I came here during the height of the bubble era with a Japanese friend who was managing various businesses in my country. Through curiosity about what makes corporate Japan so successful, I thought that it would be better to be here to continue my inquiries about the inner workings of corporate Japan. The insights gleaned from this research have enhanced my work as a management consultant over the years.

My motto in life is this, "Be useful. Be a man of conscience.” Thinking consistently about how useful your life is will force you to leave a good legacy. For example, asking yourself the basic questions such as “If today is my last day on Earth, how will I be remembered by my family, friends, colleagues, community where I belong to, my country and the world?”

As a management consultant helping clients win in the digital world through rare insights and practical strategy expertise, I believe that happiness comes from seeing and hearing from clients that our consulting engagements truly impacted their businesses by delivering their sought-after results. For this reason, we have helped more than 2,200 firms, small and large, over the last 10 years in more than 100 countries.

My goal is to keep on doing what I have always done and believed — keeping to my words while standing by my work and standing for what is right while helping clients, the voiceless and the business community in Japan at 100 percent whenever needed.

Humility and integrity should be your guide to avoid what philosopher Friedrich Hayek called the pretense of knowledge. I believe that business leaders need to be lifelong learners. In fact, in our fast-paced and disruptive world compounded by trade and technology wars, what was a winning formula yesterday is quickly becoming obsolete. Unfortunately, most firms are ill-prepared to deal with nonmarket-based disruptions, given that they were told that strategy and disruption are just market-based, which is fatally flawed. Thus, pretending otherwise by defending the status quo through outdated assumptions of strategy and disruption is a fool's errand. I dive deeper into this subject in “The Disruption Barometer for Strategic Responses” and “The Strategy Equation” in my upcoming book, “Strategy in the Digital Age: How to Disrupt or Respond to Disruptors,” which was recently published.