Ep No. 9 Interview with Christian Schmitz.

Yeah, thank you very much for having me tonight. I have to say because I'm in Tokyo, you are in Pakistan, we have a little bit of time difference. How to pronounce my last name is very easy actually. It's a typical German name: Schmitz. Schmitz is a last name. Yeah, I am German. I have been in Japan for about 18 years in total. The first time I came to Japan 23 years ago. Exactly, actually today is the 28th of March, and exactly on 28th of March I arrived in Japan the first time, 1997, 23 years ago. It was a different world. Briefly introduce myself: I'm German, living in Tokyo quite a long time. I had a corporate career with German multinational companies like Bayer, BASF - both chemicals, and I was especially in agrochemicals doing marketing and corporate strategy. Then I worked for Henkel, also a German company similar to Unilever, and I was in the cosmetics area doing marketing for hair care products. Then I joined a furniture company, a German furniture company, and I was a CEO for the Japanese market for about five years. And then after this, I founded my own company called Aventa, which is a boutique consulting firm for companies' market entry into the Japanese market, and also helping Japanese companies to internationalize their business and doing a lot of special consulting projects.

Also, I had started almost eight years ago now investing into startup companies, and the first one was a social media venture for word of mouth recommendation for restaurants, shops and travel. This company we ran for about three years, we had also investors coming in, but then at a certain point of time actually we ran out of money and we stopped it. Apart from this, I have in total invested in five different startups, so it's not a lot, but I always start at an early stage to invest. At the moment, what is also very interesting for Pakistan, I'm the third member and also investor in a company called Rice Exchange. So this is a digital fully integrated trading platform using blockchain, and we help buyers and sellers worldwide to connect to buy and sell rice, and we also integrate service providers like banks, shipping companies, insurance companies and inspection companies. And the blockchain helps for traceability and also putting an additional layer of trust.

And then the Rice Exchange is one of the most important endeavors at the moment. We are just right now going live as a platform. And apart from this, as a passion project which is called the PDIE, the Purpose Driven Innovation Ecosystem. This is important now because we are talking about SDGs, sustainable development goals, and we are focusing especially on sustainable and impactful innovations, and we are creating from Japan a global ecosystem. So at the moment we are eight countries and hopefully expanding quickly with hubs in different other countries to about 20 countries.

That's a good question. I was born in 1971. It's unbelievable, right? And so in the 70s we didn't have computers, we didn't have smartphones, nobody had a mobile phone. And I was living... we had a big garden for example. School was happening in the mornings and around one o'clock we came home from school, and we either walked to school or we took the bicycle. And after school, actually in our garden there was a big apple tree and my father and me we built a tree house in this tree. And after school I very often went onto the tree and I read a book or I just enjoyed some time being in the tree with nature. And yeah, we did a lot of interesting things. There was a period of time when we discovered BMX bicycles. In a nearby park we went with our BMX bicycles and we built a small kind of jump ramp and jumping over the ramp with the bicycles. Later it became skateboarding. We did a lot of sports. In my childhood I did many different types of sports, from gymnastics to basketball, to table tennis, to running and all these kind of things. It's interesting to think back to the childhood because I think that I had a very beautiful childhood. I was kind of blessed to have this kind of fulfilled life in a German family which was not the richest family but also not the poorest family, so it's basically an average family. But an average family in Germany is maybe relatively well off and can offer everything to the children, which is not possible in so many other places in the world.

Yeah, actually nature was something very important. One thing with my father: we had binoculars and we went sometimes we got up very early in the morning and then we went into the forest for bird watching. And we did this not only at the place where we were living, for example also in the mountains in Switzerland or in the Netherlands. And that, I yeah, here in Tokyo it's a huge metropolitan city, so what I'm missing sometimes is nature. And about the childhood, of course what I'm missing is that when we were children, we didn't need to do business for example. So we had a different way to build relationships and we had almost automatically trust, and if we had a problem we were very direct about solving it, sometimes even violently. But children are pure hearted and they don't only think about making a profit or something like this. In the adult world, a lot of the time people spend is actually around business and how to make a profit, how to make a deal, or something like this.

You mean in terms of childhood for Japanese children or in general? Okay, yeah. Japanese culture is a very sophisticated and deep culture. It starts for example with a language: there are different types of languages depending on whom you speak to, you actually change the style of your language. There's a general politeness and people are very nice and not aggressive. We have a very sophisticated culture around the cuisine. The Japanese cuisine is maybe one of the best in the world. It has many different dishes and very much creativity.

