I got caught in the mess caused by typhoon in Tokyo. When my meeting finished in the Yotsuya area, I took the subway, assuming that it would be running to the station where I usually get off, only to find that the Tokyu line had stopped. The buses were nowhere to be found and when I did find one, there were LONG lines everywhere around the bus terminal.
I thought that it would be probably wise to stop by at some restaurant or cafe and have food, drinks etc. as we knew that typhoon would pass in few hours. It also occurred to me that I should probably check in at the hotel nearby and forget about going home. But by that time, I was soaked in rain and was cold. So I followed the LONG line of people to find the end of the line and waited for close to an hour to get on the bus.
As the line was so long, we were in the pouring rain and all soaked. As I was watching TV news later at home, I heard the wait time to get on the bus had extended to three hours for some of the bus lines.
Yoko Ishikura is a Professor at Hitotsubashi University ICS in the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy in Japan. She has held positions as a professor at the School of International Politics, Economics and Business of Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, as a consultant at McKinsey and Company Inc. Japan and a visiting professor at Darden School.
Professor Ishikura is a consultant to a number of multinational companies and has been a frequent speaker at management conferences, seminars, and workshops throughout the world. She was a member of the Regulatory Reform Committee for the Japanese government and the International Competitiveness Commission for METI. She is currently a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum.
She is the author of Strategic Shift from OR choices to AND paradigm, Building Core Skills of Organization , and the co-author of the following publications: Managing Diversity in the 21st Century, Strategy for Cluster Initiatives in Japan , and Building a Career to the World Class Professionals – all in Japanese. Her books in English include: Asian Advantage, Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management and Trust and Antitrust in Asian Business Alliances.
Professor Ishikura’s current research interests are focused on global competition, innovation, and knowledge management. She received her BA from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan; MBA from Darden School, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia; and DBA from Harvard Business School.
