“The Western approach to brainstorming is to get as many ideas out there as possible and look good and show off and be the person that came up with the best idea in the room. It’s almost competition based whereas the Japanese approach to brainstorming is to sit there, possibly in silence, until they think of things. That’s not a brainstorm in the classic sense. You’re not supposed to be thinking of the ideas in your head….you need to say it, and then we can start to build on it.”
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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail
“The purpose of meetings is intrinsically different in Japan. Westerners go to meetings to brainstorm, discuss, and hammer things out and decide things. Japanese go to meetings to confirm what has already been agreed, and I think a lot of foreigners never figure that out. So as a manager it’s absolutely critical that you get that you don’t go to meetings to decide or discuss – you’ve got to do that outside. Anybody who misses that is not going to get the most out of their team. You have to provide a safe environment where people can experiment where people won’t be embarrassed. Then you can start getting the idea flow.”
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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail
