I’ve worked for several think tanks around the world. American, French, Dutch, and Swedish but the most unique and interesting was the one in Japan where I was a partner. It was called Dynax and there were only two of us principals.
For the first few years, in the early 1990’s, we had a translator since neither Takakawa san nor I spoke the other’s language well. After three years we found we understood each other, he speaking English poorly and me speaking Japanese equally poorly, but slowly we understood each other, perfectly.
The three most interesting jobs we worked on were for a giant department store chain and a coalition of three giant companies including the Sumitomo Group.
The chain wanted research on the tastes of 14-16 year-old girls. We started with in person research at youth concerts but quickly gave that up. What we settled on was ‘Aunt Suki’ a sign-up program for high school girls in the Tokyo area. A subject sheet was mailed to the girls each week for them to call in on Monday and Wednesday to share their opinions with Aunt Suki on some specific subject, such as lipstick, bras, shoes or hairdos. Then on Tuesday and Thursday they would call in to get a summary of Aunt Suki’s opinions on the previous day’s calls. The client got a monthly summary.
The second research, in the mid-1990s, predicted what was going to happen when computers and communication got so good that most workers could do most of their work at home. We did a few test runs in Yokohama with a few giant company departments. We had our own version of Zoom. We saw that all the low-level workers were fairly comfortable for three to four days at home. Most mid-level workers worked a few days at home, a few days in a satellite office and one day at headquarters. Management needed to be at the head office most of the time.
The third project was the most interesting, for the same group of giant company clients.
There was concern among management that many experts and outsiders were used throughout their companies but management felt their expertise was not fully utilized.
We developed a methodology for deeper understanding of classroom talks.
Each student had a handful of 3x5 cards. As they listened to the talk the students made simple notes. At the end, with the guest speaker gone, the class walked to the board at the front and put their notes on a large branching tree of the speaker's subject. They were summarizing the talk with their notes, showing the history of what they heard on the board.
Greater attention, accuracy and understanding were the outcome. Over months and with different groups practicing the technique, the process got better and better.
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