Kotozukuri Principle to Build Greater Impact on Business — Lesson Learned from Japanese Enterprise
There are numerous lessons to be learned from Japanese businesses. In terms of technology, the Japanese corporation has proven to be a forerunner. Everything they manufacture, including digital products, has a focus on high-quality products and the best consumer experience. Simply put, almost everyone can recall fond childhood recollections of playing one or more Japanese gaming titles from Nintendo, Sega, or Konami — the thrill never fades.
The Monozukuri philosophy — the art of manufacturing things — is a fundamental Japanese spirit that pervades every Japanese-born firm. This idea is extensively used in Japanese manufacturing businesses, but it is currently being extended to include not only the manufacturing process but also the business operations. Every person in a Japanese organization, from the front line to senior management, has a role to play in achieving a positive outcome for the customers.
Communication and managerial direction are glued by sincerity (i.e., less buzzword or over-phrase managerial speech as typified by western company’s culture), thus creating harmony among all people in a workplace. Aside from extensive use in the manufacturing process, The Monozukuri is also reflected in the making of business plans, sales, research and development, and others. Every section of the organization has the same interest in the Monozukuri principle, which is to improve the quality of the product or service and boost customer happiness.
To avoid falling into the stagnation trap, everyone in the company should concentrate on the consumer mind rather than the competition. In addition, the Monozukuri ideology requires truthfulness in accepting all facts and never burying any negative customer feedback. Because the company’s philosophy is “constant improvement,” everyone in the company is eager to share unfavorable news with senior management.
The Monozukuri philosophy also entails a sense of adventure — be prepared to change shapes at any time. As a result, everyone’s process is a constant improvement:
· To avoid becoming short-sighted, always challenge yourself and others with the following sentence: “It would be fantastic if I / We could… “
· Don’t over-glorify technology — it’s only a tool, the most important thing is your adaptability on facing the new situation. I’m quite sure that Machine learning and AI works on your pipeline, but do you know that Japanese farmer is also using AI? https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/how-a-japanese-cucumber-farmer-is-using-deep-learning-and-tensorflow
· Bring sincerity in any form of communication. One easy way to show sincerity to others is by being an active listener. Sincerity is the cornerstone of continuous improvement since you let your mind ready to accept imperfections.
· Truth is coveted in consumers’ minds, while the perception of quality is an explorative process that underpins improvement success. Strengthening communication and brand building for mediocre products will only last a while, then make sure the product promises match what users perceive.
There’s also Hitokuzuri (creating people) and Kotozukuri (making things happen), in addition to Monozukuri (producing things). While Hitokuzuri means “making people” — the passion and art of developing individuals through education — Kotozukuri means “making things happen,” or “creating value from knowledge.”
A corporation cannot create innovation on its own and rely solely on internal resources, thus ignoring the synergistic power of collaboration. Having joint development initiatives with a partner from a different industry would assist a company to stay alert and avoid bias (you can’t see the problem clearly if you’re part of it).
Honda is exemplifying what a corporation can do to bring the Kotozukuri spirit to life. Honda is working with Hitachi on a joint development initiative to create a system that converts external voices, such as those found on social media, into a format that can be used in marketing and other operations. (https://social-innovation.hitachi/en-id/case studies/honda motor/). This system is referred to by Honda as a Voice of Stakeholder (VoS) tool, which goes beyond the Voice of Customer (VoC) concept for increasing customer satisfaction. By using this tool, Honda wants to take a sincere approach to listen to all voices, including those who have never used their products, and use that to provoke innovation.
Today, the market is undergoing tremendous changes. Customers expect not only high-quality items but also improved usability. Customers generally do not seek the finest of the best in each product category, but rather something good enough at a reasonable price. While Monozukuri strives to build a high-quality product, Kotozukuri creates innovative products through fascinating stories. In the contemporary consumer era, consumer research is a critical component of efforts to get new insights and rethink innovative conceptions. Companies’ new sensibility can be identified if everyone refrains from gloating about prior achievements and instead focuses on the new findings derived from the consumer research.
To create a genuine link to the new reality, Telkomsel is improving the customer experience and evolving its marketing campaigns to be even more digital, targeted, precise, and personalized. Internal data by itself is not enough to contribute context either for active conversation or raise engagement. As a result, Telkomsel attempted to use natural language processing (NLP) technology to curate all social media conversations (either they’re using or not using Telkomsel) to convert topics, feelings, and complaints into structured consumer research data that business users can use to reference the implementation and evaluation of products and campaigns. The eagerness of consumers to share feedback, concerns, and reactions on social media demonstrates a high desire for personalization as well as a great opportunity for Telkomsel to keep doing continuous improvement on products and services delivered to customers.
Realizing that personalization is not always linear, having a contextual understanding of consumers’ behavior especially in the decision-making process surely helps the company to demonstrate a customer-centric mindset and built fascinating stories over the products. It’s important to remember that not all customers behave in the same way or digest information in the same manner. For example, interventions aimed solely at preventing customer loss can either successfully keep them using Telkomsel or cause frustration to crystallize, triggering or hastening customer departures that could otherwise have been avoided or at least delayed. This is especially true when contact mechanisms that are intrusive are being used.
The path to hyper-personalization must be followed with caution and an understanding that external influences have a significant impact on the program’s effectiveness. Consumer perceptions on usage experience and impressions of competing products are the most powerful external factors; thus, the personalization process must be tempered with customer sentiment analysis to avoid losing sight of reality and forgetting consumers’ freedom of choice. It is essential to maintain a form of “fair value exchange” with customers in order to ensure their longevity.
Once again, realizing that customers have a high degree of freedom is part of the Kotozukuri principle, a principle that believes that good things will come from togetherness, sincerity, and the courage to change.
