Executive Education

Program Overview
In order to succeed in today’s highly competitive global economy, organizations must be able to innovate—in their products, their processes, and their services. Innovators must be willing to take risks and outmaneuver competitors. They must abandon “me too” strategies and become leaders rather than followers. But many firms, especially large, established organizations, have difficulty moving away from “the way things have always been done”, distancing themselves from competitors, and trying new and different approaches to managing their business.

Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers introduces the latest strategic concepts, organization models, and approaches to product, process, and service innovation developed at the MIT Sloan School of Management. These concepts are designed to help managers compete more effectively in existing businesses as well as start new companies and explore new industries and business models. The program is designed to be of special interest to Japanese managers and entrepreneurs.

"I felt that my way of thinking was changed. It was more than just learning; it was as if the DNA of MIT had been implanted."
Hidenori Yamagishi
Team Leader, Research & Development Center
Zeon Corporation

Program Outline
Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers focuses on three content areas to introduce cutting-edge management thinking and provide practical tools and frameworks.

INNOVATION
In today’s fast-moving, complex business environment, innovating quickly, reliably, and effectively is an advantage for achieving profitability and growth. Yet, all too often, organizations are unable to generate sufficiently creative ideas and successfully move them to market. Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers changes the way managers think about innovation, providing them with a unique approach for developing new products, processes, and services.

Typical sessions include topics such as Dynamics of Innovative Industries, Product Architecture for Rapid and Effective Development, Opportunities and Threats in Waves of Innovation, Key Success Factors for High-Tech Startups, and Techniques for Creative Design.

STRATEGY
It’s not enough to have a great idea. If R&D dollars are going to pay off, organizations need strategies that not only make products and technologies that customers want, but also keep the competition from taking the market away. Developing a successful technology and product strategy means knowing which innovations to back. It means understanding the dynamics of market and technology change. And it means staying ahead of the competition. Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers presents a powerful approach to linking business and technology strategy in order to develop profitable technologies and products.

Typical sessions include topics such as The Dynamics of Commoditization, Competing in Commodity Markets, Products vs. Services: Business Models and Lifecycles, Technology Strategy, and Platform Leadership.


LEADERSHIP
Leading an innovative firm is very different from managing an organization whose business is largely static. As a result, managers must pay much greater attention to empowering those employees with the technical and market knowledge to innovate. Traditional hierarchical models, where only a small group at the top makes all the decisions, are no longer effective. Accordingly, new organizational models and approaches must be employed. Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers introduces participants to MIT’s unique analytical framework for managing the organization of the future, enabling them to improve the quality of decisions, leverage the power of organizational networks, and empower and motivate employees.

Typical sessions include topics such as Understanding and Leading Organizational Change, Organizational Design for Flexibility, Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty, and All Employees are Sales People.

The Learning Experience
Conceptual materials combined with specially designed workshops and computer simulations give participants hands-on, practical experience with the ideas, tools, and frameworks presented in the program. While content sessions are presented in English, there is a daily review session conducted in Japanese by a program facilitator. This provides participants with the opportunity to discuss the day’s learnings and network with Japanese colleagues. Throughout the week, participants work in small groups and interact closely with the faculty, in particular, Professor Michael Cusumano, faculty director of the program, and co-director, Professor Jim Utterback.

Who Should Attend
Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers is designed for Japanese mid-career managers and entrepreneurs with approximately 10 years experience. The program should be of special benefit to department managers and section managers in both new and established organizations, and in all functional areas. It is particularly valuable for managers and entrepreneurs with operations, engineering, and technology backgrounds and with an interest in technology strategy.

Program Benefits
This intensive learning experience delivers long-term value, enabling participants to:

• Understand how industries change and how to anticipate and respond to those changes
• Use strategy, process, and leadership techniques to create a more innovative environment
• Create a culture of continuous innovation to better respond to changing customer needs
• Understand how university research can generate innovations that can be commercialized
• Develop a flexible organization that can respond quickly to opportunities and threats
• Address the competitve challenges coming from new markets around the world
• Recognize what makes some firms—but not others—innovative and adaptive

"The program faculty inspired the highly motivated and diverse participants with exciting ideas and applications for innovation."
Tsuneyuki Haga
Senior Research Engineer, Manager
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

Requirements

• Fluency in understanding, speaking, and reading English and Japanese

MIT Sloan Faculty
The faculty team planned for Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers includes:

Michael Cusumano, Sloan Management Review Distinguished Professor of Management and Professor of Engineering Systems, was a founding co-director of the program. He specializes in strategy, product development, and entrepreneurship in the computer software industry, as well as automobiles and consumer electronics. He teaches courses on strategic management, technological innovation and entrepreneurship, and the software business. Fluent in Japanese, he has lived and worked in Japan for seven years. He received two Fulbright Fellowships and a Japan Foundation Fellowship for studying at Tokyo University. Cusumano has been a visiting professor in management at Hitotsubashi University and Tokyo University in Japan and at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, and a visiting professor in computer science at the University of Maryland. Six of his eight books have been translated into Japanese.

