Business Strategy as a mean to support cultural integration between the East and the West
That’s why, once you know both, you can no longer have a “black or white” approach.
The eastern world has always fascinated us occidentals: philosophy, culture, technology; there are many topics we could discuss given the reciprocal cultural enrichment between the East and the West.
However, here we’ll briefly analyze the approach pursued by these two areas when it comes to implementing a Business Strategy.
Canvas Continental breakfast based on Business Model Canvas
What is it?
The Business Model Canvas is a tool that can describe the high-level strategic details needed to successfully launch a business (or a product) on the market, by identifying the areas that make it unique and distinctive. Created by Alexander Osterwalder – Entrepreneur & Co-Founder of Strategyzer - the Business Model Canvas allows to achieve a clear vision on how to create and distribute value, by completing all the nine areas which represent the core elements of a company, the business idea will be clear and intuitive to everyone, regardless of educational background or department of belonging. In short, this is an extremely functional model for kick-starting your own business idea.
Lunch in the Land of the Rising Sun with Kaizen model
We now land in the East to analyze a different approach that has profoundly influenced the way we work all over the world: Kaizen, which was introduced by Masaaki Imai, Founder of the Kaizen Institute.
What is it?
Of Japanese origins, the Kaizen is a compound word of ‘KAI’ - Change and ‘ZEN’ - Virtue, it is a holistic method/philosophy which aims at improving every aspect inside a company: from people, to processes, to products. Just like Agile, Lean or Six Sigma systems, the goal is to reduce waste and eliminate errors – by creating an environment where employees and leadership feel comfortable enough to address issues and grow together.
The multiple and different components of processes and business strategy become opportunities to take up the challenge of constant improvement; this approach can then be transferred and repeated in different contexts outside of work.
International aperitif: when East and West coexist!
Companies all over the world are currently using the methods above, and even though they come from different cultures and social contexts, the values of economic and personal well-being act as a common denominator.
In our AI Makes Sense project we had the change to delve deeper in topics like the one above, and more, from an AI-driven technological innovation stand, together with Andrea Pecci – Head of Data, Digital & Technology Takeda Italy - and Fabio Moioli - Head Consulting & Services Microsoft (listen to the episode here).
What stood out to us is the Takeda PTRB model (Patient-Trust-Reputation-Business), which became our starting point to share the topic in this article. A topic which value is even more tangible when applied to business processes of adherence/application of new technologies in Pharma.