largest pension fund in the world, along with Professor Takenaka from Tokyo University.
He noted that the points made were deeply insightful with issues touching on the manner in which Japan is presently investing, the role of ESG or environmentally sustainable governance and its role in business and investment and the loop that it seeks to convert between capitalism and the end user in any industry.
Zaheer felt it will be beneficial if we were able to have a other events of similar nature, including under Ipoh-based Quest International University Perak (QIUP), owned by the QI Group or under the banner of QI. “The encouragement of debate and greater thinking can only be beneficial”, he said. “It doesn’t have to be large, but just having it, spurring debate on issues, including pushing some of our own, be it in Malaysia or Hong Kong will be great,” he added.