Role Models for Japan Today: (L to R) Masamichi Tanaka, Takashi Kitao, Yuki Nakanishi, and Shuji Tanaka From Cool Japan to Cooled Japan It was the late 1980s and the Japanese yen was supercharged. Japanese corporations opened up factories and offices all over the world. Thousands of Japanese managers and engineers, many of whom had… Continue reading Agency Abroad: The Japanese Who Learned by Leaving
Category: Leadership
The AI-Augmented Leader: When Intelligence is Instant and Cheap, Humans are the Difference
They were the excel whizzes and the PowerPoint masters, those who could synthesize a rambling meeting into a sleek deck before lunch, or provide the minutes of a meeting held in English, but explained in your native tongue. In my years overseeing leadership talent reviews for MNCs in Asia, managers would often identify, perhaps over-emphasize… Continue reading The AI-Augmented Leader: When Intelligence is Instant and Cheap, Humans are the Difference
Quiet Roads, Loud Stakes: China and Japan’s EV Futures
To my Tokyo ears, Shanghai is eerily quiet. Both mega cities are 30 million plus, not lacking in the hustle and bustle of human traffic. The difference to me is decibels on the roads. You can identify Electric Vehicles (EV) by their green license plates in China, and just eyeballing it, I felt that that… Continue reading Quiet Roads, Loud Stakes: China and Japan’s EV Futures
The Principles of Successful AI Adoption: SCBX, A Financial Services Case Study
SCBX Deputy CEO Dr. Arak Sutivong at TechSauce 2024 “Only around 7% of firms currently use AI.” - US Census Bureau, May, 2025 “Some leaders will pursue bottom-line gains strategically; others won’t — and will crash into the limits of quick fixes.” - Forrester, October, 2024 “The gap between what CEOs need to know and… Continue reading The Principles of Successful AI Adoption: SCBX, A Financial Services Case Study
The Whale in the Room: Three Insights on DeepSeek
You win some. You lose some. But when you lose half a trillion dollars in a single day, it's hard to be philosophical. Ask Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, whose stock price fell off a cliff on Monday, January 27, 2025, taking the stock price of the entire alphabet of tech firms… Continue reading The Whale in the Room: Three Insights on DeepSeek
AI Nation Builders: How Singapore is Cultivating a New Generation of AI Leaders Through Education and Empowerment
Imagine a nation at the crossroads. Without a visionary strategy for artificial intelligence, it spirals into a vicious cycle where economic stagnation leads to a brain drain — the brightest minds seeking opportunities elsewhere. Skill shortages deepen, dependence on foreign technology grows, as social inequality widens and insecurity surges. The nation's voice gets lost in… Continue reading AI Nation Builders: How Singapore is Cultivating a New Generation of AI Leaders Through Education and Empowerment
Organizational Change in the Face of Exponential Change: What it Means for Your Company to be AI Ready
"If I walk 30 paces this way, I have a good understanding of where I am going to end up. But let's say it's not 30 steps linearly, but 30 steps exponentially. Where do I land? That would land me on the moon. That is how hard it is to think exponentially." Ian Beacraft made… Continue reading Organizational Change in the Face of Exponential Change: What it Means for Your Company to be AI Ready
Three Scenarios in the Post-AI Revolution: Renaissance, Demolition Man and Goldilocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERXlUX4A6kU Wooly mammoths parading in the snow, pirate ships navigating waves of coffee, and intimate walks through the streets of Japan - Oh my! The reaction to Sora, Open AI's new text-to-video generator, has been, simply, WOW! (See Cleo Abram's enthusiastic reaction below.) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ByR_kZ892yA Yes, we've been inundated by large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini,… Continue reading Three Scenarios in the Post-AI Revolution: Renaissance, Demolition Man and Goldilocks
The Rising Occurrence of Self-Censorship and the Rising Need for Critical Thinking
It was a simple question posed by the Thai filmmaker. What did these six film and TV productions have in common? Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy JFK, directed by Oliver Stone Social Network, directed by David Fincher The Crown, created by Peter Morgan All the President's Men, directed by Alan J. Pakula A… Continue reading The Rising Occurrence of Self-Censorship and the Rising Need for Critical Thinking
Losing and Finding Yourself: A Perfect Five-Minute Scene From Ted Lasso
In the middle of the journey of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost. - Dante Alighieri The precocious young manager of West Ham was out of a job, with all the time in the world to wallow in self-pity. The owner of the AFC… Continue reading Losing and Finding Yourself: A Perfect Five-Minute Scene From Ted Lasso