James Utterback, James Utterback, David J. McGrath jr (1959) Professor of Management and Innovation, was a founding co-director of the program. He has held faculty positions at Indiana University, Harvard Business School, and Chalmers University as well as at MIT. From 1983 through 1988, he served as MIT’s director of the Industrial Liaison Program. His research has focused on the process of technological innovation in both U.S. and international firms. Utterback’s teaching focuses on the management of product and process development; economic and other influences on manufacturing process change; interactions between research, development, and engineering activities and manufacturing operations; and the transfer of new product developments into manufacturing. He is one of the founding faculty and the former chair of MIT’s original Management of Technology Program.

Deborah Ancona, Faculty Director, MIT Leadership Center, Seley Distinguished Professor of Management is engaged in research examining core leadership capabilities. Her work includes the design and creation of leadership courses and workshops, a leadership model, and a 360-degree survey instrument. With others at MIT Sloan, she is examining leadership “Change Signatures”, the unique ways that leaders create change, and leaders who have changed the evolutionary pathways of their organizations.

Kenneth Morse,  Former Managing Director, MIT Entrepreneurship Center, has played a key role in launching several MIT-related high-tech startups, including 3Com Corporation; Aspen Technology, Inc.; a biotech company; and an expert systems firm. His expertise includes global sales and marketing strategies for new high-tech ventures and university-based technology entrepreneurship initiatives.

Yosef (Yossi) Sheffi, Director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Head, Engineering Systems Division, is an expert in transportation networks analysis, systems optimization, logistics, supply chain management, and electronic commerce, which are the subjects he teaches and researches at MIT. Sheffi is the author of numerous scientific publications and a book on transportation networks optimization.

Fernando Suarez, Guest Lecturer, Associate Professor of Management at Boston University, specializes in the areas of innovation and technology strategy, standards and dominant designs, IT and firm performance, and flexibility. He received his PhD from MIT Sloan and has taught at the London Business School, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile).

John Van Maanen, Erwin H. Schell Professor of Organization Studies, works within the fields of organization behavior and theory, and is an ethnographer of organizations ranging from police departments to educational institutions to a variety of business firms. In addition, he has worked with numerous public and private organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia, including BP, IBM, BMW, Siemens, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Lafarge, Warburg Dillon Read, and the National University of Technology (Singapore).

Henry Weil, Senior Lecturer, researches competition in technology-based service industries, illuminating the effects of management policies, technology developments, industry structure, and regulation on corporate competitiveness and the behavior of markets. Weil pioneered the use of system dynamics computer simulation modeling for the management of complex design and construction projects and for the resolution of legal disputes in industries including shipbuilding, aerospace, defense electronics, IT, and energy. His research focuses on commoditization, innovation, and value chain dynamics in many industries.

Ezra Zuckerman, Nanyang Technological University Associate Professor, Co-director, Economic Sociology Program, is an economic sociologist with a focus on social network analysis. He studies how social structures of various kinds emerge and influence behavior and key outcomes for individuals, teams, and organizations. Zuckerman’s current research projects include a study of industry peer networks, exclusive groups of noncompeting peer firms from the same industry that gather on a regular basis to learn from one another’s experiences and to motivate one another to achieve higher performance.

"Excellent! I learned so much in the program. There's really nothing else to say but 'excellent program'."
Akihiko Kawai
Manager, Renewal Sales
Citrix Systems Japan, Inc.

Program History
Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers began in 2004 as the Executive Management of Technology Program at MIT. The program was created through a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and with funding from CICOM BRAINS. The program is currently offered with the administrative assistance of CICOM BRAINS.

About CICOM BRAINS
MIT Sloan Executive Education’s representative in Japan for Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership for Japanese Managers is CICOM BRAINS, Inc.

CICOM BRAINS was founded in 1996 and is a leading management training provider in Japan and Asia. CICOM BRAIN’s CEO and Co-founder, Tadayasu Nishida, received his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and is a director of the MIT Association of Japan. CICOM BRAINS offers an Innovation, Strategy, and Leadership (ISL) Foundation Program which may be helpful for those wishing to prepare for the MIT program.