This year's hike in Japan's sales tax calls to mind the last hike, 17 years ago. That event coincided with a personal watershed in my career at Toyota: the 1997 launch of the Prius hybrid vehicle. The Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convened in Kyoto that year. That gathering famously spawned the Kyoto Protocol as a set of binding obligations for reducing output of greenhouse gases. In the same spirit, Toyota launched the Prius as the world's first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle. I headed the Prius development project. We undertook the project in the name of achieving an environmental breakthrough before the turn of the century. And we succeeded through a rigorous focus on output.

The development project for the Prius began 20 years ago, in 1994. Toyota had begun working on hybrid technologies a quarter century earlier, back in the 1960s. But the prevailing view in the company was that a commercially feasible hybrid vehicle was still a long way off. The project team members defied the doubters by bringing the Prius to market in just three years.

Driving the Prius-development project was a strong mandate from management: launch a car by 1997 that would provide twice the fuel economy of conventional vehicles. The project had, in other words, a crystal-clear target for output. That focus on output engendered a powerful solidarity among the project team members, and that solidarity was instrumental in bringing the Prius to market so swiftly.

In setting goals, let us aim high and not simply settle for what seems possible. Let us set concrete deadlines, however, and undertake R&D with an uncompromising commitment to meeting those deadlines. That kind of results-oriented approach will be absolutely essential in achieving meaningful innovation on a continuing basis.

Lasting growth for Japan, given our nation's dearth of natural resources, will hinge on asserting industrial vitality. And our industrial vitality will hinge on progress in scientific and technological innovation. So let us in industry step up our collaboration with academic and government partners with an eye to transforming R&D into meaningful output. Let us stage a national effort to reinforce our collective international competitiveness.

Hosting of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games can be and should be an excellent opportunity for exhibiting Japan's recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake and for showcasing our nation's scientific and technological innovation. Over the next six years, let us in Japanese industry take part in readying a positive message to the world.