More than twenty years ago, I played a role in establishing the Phoenix Fund, Japan’s first full-scale private equity fund. Since then, I have watched the Japanese private equity market grow.

To be frank, private equity in Japan has addressed the social challenge of business succession, accelerated the restructuring of major corporations, and grown into a major industry. The speed of that growth has far exceeded anything I imagined.

But I had another great expectation.

I expected a new form of capital to emerge—capital that would leverage Japan’s technological capabilities.

Regrettably, that has yet to happen.

Japanese private equity has succeeded in refining financial leverage: determining how much can be borrowed from banks and how lending can be structured. Yet it has shown remarkably little interest in developing technology leverage—identifying which technologies should be taken to the world.

Increasing enterprise value and increasing leverage multiples are, by nature, entirely different things.

At some point in Japan, however, the two came to be treated as though they were virtually synonymous.

Financial engineering alone does not create new industries.

Japan still possesses countless technologies with the potential to change the world.

Some are housed in the research laboratories of major corporations. Others can be found in small and medium-sized companies across the country.

Yet many of these technologies remain buried, never reaching the global market.

The problem is not technology. It is management.

Japan has no shortage of management teams committed to avoiding failure. What it lacks are management teams determined to compete for global leadership.

In a corporate culture where avoiding risk is treated as a mark of managerial competence, the most capable engineers are often overlooked, and technologies with the greatest potential to change the world remain dormant within their companies.

There is something else that concerns me.

Many companies speak of “globalization.”

But what they often mean is a form of globalization in which the Japanese company remains at the center.

I believe that way of thinking is already outdated.

What we need now is not globalization that starts solely from Japan, but globalization that begins from multiple centers of excellence around the world.

From Japan’s perspective, this means bringing together American AI, European environmental technology, Israeli cybersecurity, Singapore’s semiconductor networks, and Japan’s materials and manufacturing technologies.

By combining these strengths across national borders, we can create new industries.

I call this “multipolar globalization.”

The world is no longer organized around a single center, nor can technology be completed within the borders of a single country.

That is precisely why we must move beyond the idea that Japan should always be the starting point.

The same applies not only to companies, but also to private equity.

Finance has been the principal actor until now.

From this point forward, technology should take the lead.

The age in which financial and legal professionals at private equity firms simply hire engineers is over.

Engineers and business builders who understand global technology trends should be at the center, supported by specialists in finance, law, and M&A.

This reversal of the traditional order is what Japan needs if it is to compete successfully over the next thirty years.

Japan enjoys the good fortune of having a domestic market of considerable size.

Yet that good fortune has also deprived Japanese companies of the resolve to challenge the world.

Because companies can survive within the domestic market, they have been able to avoid pursuing the global market in any true sense.

As a result, Japanese companies have become accustomed to defending their domestic positions rather than attacking global markets.

I want to change that direction.

The Eco Movement initiative that I am pursuing is not intended to create merely another reuse BPO company.

By combining AI, robotics, image recognition, data analytics, and the strengths of partner companies around the world, we aim to create a new industrial model.

Not financial leverage, but technology leverage.

Not Japan-centered globalization, but multipolar globalization.

Not merely buying companies, but connecting technologies.

I am convinced that these three shifts will fundamentally reshape capitalism in the next era.

And Japan still has the power to lead that transformation.

What we need is not capital alone. Outstanding technologies already exist around the world. What we need is the resolve to connect with them, to become partners, and to build the future together.