Japanese science venture company - Leave a Nest

I have never been to Japan but I have great admiration for them. My wife studied there and works for a Japanese company and the goodies she gets back from her Japanese visits often amuses me. The thought that goes into their packaging is mindboggling and after I gobble them up I wonder how the Japanese are able to remain so petite despite those culinary temptations!!

Another thing that fascinates me is why we don’t hear of any great Japanese Mars or Ferroro Rochers!! Perhaps an important reason that prevents the Japanese from iruling the world is the linguistic barriers and once they figure how to breach that they would be unstoppable. Take for example 3 star Michelin restaurants; It may amuse you to know that Japan has more 3 star Michelins than anywhere in the world including France. So my thought is that the moment the Japanese figure out how to communicate their value proposition with the global consumer a slew of billion dollar brands will emerge from that country.

Consequently a big opportunity will be for accelerator entities that could help the Japanese reach out to the rest of the world. I came across such an entity called the "Leave a Nest Group". The CEO of the setup, Dr Yukihiro Maru has written a short book on his philosophy. As an accelerator he sees his efforts as more than just a simple coordinator and more as a bridge that creates new knowledge by removing the knowledge barriers that separate different parties, using the common language of science. His articulation is a bit raw but its a practitioner's note on how he made his science focused accelerator setup work. Despite the challenges with the english language I would say that its an admirable effort that gives a fascinating peek into the Japanese minds at work in the innovations field.

Below are some of the beautiful points from the book paraphrased in my own words:

1. His framework is queerly named QPMI. Its stands for Question, Passion, Mission and Innovation. 

At the core of the framework is the idea that the passion of the individual is a key ignition required for innovation. Any organization wanting to innovate, hence needs to nurture and pave the path for passionate individuals and help them grow. A key implication is the recognition of the networked world of today where an individuals' role is to 'initiate work' and then the undertaking assumes a life of its own and gets scaled up with the help of traditional organizational setups. He emphasises the use of a broader Vision/ Mission to ensure alignment with the wider eco-system. 

The framework also has an important role for Question or the problem statement. The author makes a strong case for keeping that at the center of any action for searching for an answer for it. Clear question is also potentially a fantastic stage-gating mechanism that could keep the scope of work focused on what needs to be done. 

The narrow question and a wider vision/ mission is a fascinatingly contradictory idea with beautiful implications on keeping the individual focused and finding synergies in a multifunctional/ stakeholder environment with contradictory priorities.

2. Profit and other such things

His views on profit is fascinating. He highlights the need for profitability to sustain an innovation, however he is also mindful of how short term monetization efforts could potentially kill a great idea. He elaborates this idea further by emphasizing the need to "create capability"and "organizational assets"as important project selection criteria. 

Quantifying these softer aspects is valuable and a challenging activity. An interesting proxy used by the author is the "Thank you" notes from the client/ customers. The underlying idea is that if a client is thankful then he/she is finding value which could potentially be monetized in future. Other intangibles that the author values included knowledge, experience, human network and personal connections. 

He says that the Japanese in the past confident of continual steady growth, embarked on bold projects under a long-term vision. Today he laments that the Japanese have lost confidence and are very short term focused. In the same spirit he highlights the need for visions that "dream big" and the advocates the process of "trial and error" and accepting the successes and failures that come with it. 

3. Middle Management and Passion control.

He has some strong views about the middle management function of managing subordinates. He feels that the poor souls who form the middle management often have to deal with a lot of stress as they are sandwiched between corporate management above and junior managers below. He also feels that the traditional roles of "Accumulating knowhow", "Disseminating knowhow" and "Raising efficiency" have been democratized and the necessary roles that the middle management needs to play is that of a "Trainer" and a "Mentor". The key idea is that these leaders need to have the ability to control passion, that is pave the paths that people with passion wish to take rather than placing barriers in front of them. And that art of controlling passion needs to be scaled up. 

Another beautiful suggestion is to make sure each project has three 'core members', which is the minimum required number of members for a project. Eight is the maximum number. The structure beautifully marries accountability and diversity of thought and keeps the decision making structures relatively flat.  

4. Schedule Management and IT tools

I liked the author's use of schedule management. Like an elementary school they have broken their schedules into several 45 minute slots. Every team member is expected to share his schedule with everyone. I guess this creates a certain peer pressure to plan your day and the author mentions two explicit advantages:

• A working style of consciously switching between several different projects will create a diversity of ideas which may in turn lead to innovation. 
• Make it part of the routine to set a clear finishing time and work solidly and efficiently for the full allotted time.

He has all his team members email their schedules to him. When he gets a schedule he visualizes team member's face and for the active guys he is able to recall their project progress in an instant. In cases where he is unable to do so he checks with the member for an update.

A fantastic idea and I have seen some of the Japanese and my half Japanese wife do this well. But for relatively unstructured people like myself this may be bit of an effort and may even invite resistance. The approach also involves a lot of tacit knowledge and the process is very dependent on the individual which in this case is the author himself. But despite the concerns if implemented it could be a fantastic idea as it in the author's words makes you conscious of how to use time. In the ideal world the idea of members managing their own schedule and making it transparent across the board is a powerful empowering and control mechanism.

5. HR Systems:

The author places importance on hiring. The process he has for the purpose is a rather communal mentor system. The applicant needs to network and win support before he can be hired.

For evaluation they use a so called PMT matrix which stands for Partner, Mentor and Trainee. So for a n member team there would {n X (n - 1) / 2} number of relationship and in each relationship a member is either a Partner, Mentor or a Trainee to the other member. Each relation is colour code and two way. So a guy may see another member as a partner but he/she may in turn see this fellow as a trainee. There are some beautiful derivatives possible out of this framework:

• A person whose assessment of his relationship matches with how the team views him is objective in his assessment, while a disagreement means that he is not properly evaluating his relationships.
• A person with many Mentor cells is showing leadership qualities.

Overall this seems like something that you will hear more about in future.