Hiromasa Yonekura, newly appointed chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), says he wants to compile a Japanese version of landmark U.S. industrial competitiveness reports that should strongly appeal to the public.

The 73-year-old veteran businessman said in an interview this week he hopes Keidanren's vision will be something like the Young Report proposed by the industrial competitiveness council under the Reagan administration in 1985 or "Innovate America," published in 2004. It lays out an action agenda for a wide range of stakeholders to improve U.S. innovation capacity.

"I wonder if we can compile something like a Japanese version of these," said Yonekura, also chairman of Sumitomo Chemical Co.