Hirotaka Takeuchi is a professor of Management Practice in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, where he is the 4th most renowned professor there. He is also the dean ofHitotsubashi Business School in Tokyo.He was also our CEO, P’Ping’s mentor; he not only spoke at the Remaking Schools in the Post-Corona Era event on November 3rd, but also gave a special lecture to students of NBS.
Currently 76 years old, Professor Takeuchi was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. He received his BA at International Christian University, Tokyo, and an MBA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Prof. Takeuchi worked as an assistant professor in the Marketing Unit at Harvard Business School from 1976 until 1983. The same year, he transferred to Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University, where he was appointed a professor in 1987. He was made the founding dean of Hitotsubashi University's Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy in 1998. From then on Prof. Takeuchi received two appointments in 2010: one as a professor at Harvard Business School, and another as Professor Emeritus at Hitotsubashi university. Some of his most well-known books are_The Wise Company_,The Knowledge Creating Company,Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management, and_Can Japan Compete?_
One of the main topics he covers is about living in a**‘VUCA’**world - that is, a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world. He mentions in his article that the qualities required in this kind of world is the ability to deal with social issues, leading to new development. Even in this digital age, an essential ability is to have a multicultural mindset - we must understand the ‘dynamic duality’ between the analog and digital, and adapt to both. Global leaders have to have agility and a sense of social responsibility.
The Japan Immersive field course was asecond-year field study program launched by Prof. Takeuchi in 2012, which incorporates these teachings into its activities. Students helped find solutions for local business problems while carrying out hands-on projects (such as cleaning up debris from a village in Japan hit by an earthquake, and finding solutions for local business problems). It integrated the outside-in (as taught at HBS) and inside-out approaches to business and strategy. The outside-in approach looks at analyzing the industry and basing one’s objectives off of that, whereas the inside-out approach focuses on one’s mission and core values at the center.He says that the goal of the course goes more than just Knowing (the acquisition of knowledge) and Doing (applying that knowledge through action), but a considerable learning is Being (learning the values and beliefs of becoming a business leader). If you look a little deeply, this also relates to our school’sSEEKphilosophy. Knowledge and English relate to the Knowing aspect, Skills relate to Doing, and Ethics relates to Being.
In the post-Corona business period, Prof. Takeuchi says he has found a new meaning for the scientific word ‘RNA’:
- Rule Breaking
- Non-Conforming
- Antithesis Zooming into Antithesis, the system of Dialectic Thinking is a key aspect that promotes success through it. After every idea, every ‘thesis’, there should be a counter to it - an ‘antithesis’. This gives clarity of thought of the idea and leads to ‘synthesis’ and growth. According to him, a leader should have all of these qualities to succeed. Therole of a Leader is to createchange & direction; (constant change + direction = growth), while, a Manager’s role is to createorder & consistency.Focusing only on improving your management may distract you from a leader’s behaviour or way of thinking.
Circling this back to VUCA, he says that there are three necessary things a leader must have:
- Agility- for instance, a major event happening every 3 years (eg. 2016: Brexit; 2019: Coronavirus; 2022: Russia-Ukraine War)
- Speedis how quickly your react to that event
- Creativity- how creatively and innovatively you react to that event.
At the youthful age of 76, Professor Takeuchi drew inspiration from a passion of his, tennis, and coined a term which is another meaning for the wordAI:Advantage Inferior(“advantagename of player!”), referring to the advantage of accepting that you don’t know something,which leads to growth and progress.(‘Fail Fast, Learn Faster.’)
My question to him was: “I know I have to be comfortable with change to be a leader, but how do I take that jump?”
His answer summarized is: First you need to have belief, second is courage and third you must train - you need to have a belief in something and the courage to act on it. You need to train physically as well as mentally to get to your goal. “People often think that the mind trains the body, but it's actually the other way around - you have to train both.”
These are some of the key aspects from his most popular book,The Wise Company:
- Learn to judge goodness, not only for the company but for society.
- Rely on intuition to grasp the essence of people, things, and events.
- Create informal and formal shared context—called ba in Japan—constantly in order to construct new meaning through human interactions.
- Use metaphors and stories to help people with different experiences understand the essence of the business strategy.
- Use all possible means, including Machiavellian ones, if necessary, to bring together people with conflicting goals and spur them into action.
- Encourage the development of practical wisdom in others, especially employees on the front line, through apprenticeship and mentoring.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the Year 12 NBS students’ thoughts on the class…
Insights from Fern:
The most important topics you picked up…
- Roles - The difference between a leader and a manager: Leader Role = To createchanges & direction
Manager Role = To createorder & consistency
- In VUCA world, a leader’s responsibilities are to have:
- Agility
- Speed
- Creativity
- How do you perform that role the best: Goal: More than Knowing (beyond knowledge) but Doing (Action) and Being (learn values and convictions to be business leader)
Fern’s uestion:
- Why is Agility important in the VUCA world and how does it affect us as business students?
Insights from Sayuri:
The most important things you picked up from his class…
1). ‘The Lost Decades’ was the period when Japan’s economy was underperforming. Innovations and new concepts were slow - In Japanese, ‘失われた30年’ (Ushinawareta sanjyu nen)
My question to the prof. was ‘Has Japan stopped innovating and why?’ and ‘Are they reluctant to change?’
A summary of his response is:
- ‘They [The Japanese] are lazy.’
- When the company achieves their goal, they stop wanting more.
- ‘[They are]Redundant’
- ‘The Japanese government is scared of change’
- ‘[They are ] not hungry for it’
- According to me, by that he means less spirit and motivation to become entrepreneurs or leaders.
Furthermore, the competitive society we live in today could also be the reason why Japan may be unwilling to change.
In class, P’Ping mentioned Soichiro Honda - the founder of Honda Motor, well known for their cars and motorcycles; and Fujino Michimasa, who founded Honda Aircraft (a subsidiary of Honda) and built the Honda Jet (the inside would be designed just like a car with 5 seats) in North Carolina.
Professor Takeuchi’s insightful teachings seem to light a spark of ambition in every person who hears them, at least they did in me. He has passed down those pearls of wisdom to P’Ping, and he is now passing them down to us so we can be successful leaders in this ever-changing, fast-paced world. I hope we are able to make the best of these learnings and apply them into our everyday lives to keep moving forward. There is so much to learn, so much to know and understand about this world, about society, about being a_leader_in it all; I hope this can be our first stepping stone to that knowledge and those goals.