Then we have all the old rituals which have been delivered, and we have shrines and temples. Every year we have the different kind of national ceremonies when people get together and the local shrine, they do the mikoshi. Mikoshi means that they carry a small thing with many people, and for them it's a kami sama. The word kamisama means god, but it's not what we mean when we say god. When you say god you mean Allah, when I say god I mean the Christian god, but it's basically the same. But in the Shinto religion, basically there is a soul and a god in everything, like even in the trees, in the water. So it's a nature religion. Everything is surrounded, and we as human beings we are a part of this nature. So this is actually a very interesting concept. And there is this gratitude which comes from Buddhism as well. And yeah, Japanese culture is very interesting and not always easy to follow, especially for people who are new to Japan; they have to get used to it.

You mean say it again? Okay, the Global Summit. This is an event which takes place basically every two years. It's contrary to the United Nations, it's more a grassroots approach but it involves all the different stakeholders from NGOs, NPOs, over corporations and startups, investors, and government people. And it has different topics. The Global Summit in itself is an eight-day event which starts with a cultural reception. It always highlights, like we just discussed a little bit about the Japanese culture, so it would pick up some highlights of Japanese culture, which could be something related to Noh theater for example, it could be a performance on some Japanese instruments or even maybe having a collaboration between a Japanese musician on the shakuhachi (a kind of flute) and somebody who plays maybe shakuhachi and violin. Cultural reception, then a Leaders Forum for three days where 200 leaders who are curated and selected come together and work on five different topics: Ocean, Thriving Cities, Feminomics... I always forget some of the topics.

But at the moment we have this coronavirus crisis and it is not clear if and how this Global Summit will happen because the Olympic Games have been postponed to 2021. Originally, the intention was to have the Global Summit right after the Olympics. So the Olympics would end on August 9, and August 10 was the day for the cultural reception for the Global Summit, and then it would have been 10 to 17. On the last day there would have been the Impact Investment Symposium where, from the Leaders Forum, ideas would be developed and solutions would be developed, and these solutions the champions would be chosen and they would do a hackathon, two days, 48 hours. And the ideas and prototypes created in the hackathon would go into the global pitch which would be the final thing in the investment symposium. And at the same time when the hackathon happens, there would be the public part of the Global Summit as a Future Fair. The Future Fair is open to the public, is the most public part of the whole Global Summit, and it would also attract the media and it would be a very good showcase for corporations to show their solutions. We would have this kind of SDGs lounge in the middle of it. And it's an inclusive event so we intend to have whole families visiting this kind of Future Fair. We would have a play corner for children so that the adults can actually leave their children there and then the adults can walk around and look at the innovations and the future ideas. And there's also entertainment and there's food of course, food from different countries. So that's an eight-day event: Leaders Forum, Hackathon, Future Fair, Investment Symposium, and the cultural reception in the beginning. So it's quite a complex event and quite an effort also to put it together.

Yeah, that's... how how it is to be an investor? It's very exciting of course. And if you invest money into something, you are aware that it's a 100% risk. So when you invest, you think very well about the investment before you do it. And the heart is also very important because what you invest in has to make sense and has to be meaningful from your point of view and perspective. So I generally want to invest in things I have defined the three areas: people, planet and life. People, planet, life. People is something which is good for the people, good for the people who work in the company but also good for the people that are affected by the services of this company. Planet is clear, it's nature, environment. And life is also rather clear but it has the part of health and well-being on the one hand, but on the other hand it could also be something like lifestyle which implies culture for example. So if something matches at least one of these criteria, then it becomes interesting. Yeah, there are a few examples. Lifestyle would also be art for example or music. And there is for example an augmented reality startup. What they do is they created an augmented reality app for museums. Usually if you go to a museum you can get an audio guide, but instead of an audio guide you just take your smartphone and your earphones and then you hold the smartphone to the painting and then you get narration and you get multimedia contents and you can learn a lot, you don't disturb other people, and you can also share these contents on social media. And the museum for example gets data about which of the paintings attracts most of the views and how long people actually stay at the painting. It's very interesting, it doesn't make a lot of profit but it's a very, very interesting project.

A message? Okay. So, one message could be that especially in these times now that we have this kind of worldwide pandemic and crisis, one very simple message: life is precious. So try to live the moment, try to be aware and conscious, and try to practice gratitude whenever you can. And yeah, do the best out of any situation. That's what comes to my mind right now.