Can a Laundry-Folding Robot Improve Your Life?

Chief executives of highly innovative companies must figure out how to take bold risks while being stable enough to sustain an enterprise over the long term. Achieving this balance is even more difficult in Japan, where lifelong employment is a strong tradition, than elsewhere. Shin Sakane, founder and CEO of the Japanese startup Seven Dreamers Laboratories, has built the company's identity around resolving that conflict. Sakane is a member of a prominent Japanese business family, perhaps best known as the founders and owners of the I.S.T Corporation, a global producer of composite materials made from glass fiber and fluorine resin. After completing a Ph.D. in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Delaware, he returned to Japan in 2000, joining I.S.T as a managing director. He succeeded his father as CEO in 2003. In 2008, I.S.T acquired Super Resin, a company making components for the aerospace, industrial, automotive, and semiconductor industries.