Unless things change, Japan is finished, and what we need to deliver change is a revolution in the way workers are trained. I founded Business Breakthrough (BBT) as a foundation for shared knowledge, a platform based on everything I believe in after my many years in business. BBT's mission is nothing less than the development of business leaders who are able to contribute to the international community.

How We Started At the age of fifty-one, I quit the consulting firm I had been with for twenty-three years. I found myself in my mid-forties not really sure what more I wanted out of life, but with a growing conviction that making a real contribution to society was important to me. I thought that if everything I had learned over the years about management and problem solving could somehow find application at the international level, or in the community, in corporations and even in schools, many more people could benefit from this knowledge. Thus, shortly after leaving my job, I started focusing on reform issues from the standpoint of people in Japan; the culmination of those early efforts is this new, education-based business.

Why Education? In order to compete on an equal footing in the world of business today, it is essential that one have a strong understanding of world-class management structure, thinking, and analytical tools. Unfortunately in Japan today, it is clear that a total rethinking of management training and development practices, from the new hire to the president, is needed to help companies adapt to a new way of doing business. I was at the top of a major international consulting firm for many years. I have seen first hand the changes wrought in American business from the time before Bill Gates introduced Windows to the world in 1985 (let's call it “B.G.” for “Before Gates”), to the “A.G.” (“After Gates”) years after this major paradigm shift. I have also worked with business leaders and politicians the world over, and this experience has given me a strong understanding of what is needed to succeed in the coming age. Again, Business Breakthrough (BBT) was founded in the hope that this experience, in the form of a shareable knowledge platform, can be of some use to the Japanese business community.

Building Problem-Solving Skills, Not Rote Knowledge Even today, teaching based on rote acquisition of facts and figures is pervasive in Japan's schools. Education still focuses not on discovering an answer for oneself, but on memorizing a set of prepared answers, or perhaps on arriving at a prepared answer faster than someone else. Once employed, young workers are trained on-the-job by senior employees. In the fast-changing environment of business today, however, rote memorization just isn't enough, and when it comes time for those senior employees to change the way they think, or the way they do things, this on-the-job style of passing along knowledge can actually stop innovation in its tracks. This is why, at BBT, we have created a learning framework that focuses on an understanding of today's economic order, approaches to issues facing individuals and corporations, and methods for resolving those issues. We also place an emphasis on providing methods to help students improve their problem-solving skills versus concrete, real world situations. Today, real business opportunities lie in the destruction of old ways of doing things. The truly successful business leaders of the past twenty years have all been mold-breaking mavericks. The real success stories have also been very person-specific: the successes of Amazon, or Google, or Dell Computer, have all begun with the unconventional business models created by their founders. Another recent trend in business is that old, established companies find themselves at as high a risk for sudden collapse as anyone else. This needs to be felt and understood not just as an issue of corporate social responsibility, or of corporate governance, but a risk that pervades our IT society as a whole. It's understandable, then, that people who have nothing but the old models and structures to work with find themselves at a loss in the face of this new reality. What they need is an opportunity to improve their basic problem-solving, conceptualization, and logical thinking skills, and the chance to be exposed to real-world management case studies interpreted by real-world experts.

Toward a New Vision of Two-Way Distance Learning BBT develops and operates business management training programs built on Internet- and satellite-based distance learning. Using the digital networks and broadband capabilities widely available today, we hope to revolutionize interactive distance learning by delivering innovative, cutting-edge management training content and distance learning technology to people everywhere. Today, we have the ability to deliver comprehensive management training--over 4,000 hours of rich content covering everything from business basics to industry-specific topics--via a wide range of media (satellite broadcast, CD-ROM, VTR, broadband, etc.), primarily targeting people already in the workforce. BBT's strength is our ability to design, develop, and manage not only the educational content, but also the distance learning systems that deliver that content. Because the services we provide are based on a combination of content and technology, each program can be customized to a specific customer's needs. We also have in place the infrastructure to deliver a wide range of personnel development solutions, for everyone from the entry-level employee all the way to the CEO. Further, because our distance learning technology makes it possible to distribute content to a wide audience, employees needn't gather in one place, making it easy to scale up as needs grow. Our model is flexible enough to provide training simultaneously to employees at home and abroad, anywhere in the world.

