Tokyo
I joined a business (partnership) in Tokyo in the
early 1980s, founded by Seiji Takekawa, called Dynax. Dynax was the
first social think tank to my knowledge.
Dynax's most brilliant job for a client was to learn the tastes of young Japanese women aged 12 to 16 for a giant department store chain. The solution was to hand out fliers to all the girls in the local middle-schools. The flier offered the young woman a chance to phone a number and ask questions of an anonymous older girl on Mondays and Wednesdays and phone the same number on Tuesdays and Thursdays to hear a short tape of the questions and answers. Ingenious, and it worked perfectly as a marketing research tool.
The Takekawa Method was even more
brilliant but there were many different kinds of clients. The method
was aimed at understanding complex business and social ideas. The
method involves using a group of intelligent people, say a dozen. The
group listens to a speaker on a relevant subject of interest, all the
while filling out 3x5 cards with the main ideas of the speaker. After
the speaker is done, the group puts up all their note cards up on a
board, under the direction of a facilitator. The notes, with
discussion among the group, are put into categories of major ideas.
The consequence is that the final result shows the underlying
structure of the speaker's subject. This is an effective way of
examining unspoken assumptions and underlying concepts for any
important subject.
I visited my partner, Takekawa, who is dying of interstitial lung growth. I don't expect to see my beloved partner again next year. The world has lost a brilliant businessman and great social thinker.