How Japanese Business People Think About Strategy

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The Mind of the Strategist

The Art of Japanese Business

by Kenichi Ohmae

© 1982 McGraw-Hill

304 pages

* The purpose of business strategy is to cause events to favor your strengths.

* Identify your strengths and build on them.

* Every industry has a key success factor -- know yours.

* Penetrate appearances.

* Address the problem, not the symptoms.

* Know what separates winners from losers in your industry and your market.

* Analyze potential improvements in terms of cost, benefi t and strategic advantage.

* Keep track of customer and market trends -- even though customers may not

know what they want.

* Know the difference between a "business" and a "product."

* Think like an entrepreneur, but think.

9 9 9 9

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The Mind of the Strategist © Copyright 2003 getAbstract 2 of 5

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What You Will Learn

In this Abstract, you will learn: 1) How Japanese business people think about strategy;

and 2) How you should conceptualize and execute your strategy.

Recommendation

This book, fi rst published in Japan in 1975, is a somewhat dated classic, since the fi rst

edition appeared at the high water mark of Japanese competitiveness. Japan's economic

doldrums since 1990 probably ensure that few business people will emulate it now. In a

way, the fact that the bloom is off Japan's chrysanthemum makes this book more useful

and relevant than it was a quarter-century ago. Now that people aren't starry-eyed about

Japan, it's possible to sort through the recommendations, take them with a grain of

salt and fi nd their deeper usefulness. The author is a famous McKinsey consultant, so

the book is packed with charts and jargon. Ignore the jargon, the obsolete observations

about how U.S. companies organize themselves and the anachronisms about Soviet-style

central planning, now a relic. Focus instead on the examples and asides. getAbstract.com

also notes that this is a must-read for anyone working in Japan or competing against

Japanese companies, if only because so many Japanese managers give it to their new

hires as part of their training programs.

Abstract

The Point of Beginning

Japanese companies have astounded the world with their competitive drive and success, so

everyone wonders what their secret is. Surely such remarkable achievement must derive

from some equally remarkable formula or insight. How paradoxical it is that these worldbeating

fi rms have no formal processes of strategic planning, lean or nonexistent planning

staffs and rudimentary technologies. With all these defi ciencies, they still manage to

penetrate new markets and establish dominance in a wide range of industries.

In fact, although Japanese companies don't usually have an army of strategic planners,

they do have some remarkable strategic insights. Usually those insights reside in one

person, often the person who founded the company, perhaps a man with scant formal

education. Instead of a thorough grounding in analytical methodologies, this man usually

has an intuitive understanding of how the market works and where the company must

position itself. These insights are creative, usually unorthodox and often radically new.

This kind of strategic visionary leader is becoming obsolete. In both the East and

the West, the pressure of organization and institution overwhelms the individual,

pushing