Unmatched Depth and Quality of Content In order to continuously deliver the kind of content business owners, managers, and course participants will appreciate, we work closely with business leaders, university professors, and consulting firms to design and develop our courses, which are then filmed in our own studios. We make available seminars by the leading trainers in areas ranging from basic business concepts to the latest in management skills. To date we have produced almost 4,000 hours of course work, with another 400 hours of timely programming being produced each year, a quality and quantity of content which would be difficult for any competitor to match. For example, a stream of well-known executives and politicians from around the world visits me regularly, and the discussions that we have are taped for distribution worldwide. Some of this content includes talks with global leaders such as Phil Knight (founder of Nike), John Chambers (President & CEO, Cisco Systems), Michael Spence (Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, former head of Stanford's Graduate School of Business), Dr. Matathir Mohammed (Former Prime Minister of Malaysia), and Alvin Toffler (Futurist). We also follow world leaders as they track the latest in global trends, and package those conclusions in the form of text, books, and programs. To date, we have covered the leading economic “hot spots” around the globe, including China, Southeast Asia, America, India, South America, Scandinavia, and central Europe. We have also put together a wide range of content usually available only through MBA programs, ranging from basic business concepts to case studies covering both the successes and failures of a variety of business leaders and entrepreneurs. We now have talks with over 500 executives and other guests recorded and available for distribution.

Proprietary System Is Both Effective and Competitive BBT's proprietary distance learning system makes it possible for employees to study as they work. Everything necessary, from online courses, to review materials, to text downloads and submission of coursework, can be accessed from their PCs, and the system even makes it possible for them to exchange information and have lively discussions with other course participants. Further, with our patented viewing verification system, you can not only check whether participants have actually viewed the required content, but also deliver test questions tailored to the individual student. In short, the system makes "mass customization" of educational content possible. Our live broadcast system, in addition to supporting questions submitted prior to broadcast, can also handle real time question and answer sessions over the Internet. Most Internet-based learning systems can leave the student feeling increasingly isolated and alone, but by employing these kinds of interactive features, we deliver a more realistic “classroom” experience, so that even at a distance, the students can feel they are really “learning at the knee” of a master.

Sparking Innovation in Learning BBT focuses on distance learning as the core of its services, and there is a reason for this. Simply put, it enables us to deliver the knowledge and expertise of the world's best teachers to anyone, anywhere, using satellite and Internet-based broadcasting. The most effective teaching comes from those who are experts in their fields, and their participation has a huge impact on the students as well. Distance education also has other benefits. In-person group study requires a physical classroom, with restrictions on time and location, and question and answer sessions can be disorganized and frequently veer off-topic. With a distance learning system, however, physical restrictions of time and place can be eliminated, and the students are better able to focus on expressing their opinions based on the facts and data in front of them. Sitting at their PCs, they can easily access Google to search for supporting data and information before they speak up, enabling them to enter an argument better prepared. For example, at BBT's Graduate School, which is accredited by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, the Master of Business Administration (MBA) course offers online, real-time case studies based on the most current business issues, centering week-long discussions around "What would you do if YOU were the president of this company?" scenarios. Participation requires active research, analysis, and debate, and compared to the typical one-way classroom environment, we see much more meaningful interaction. The students cover a considerable number of these case studies by the time they graduate, eventually acquiring the kind of problem-solving skills that enable them to imagine what they would do as leaders in a similar situation. This is something only distance learning can deliver, and the students themselves are very much aware of the difference in approaching their jobs with these skills and without them. We believe that no traditional classroom-based training can offer this kind of effectiveness. BBT's core competencies--depth and breadth of content, coupled with proprietary distance learning technology-will not only create a revolution in employee training, but will also give thousands of those workers new hope for surviving in today's global economy.

BBT's Limitless Possibilities At BBT, we target people from all walks of business, from the new hire to the CEO. Even experienced managers and executives need to constantly acquire new world-class management methods, problem-solving skills, viewpoints, and insights in order to survive the dramatic shifts in today's business world. BBT thus makes available programs designed to meet these individual needs on demand, whether they be for more training to improve problem-solving skills, or a request for in-depth study of the M&A field. The secret is in our ability to create a customized, high value-added training system based on both our thousands of hours of content and the components of our learning technology. Further, using the Internet enables the delivery of a truly borderless learning experience for teachers and students no matter where they are in the world. With a platform that makes it possible for even your most far-flung employees to participate, you can conduct on-line surveys of tens of thousands of employees in just an instant. In short, BBT helps make this mysterious new era of the global economy more accessible to everyone, and we believe that with our world-leading content and training delivery systems, we can go beyond the boundaries of traditional education, to become the de facto learning platform for both corporate and collegiate users.

A Next-Generation Visionary Company Based on our vision of “lifetime empowerment,” BBT aims to create a platform that will become the one-stop filling station for all management training needs. Our wide-ranging content and advanced systems mean that learning can continue after college--the best training, as much of it as you want, when you want it, for as long as you like. Our comprehensive solutions offer a true integration of high tech and high touch, continually growing and generating new added value. The real drivers of our competitive strength and corporate value, though, lie in increasing the opportunities for lifetime self-improvement, helping students to get the most possible from our courses, and enabling them to become productive leaders in our society. BBT will continue to be a visionary company with its eyes firmly on the next generation. Our goal: to keep moving forward and adapting in the face of an ever-changing environment, and to use our creative, flexible approaches to learning to create a generation of business leaders who can truly contribute to the rest of the world.