The Mind Of The Strategist: The Art Of Japanese Business

The Mind of the Strategist The Art of Japanese Business Kenichi Ohmae Director, McKinsey & Company, Inc. McGraw-Hill Book Company New York St. Louis San Francisco Auckland Bogota Hamburg Johannesburg London Madrid Mexico Montreal New Delhi Panama Paris SAo Paulo Singapore Sydney Tokyo Toronto iii Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ohmae, Kenichi. The mind of the strategist. Includes index. 1. Industrial management. 2. Industrial manage­ ment-Japan. 3. Strategy. I. Title. 81-18630 658.4'012 HD38.0315 ISBN 0--07-047595--4 AACR2 Copyright © 1982 by McGraw-Hill, Inc. All rights reserved. Print­ ed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 1234567890 MUMU 898765432 ISBN 0-07-047595-4 The editors for this book were William Newton and Eric Lowen­ kron, the designer was Mark E. Safran, and the production super­ visor was Teresa F. Leaden. It was set in Century Schoolbook by Datapage. Printed and bound by The Murray Printing Company. For Marvin Bower, my role model, with admiration: and for Jeannie, Soki and Hiroki, my family, with love. About the Author As an adviser to top management, author, and speaker, Kenichi Ohmae has been described as "Mr. Strategy" in his native Japan, where he heads the office ofMcKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm. Some of Japan's most famous and internationally successful com­ panies regularly seek his help in shaping their competi­ tive strategies, and his counsel is likewise much in de­ mand among U.S.- and European-based multinationals. As a director ofMcKinsey & Company and co-leader of its strategic management practice, Ohmae has served companies in a wide spectrum of industries: industrial and consumer electronics, office equipment, photographic equipment, industrial machinery, food, rubber, and chemicals. His special interest and area of expertise is formulating creative strategies and developing organiza­ tional concepts to implement them. During the past six years Ohmae has produced five books on strategy (three of them runaway best-sellers in Japan) and more than twenty-five articles on strategy­ related topics as well as several other books on various aspects of Japanese culture. Besides scientific papers in the Journal of Nuclear Engineering and the Journal of Nuclear Materials (he holds a Ph.D. in nuclear engineer­ ing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), his publications in English include articles in Chief Execu­ tive, European Management, and The McKinsey Quarter­ ly. This is his first book to be published in English. B