月別アーカイブ：2020年04月

I feel like due to the coronavirus there are an increasing number of false (unconvincing) ideas and opinions out there these days. When practicing strategic thinking and logical thinking, the first step is to grasp facts and logic. If you are confronting the facts your opinion and statements become real and convincing. To grasp the facts, you must look into them in detail by breaking them down into elements. René Descartes said, “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.” Those who do not exercise the ability to divide things into parts are ...

As part of “after-corona society” argument, let’s think from a pathological point of view. A while ago, a book titled Guns, Germs, and Steel became popular worldwide. As is discussed in the book, germs have had a huge impact on human history: Because diseases have been the biggest killers of people, they have also been decisive shapers of history. Until World War II, more victims of war died of war-borne microbes than of battle wounds. All those military histories glorifying great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals ...

The world will not be the same post-corona. Many industries will have to rebuild themselves while taking the risk of infection into consideration. Even after this initial crisis is over, there will be a second and third corona wave, so “going back to normal after the COVID incident” is going to be nothing but an illusion. For example, the way we work. Are we going back to work in that dense, island-style office layout? Now that telework has proven functional, going back to that will increase health risks but not productivity (of course there will be some balance between traditional ...

Around this time last year, it was a topic in the news that apparel companies were leaving ZOZOTOWN. In exactly the same manner, Disney has announced that it will exit Netflix to start its own Disney+ service, adding on to the impression that more and more companies are becoming platform-independent. Although a slightly belated topic, I will address this in this post. The US Toys“R”us filed bankruptcy in September 2017. The direct reason for its collapse was that they couldn’t compete against Amazon in the online toy market. Toys“R”us initially signed an exclusive agreement with Amazon to sell their products ...

There is a famous sword master in Japan’s history, and his name is Miyamoto Musashi. Miyamoto Musashi（source：Wikipedia） I just recently wrote about living in “want to” and striving for one’s dream, and I decided to continue noting the importance of lifelong learning, which is also meant as my own reminder. Miyamoto Musashi wrote a book titled The Book of Five Rings, and the following lines are found in one of the five chapters, The Book of Water: Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. Next, to beat more skillful men, train accordingly. … ...

There is this famously difficult piece called La Campanella by Franz Liszt. It is made to play with Liszt’s large hands and at a very fast tempo, so it is an extremely hard, actually, one of the hardest piano pieces that exists in the world. Recently, a TV program featured a mid-aged fisherman who fully plays it. He is a seaweed fisherman whose hobby was Pachinko (an arcade game or gambling machine popular among Japanese adults). He kept losing his money until eventually he stopped doing it, and thus, he was bored at home. One day, he saw Fuzjko (Fujiko) ...

The oil market is in turmoil. In addition to decreased demand due to the spread of Coronavirus, Saudi Arabia and Russia failed to reach an agreement regarding a reduction in oil production. Saudi Arabia has decided to go ahead and increase its oil production, which caused a sharp drop in the oil price to less than 20 USD per barrel. For oil importers, it is certainly preferable that the price of oil has fallen, but for oil exporting countries, it has a huge economic impact and will inevitably lead to political instability. To understand the context, there are several important ...

There are many false rumors going around about the Coronavirus. From how to cure the disease by gargling with vinegar or hot water to predicting the date of the state of emergency declaration, there are so many of them. We don’t know who spread these rumors and with what intentions (perhaps the first person starts with good intentions to let people know what is upcoming or help people be prepared, but then the information is embellished as it spreads). Similar types of false rumors were spread after the Tohoku Earthquake disaster. With SNS being the mainstream communication tool nowadays, false ...

As you grow professionally, your viewpoints change. You might have heard the expression, “move up the level of abstraction,” but when you do so, you start finding some kind of universality among the things that used to look different to you. Meaning, you become “smart,” because it means you become able to apply one principle to another more flexibly. In business, a manager needs not know every detail of the operation on the ground; in fact, that is just impossible. However, there are general principles in management and leadership.    Although, when your viewpoint changes, it becomes less easy to communicate ...