Successful Innovation and Trend Forecasting: Defying the Consensus and Making a Difference I recently had the opportunity to exchange with a team responsible for product and innovation management at a major corporation. Introduced as the “crazy guy” whose ideas and forecasts defied expectations but generally became reality, I was asked to share insights from my past in innovation management.  In this article, I’ll try to articulate some[…]

When it comes to COVID, there will be a before and an after… many are talking about a new normal and there will be many versions of it… as when is the after. During the pandemic, our lives changed a way we would not have imagined before. It will take time to understand and analyze[…]

A few weeks ago I gave a lecture at Waseda University to E-MBA students of ESSEC and Mannheim University of three different campuses (Germany, Singapore and France) on transformation in Japanese corporations. It was following a class I did a few years ago, on The Third Road of Management or how to transform companies. The[…]

This year at CES, trends are getting confirmed. Autonomous and smart mobility seems closer than ever. Let’s be clear: Level 5 (the autonomous car you will buy and that can go everywhere) is a Grail that will not be achieved easily. It is now understood by (almost) everyone that you won’t own a car without[…]

I.1) The Japanese school, Prioritizing harmony and operational efficiency The Japanese executive is a gardener when the western one is an architect*. This sentence is a good summary of the differences between the two managing system which I call the first two roads of management. When the western executive defines centrally a detailed plan, his[…]

At a time when many are writing about the future of the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance, it is good to remember what made its success 20 years ago. Sometimes, it is not necessary to reinvent everything. This is an extract of the book to come, which I wrote a few years ago. It is part[…]

The fist chapter of this book is a quick description of the dominant Japanese management model and how it differs with its western counterpart. It is of course a difficult exercise, as it could be perceived as restricting the way Japanese firms are managed in a single and frozen manner. It is of course not[…]

  As child my first experience of Japanese culture was the Judo class my parents put me in when I was 10 years old. Judo means in Japanese the road of flexibility (柔道). 2 years later, facing a total lack of progress, partly due to a very rigid body, I gave up Judo. This was[…]