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

Kushida’s research and projects are focused on: (1) Japan’s transforming political economy; (2) Japan’s startup ecosystem; (3) the Silicon Valley ecosystem and innovation; (4) the political economy of technology development and diffusion, including artificial intelligence; (5) how Japan’s extreme demographics shape technological opportunities; and (6) the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams 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 an International Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, 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.