Everyone has someone they admire.
If you are a baseball boy, you may look up to a professional baseball player. If you are a junior engineer, you may look up to a senior engineer. If you are a new mother, you may look up to a veteran mother.
As a startup CEO, I also have someone whom I respect.
That person is Satoru Iwata, the former CEO of Nintendo.
I have had the opportunity to learn about the thinking and values of various business leaders through reading their books and working with them, but no one has influenced me as much as Mr. Iwata.
As I sometimes say within the company, HACARUS’ Code of Conduct was created under the considerable influence of Mr. Iwata’s and even Nintendo’s values.
Our Code of Conduct is as follows.
- It’s up to you to make your job exciting or boring.
- Don’t be domestic. Be global.
- Don’t follow the mainstream. Be unique.
I still clearly remember Mr. Iwata once made this statement before he was gone, and he said:
“Trends are not something you follow, but something you create.”
I feel that all of Nintendo’s management policies can be summed up in this one statement.
Because HACARUS is a B2B company at this point, we tend to make proposals in response to issues and needs that have already become prominent, rather than creating and proposing trends.
For example, even when it comes to technology, we do not always adopt the latest fads, but rather prefer to adopt technologies that have been used for a long time.
This is what Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo is famous for “Lateral thinking of withered technology.”
We dare to challenge difficult themes, choose industries that other companies do not tackle, and try to operate in places (cities) where no one else has set eyes on.
These are also close to going against the trend.
It is dangerous to always go against the trend in a startup where one must aim for the goal in the shortest distance with limited financial and human resources.
Balance is important in everything, but I am proud to say that HACARUS is permeated with this anti-trend mindset.
In the rapidly evolving technology field, it requires so much effort just to understand new trends. We will continue to strive not only to know and use such trends but also to be a trend-maker as much as possible.
