Preamble

Japan had enjoyed prosperity, fostered by industrial production, but could not catch up with the rapid transition to the knowledge and information based society from the industrialized society during the 1990s. It is rapidly losing its international competitiveness.

The difference between the U.S. and Japan during the "lost decade" seems to have resulted from the difference between a country that fostered human resources through practical education, giving the employees the ability to solve problems by observing the situation from an "elevated position with a wide perspective" and a country that did not. We regret to say that Japan has produced fewer generalists, people that are necessary for a knowledge and information based society to function, those who can find values shared across the industry, as opposed to individual industry specialists.

Project Management (PM) is suited to solve complicated problems by integrating factors in individual specialized fields for the purpose of executing a project, a method that is being adopted in every industry today. It is becoming one of the major trends in the world.

During the present era of radical innovations, PM is a source of competitive advantage. Therefore, for Japanese industries that lag behind their U.S. and European counterparts in adoption of PM, it is of urgent necessity to train personnel who carries out PM in a practical manner.

For this purpose, we carried out promotion and distribution related activities for the project and program management standard guidebook (P2M), held PM seminars, and formulated a PM certification system. We hope people in Japan and overseas will study P2M to obtain PM certification and carry out PM to establish global competitiveness in various fields.

Aplil 2002