Kenichi Ohmae (1943- )
Japanese expert in globalization and strategy (pictured right).
Key books
The Mind of the Strategist
(1983)
Successful strategies are creative and require:
1. Reality - awareness and analysis of the 3 C’s
- competencies (what an organization does better than its competitors).
Profits result from serving customers better than competitors.
2. Key factors for success (KFS)
Identifying the factors for success (in your industry or business) and how to achieve them.
3. Innovative thinking - from
- creativity - exploring every alternative from 'what if' questions.
- challenging the status quo.
Strategic analysis (SWOT analysis etc. - see corporate
strategy) should only be used to stimulate creativity.
4. Right
timing
(“ripeness”)
5. Availability
of resources.
Key quotes on strategy
Customer-based strategies are the basis of all strategy.
Strategic thinkers need sensitivity, insight and an inquisitive mind that can't
help challenging the status quo.
The job of the strategist is to achieve superior performance, relative to
competition, in the key factors for success of the business.
The Borderless World
(1990)
(see for more detail The Borderless World in the
Business Books section)
Customers’ tastes and preferences are becoming truly international, creating a “borderless
world”, in which:
1. The world is one market
2. Resources (particularly knowledge)
flow freely between
different countries
3. People become global citizens, buying global products
from customer driven global corporations
4. Trade makes us all interdependent in the Inter-Linked
Economy
(resulting in every country’s economy being dependent on global prosperity).
The global corporation and its international subsidiaries must be unified
by:
1. Corporate
culture
(shared values and beliefs throughout the corporation).
2. Global strategy
Setting broad objectives within which subsidiaries are:
- free to manage themselves.
- treated as equal partners.
Key quotes on
globalization
Knowledge is the secret of success in the borderless world.
Multinational companies are truly the servants of demanding customers around the world.
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