The Business-Oriented CIO: A Guide to Market-Driven Management

Chapter 11. Local Heroes

The reason progress is slow is that we always expect other men to be the heroes and to live the heroic lives. But we all have hero stuff in us.

—Wilfred A. Peterson

It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.

—Louis Pasteur

An American purchased an expensive watch from a first-rate jewelry store in Tokyo. The paper bag containing the watch was of the finest quality, with the name of the store in green letters on a pale yellow background. Below the store name, printed in English, were the words, "The worlds most beautifully." Why was the tag line for a Japanese jewelry store in English, and why did a first-rate store have a tag line that did not make sense?

To understand the reasons for the wording on the bag, one has to look a little closer at Japanese culture. Like most of the world, Japan is enamored with Western pop culture. Travel to Moscow, Bangkok, or Hong Kong and you will experience large numbers of the locals, particularly the young, wearing blue jeans, listening to Western music, and watching Western movies. Japan is no different. Spend a Saturday in one of Tokyo's parks, or visit any of its many shopping areas, and one will see UCLA T-shirts and New York Yankees baseball caps among a sea of other Western iconic names splashed across shirts, coats, and hats. Japan's acceptance of foreign ideas has led to the popular Western belief that Japan just copies others, particularly the West. This is reinforced by the electronics and computer industries, ...