The Mind Of The Strategist: The Art of Japanese Business (Paperback)

by Kenichi Ohmae (Author) "Some weeks ago I received a brochure from a Japanese travel agency inviting me to "enjoy sport amid fantastic scenic beauty..." (more)
Key Phrases: strategic degrees, issue diagram, strategic freedom, United States, Southeast Asia, Yukashoken Hokokusho (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This provocative book by a Japanese executive shows that the keys to business success in the West are the proven techniques of the Far East successful strategic planning and its conservative execution. Strategy in the classic military sense is deploying your forces to achieve a competitive advantage. Concentrating on the thought processes behind Japan's successful strategic thinking, this book describes what strategic thinking is and presents concepts and concrete examples for its application. Only by integrating the three C's in a strategic triangle Customer, Competitor, and Company can sustained competitive advantage exist. Business managers at all levels can benefit from this 'how to think about it' guide by developing profitable and creative strategies.

From the Back Cover

A Masterful Analysis of Company, Customer, and Competition

Kenichi Ohmae-voted by The Economist as “one of the world's top five management gurus”-changed the landscape of management strategy in The Mind of the Strategist. In this compelling account of global business domination, Ohmae reveals the vital thinking processes and planning techniques of prominent companies, showing why they work, and how any company can benefit from them.

Filled with case studies of strategic thinking in action, Ohmae's classic work inspires today's managers to excel to new heights of bold, imaginative thinking and solutions.

“In many ways, Ohmae can be considered the modern reincarnation of a much older guru, Adam Smith.”-Journal of Marketing

“A fascinating window into the mind of one of Japan's premier strategists…full of ideas about how to improve strategic thinking.”-Michael E. Porter, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (August 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070479046
• ISBN-13: 978-0070479043
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #153,764 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creating the right mind-set for strategy formulation, February 23, 2002

By	Gerard Kroese (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Kenichi Ohmae was Chairman of the Japan office of McKinsey & Company, the world-famous strategy consulting firm. He has been described as "Mr. Strategy" and has written several books and articles on strategy-related topics.

Kenichi Ohmae believes that successful business strategies do not result from rigorous analysis but from a particular state of mind. "In what I call the mind of the strategist, insight and consequent drive for achievement, often amounting to a sense of mission, fuel a thought process which is basically creative and intuitive rather than rational." He uses theoretical knowledge from the various academic scholars and puts them in its place - "a place distinctly secondary to creative intuition in the tool kit of the successful strategist." The book split up in three parts, each consisting of 5 to 7 chapters.

In Part I - The Art of Strategic Thinking, the author concentrates on the basics of the mental process. In Chapter 1 - Analysis: The Starting Point, Ohmae introduces the strategic thinking process. He introduces various useful diagrams and flow processes for a more reliable recipe for success: "the combination of analytical method and mental elasticity that I call strategic thinking." In the chapters 2 to 6, the author explores the different directions the strategic thinker can pursue in quest of innovative strategies. In the final chapter of Part I, Ohmae explains how the right mindset for strategic thinking and how to develop the required strategy.

In Part II - Building Successful Strategies, Ohmae shifts his focus from process to content. "In the construction of any business strategy, three main players must be taken into account: the corporation itself, the customer, and the competition." He refers to them as the three C's or the strategic triangle. Within the next three chapters, Ohmae discusses the strategies based on those three C's: (1) "Customer-based strategies are the basis of all strategy. ... There is no doubt that a corporation's foremost concern ought to be the interest of its customers rather than that of its stockholders and other parties. In the long run, the corporation that is genuinely interested in its customers is the one that will be interesting to investors." (2) "Corporate-based strategies are functional. Their aim to maximize the corporation's strenghts relative to the competition in the functional areas that are critical to success in the industry." (3) "Competitor-based strategies can be constructed by looking at possible sources of differentiation in functions ranging from purchasing, design, and engineering to sales and servicing. The main point to remember is that any difference between you and your competitors must be related to one or more of the three elements that jointly determine profit: price, volume, and cost." In the final chapter of Part II, Ohmae discusses corporate strategy. He claims that corporate strategy needs to address two issues: First, the integration between the individual business and the total corporation. And second, should there be a corporate strategy that is different from the individual business.

