9月21日 物語を持つ企業や団体は強いとして、具体的な企業などを取り上げます。

Takeda Tetsuya introduces "Monogatari Senryaku" (Story Strategy) by Uchida Kazunari (Nikkei BP), a book he says he found in a newspaper company's conference room. Its argument: companies that are managed well always have a story. He draws a parallel with how TV stations have shifted from hit dramas as their flagship draw to a focus on news and current-affairs programming.

"Monogatari Senryaku," a book from 10 years ago

Takeda introduces "Monogatari Senryaku" (Story Strategy) by Uchida Kazunari, published by Nikkei BP, which he says he came across in a newspaper company's conference room. Its core claim is that every well-managed company has a story behind it, and Takeda links this to how television has moved away from an era when hit dramas were a station's calling card, toward one centered on news and current-affairs programs.

Legends make companies stronger

As an example of a story's power, Takeda recounts the legend tied to Louis Vuitton and the sinking of the Titanic: tales that a Louis Vuitton trunk floated in the icy sea and saved someone clinging to it, and that a shirt found inside a bag washed up from the seabed was still dry. The legend spread and fed a worldwide boom for the brand. He then turns to Volvo, which developed the three-point seatbelt in its 1959 "PV544" but chose not to keep the patent exclusive, opening it to other automakers—a decision credited with lowering fatality rates and later leading to the development of pedestrian airbags. Next comes Patagonia, whose headquarters sits in Kamakura, reportedly chosen so employees could go surfing as soon as the waves were good. Finally, Takeda cites Steve Jobs's Apple commercial declaring the company's values: "I like Einstein, I like Martin Luther King, I want to be a misfit."

Kindai University's story strategy

Turning to education, Takeda highlights Kindai University (Kinki University), long treated as a safety-school fallback against the Kansai region's top four—Kansai University, Kwansei Gakuin, Doshisha, and Ritsumeikan. As Japan's pool of exam-age applicants shrank from 2 million in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2010, Kindai branded itself around "practical learning," achieving full-cycle tuna farming and marketing the fish as "Kindai Tuna," even opening dedicated restaurants in Osaka and Tokyo's Ginza. The university also embraced being a "second-choice school," introducing online applications and lower exam fees, and welcomed new students with a rock-concert-style entrance ceremony produced by alumnus Tsunku. The strategy paid off: in 2014 Kindai ranked first nationwide with 105,890 applicants.

Small companies with founding stories

Takeda also brings up Tanita and Ping, the golf club maker that built its brand on "custom fitting" even as the golf club market has been rapidly shrinking. Ping's founder, Karsten Solheim, worked as an engineer at GE (General Electric) while building putters by hand in his garage; when pros praised them, he founded the company. Likening these to the mythic hero's journey, Takeda runs through a string of Japanese food-company founding stories: Ezaki Glico, born from turning glycogen into caramel; