This book was written in 1975 in Japanese by Kenichi Ohame. The American version of this book was published in 1982. He was a chairman of the McKinsey & Company in Japan. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from MIT. Since I am a scientist too, the way of his thinking are very comfortable for me. I happened to find this book in the used book store in Japan. Guess how much? Just one dollar!! While I was excited to buy, I was wondering what Japanese business men are reading now. What are they doing, while leaving this book at used book store???? They must have the Kindle version of this book, mustn’t they? Otherwise, we will fall “Lost 3 decades”
He was called Mr. Strategy. Even the strongest chess in the world Gary Kasparov referred this book. Anyway, this book consists from three parts, which are the art of strategy thinking, building successful strategy, and modern strategy reality. Even though he used Japanese companies as examples, you can easily adapt this idea. Why not trying?
I am writing this for Japanese business men. Japanese companies have to be innovative companies in this 21th century. I can tolerate if you can’t agree with this approach. That is fine. As Mortimer J. Adler or Charles Van Doren (The author of “How to read a book”) said, either way that you agree or you disagree with the book, you need to understand what exactly the author claims. But, if you don’t read this, you should not be a manager at top level company. Please don’t be.
If you read this 20-25 years old: You are excellent. This book is a little bit earlier for you, but you can try to apply this idea in you dearly life. When you start your work seriously, let’s apply this idea.
25- 30 years old: You are very good. You would be able to a manager in top-leveled company somewhere in the world. Since you are still young, you can watch who will win, who lose by looking up your bosses. You can use this idea to build your hypotheses, and test again and again. You can still have time to fail. And then, you have to be careful enough not to waste your time. You have to be most knowledgeable person about what you do in your company until you become 30. Know yourself, invest efficiently, and win.
31 years old: You are almost late, but there is still hope. You might just need to only adjust what you have done.
32 years old: I want to say you are late but you can do some. But, I want to point this out. Dr. Ohmae wrote this book when he was 32 years old, you are reading now. Do you understand what I mean?
33-34 years old: I don’t know what to say.
If you read this book when you are older than 35 years old, you will never be a manager at top-level company.
This book was written 40 years ago. Just an idea in 20th century, you are surviving 21th century, you need to acquire these kind of skills until you turn 30, and otherwise you can’t be an effective executive because the others can. Since I am leaving Japan, I can give you this book and explain it to you if you want. Please let me know.