Part III - Modern Strategic Realities discusses the environmental factors influencing strategy thinking and strategy formulation. The chapters in this part are not as much related to each other as the previous parts. Ohmae identifies and discusses five economic trends that have an impact on long-term business strategies, whereby he notes that the strategic thinker needs to take those trends into consideration when shaping strategies. Due to those economic trends, seven major changes are ongoing in a global perspective. Ohmae discusses those seven changes in a very interesting chapter 14. In the next chapter, the author discusses the various myths and realities about Japan products and Japanese companies, and discusses the four main differences between Japanese and Western companies. This chapter provides some great insights into Japanese strategic and business thinking. In Chapter 16, Ohmae tackles strategic decision making. Ohmae believes that founders of successful businesses do not simply gamble. In his opinion entrepreneurs follow a five-step process for successful, foresighted management decision making: (1) Clear definition of the business domain. (2) Logical hypothesis based on an extrapolation of forces at work in the business environment. (3) Focus on a few strategic options, instead of many, open to the business. (4) The company must pace its strategy and not overreach itself. (5) Management must be prepared to change the basic direction of the business, if conditions demand it. Each of these five steps are discussed in detail. In the final chapter of the book, the author discusses strategy formulation: "... to bring insight to fruition as a successful strategy takes method, mental discipline, and plain hard work." He also discusses the creativity required for the development of business strategy.

Yes, I do like this book. And yes, I do find it difficult to write a review about it. This book is not a guide or framework into Japanese strategic thinking. In fact, Ohmae only really spends one chapter on the difference between Japanese and Western business systems. It is more about the right mind-set for strategy formulation and strategy development. There are some great lines in this book, and the various figures, diagrams and sketches are extremely useful. I wish that I had read this book several years ago as it gives great insights into the strategy process and development. But again, this book is not a guide or framework. It is an excellent complement to books such Porter's 'Competitive Strategy' (1980) and 'Competitive Advantage' (1985). Highly recommended to anybody interested in strategic management and strategy development/process. The authors uses a very simple US-English writing style.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not only a business book, but also a HOW TO THINK TRAINING, February 27, 2002

By	Emir (Emirdag/Turkiye) - See all my reviews

This is the best book I have ever read about Strategic Thinking. What is different and not existing in other popular books as 'Thinking Strategically, Co-opetition, Leading the Revolution, Competitive Strategy...' etc is HOW to think instead of WHAT to think.

The book's main chapter's include the following competencies:

Part I-The Art of Strategic Thinking:
--> What is strategy?
--> What can be the possible ways to overcome competitor?
--> How strategic mind should work?
(Instead of analysis to idea, idea to analysis)

Part II-Building Successful Strategies:
--> Define yourself - the corporation
--> Define the others - the competition
--> Define the rewarders - the consumers
--> And finally define the above 3C in one map

Part III-Modern Strategic Realities:
--> What is the affect of economic environment to 3C's?
--> How to cope with strategic changes?
--> A case analysis: A nations strategic gain: Japan
--> How to project the future 3C's?
--> And finally is there a strategic success formula?

The main thing I captured from the book is: strategic thinking is a way of life, not a special time event. Working in a US multinational for years, I am more and more aware of the facts and success path defined by Mr. Ohmae - McKinsey guru. Especially, determining the strategic degrees of freedom of any issue (can be a business issue, or a weekend tennis journey, or even life -I applied-) and determining the actions to take to get the determined result is the best thing I learned.

This is a short book (wrt to other strategic management books) but it teaches how to think instead of popular strategy methods.
It is a must read & can be taken as foreword of all business books.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Balanced Perspective on Strategic Questioning and Thinking, May 21, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

I have over 30 years of experience with strategic thinking as a consultant and planner. I constantly find that people have totally different concepts of what strategy is all about. Each tends to be either too focused in one area, or incomplete in some aspects. As a result, people logically arrive at some pretty bad strategic conclusions. Typically, this involves a strategy that the organization cannot execute well or which the competitors will quickly negate.

What I like about this simple book is that it nicely summarizes the case for a balanced perspective of customer, competitor and your own company. Although most American companies will believe that they do this, the American approach is much more superficial and incomplete than the Japanese one. For example, if a Japanese company wants to add a new product, the evaluation looks heavily at how well the customer will be able to use the product and how effectively the company will be able to provide it in the context of probable competitive offerings. An American analysis will feature financial analysis of a forecast that is often based on little more than spreadsheet doodling.

The weakness of the Japanese model is that they typically look too little at the business environment (notice how often they buy American businesses and properties at the top of the market for inflated prices), and are relatively insensitive to financial implications. In fast moving technology markets, the Japanese consensus-building process also tends to slow down time to market.

Clearly, there is no perfect model for strategic thinking that fits all situations. A major weakness of many efforts is to assume that the future can be precisely forecast. That is patently wrong. Typically, the relative importance of the elements considered needs to be adjusted to fit the circumstnace. That seems to be an art rather than a science at this point. Although this book has its limitations (as suggested above), it is a valuable perspective on strategy thinking that will be helpful to most American business people if they think about the concepts in a more thorough way.

To balance the perspective here, I suggest you also read Profit Patterns to get a sense of how circumstances play a role in profitability.

Good thinking! May this book help you overcome any stalled thinking you have about not doing your home work in thinking about outperforming competitors to provide benefits that matter a lot to customers.