7 Steps to Organizational Reform to Create New Businesses

Thoughts from the Head of the Development Division

• Too busy with existing businesses to avoid using resources for new businesses
• Weak ability to come up with ideas for new businesses
• Lack of know-how to launch new businesses

We have a proven track record in creating organizations that generate ideas that can work on their own through the development of “thinking people.

7 Steps to Organizational Reform for Generating New Business

An organization that creates new businesses has many individuals who think and take action on their own, and the organization strongly supports them.

• Deep understanding of customers and activities to grasp latent needs that even customers are not aware of
• Thinking to draw out the differences from other companies from the technologies they own
• The ability to connect technology, needs, and business models that generate profit

By following the seven steps to strengthen the power of individuals and the organization, the current organization can be transformed into an organization with the ability to generate new business.

When executing the above seven steps, you need to

• Toyota method of lean product development
• TOC (Theory of Constraints) framework
• Jobs Theory (Jobs To Be Done)
• Business Model Thinking Method

We will utilize the following.

This framework maximizes organizational strength through the well-balanced enhancement of individual “knowledge” and “thinking skills.

3 Thinking Skills to Improve Idea Generation

Known methods to accelerate idea generation include the brainstorming method, the KJ method, the NM method, and TRIZ.

All of these methods are used to accelerate idea generation, and I think each of them is a useful tool.

However, all of these methods do not commit to generating ideas, but rather to creating a situation that facilitates idea generation.

Therefore, while making good use of the methods, I would like to think about training the individual’s ability to come up with ideas in parallel.

From my experience, I strongly recommend improving the following three thinking skills.

• Logical thinking skills
• Marketing thinking skills
• Strategic thinking skills

Logical thinking skills

What inhibits the ability to come up with ideas are each person’s own assumptions.

The most effective way to eliminate assumptions and get to the essence of things is to strengthen your logical thinking skills.

By learning that things are connected by cause-and-effect relationships, and by training yourself to think deeply about why and why not to get to the essence of things, you will eliminate assumptions, develop a habit of perceiving things objectively, and eliminate obstacles to idea generation.

By strengthening your logical thinking skills, you will also strengthen your abstraction skills and learn to borrow ideas from a wide range of areas through analogy thinking.

Reference： “Logical Thinking Skills Seminar”

Marketing thinking skills

The term “customer thinking” is widely used in companies, but the reality is that it is hard to get rid of the product-centered way of thinking.

Using various tools such as marketing theory, job theory, design thinking, etc., it is possible to eliminate the product-based way of thinking and to change the way engineers think about ideas, which tends to be product-out, to a customer-centric way.

Although there are people who object to engineers developing marketing skills, marketing thinking is becoming more and more important in various aspects of corporate activities.

Reference： “Marketing Thinking Skills Seminar”

Strategic thinking skills

Making a strategy means deciding on a basic policy (the key to the strategy) based on the analysis of the situation. This means digesting the obtained facts in your mind and coming up with something unexpected that no one else can come up with. Whether it will be a good strategy or an unusable one is a matter of personal taste, just like idea generation.

A good strategy, a strategy of a historically recognized strategist, is one that is both simple and surprising to people.

Understanding the essence of strategy will improve your ability to come up with ideas as well as improve your ability to think logically, and it will also give you the power to eliminate people’s assumptions.

Reference： “Strategic Planning Skills Enhancement Seminar”

How to learn entrepreneurial know-how from venture companies

By promoting open innovation and expanding networks with venture companies, it is possible to learn entrepreneurial know-how from venture companies.

In the 2000s, the number of people starting businesses, especially young people, has increased in Japan, and the financial environment surrounding venture companies has also improved.

There are many people who are willing to lend not only their money but also their wisdom to venture companies, such as major companies that have set up funds to enclose excellent venture companies, and venture capitalists who are thinking of facilitating the exit of startups by acquiring major companies.

Just by sending engineers to these worlds, the engineers can naturally absorb the “startup” situation and the know-how of starting a business.

By having engineers make personal connections with young people in startups, this can develop into company-to-company connections.

Here are two ways to acquire entrepreneurial know-how and other knowledge from ventures and around ventures while seeking contacts with venture companies.

1. Send young engineers to a co-working space run by a venture capital company
2. Send young people to venture companies (for a limited period of time, with a 7:3 work ratio between the venture and your company)

This is a dramatically more effective way to learn about entrepreneurship than having them learn in a classroom.

How Futureship can help

• Support for organizational reform to create new businesses
• Execution support for launching new businesses