Kenji Kushida

Kenji E. Kushida is a senior fellow for Japan studies in Carnegie’s Asia Program, directing research on Japan, including a new Japan-Silicon Valley Innovation Initiative at Carnegie. He was formerly a research scholar with the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. 

Kushida’s research and projects are focused in five streams: (1) Japan's transforming political economy; (2) how politics and regulations shape the development and diffusion of information technology such as artificial intelligence; (3) institutional underpinnings of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, (4) Japan's startup ecosystem, and (5) the role of foreign multinational firms in Japan. He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams and is the author of books and monographs in Japanese and English. 

Kushida has appeared in media including the New York Times, Washington Post, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei Business, Diamond Harvard Business Review, NHK, PBS NewsHour, and NPR. He is also a trustee of the Japan ICU Foundation, an alumnus of the Trilateral Commission David Rockefeller Fellows program, and a member of the Mansfield Foundation Network for the Future. 

Kushida holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his MA in East Asian studies and his BA in economics and East Asian studies with honors, all from Stanford University.