Dynax was the name of the
partnership I belonged to in Japan for twenty years. The principal was
Takahashi, Seiji who died two years ago and had closed the business a
few years earlier as his health failed.
My job was to review all projects and bring a fresh outside perspective to the issues of the company. Dynax was a business that we don't have in the U.S. It was a commercial social science think tank.
I'll only describe two projects. One client was Seibu, a major department store chain, that wanted to have a direct link to the tastes of 15 year old girls. We at Dynax figured out a solution to that problem. We chose two high schools in Tokyo, handed out fliers. We offered a phone number that girls could call on Monday and Wednesday to get advice from a 'big sister' on specific issues such as skirt length, make-up at school, etc. We had real women answering the phone.. We then offered a tape summary of the previous nights' calls and advice on Tuesday and Thursday for the girls who called in. We had a perfect connection to 15 year old girls' tastes and interests.
Another client wanted to make the best use of imported experts who gave luncheon talks to our client company's engineers and specialists. The client wanted to make sure that the material was completely understood and digested.
Solution: All the listeners were
asked to make 3x5 card notes on the key points in the talk, during the
talk. After the talk we put all the cards on the wall under the
appropriate subject areas and with appropriate lines connecting the
cards. The process took several hours and forced the participants to
deeply examine the nature, structure and content of the talk.
The deep examination was precisely the intent of the methodology we had developed.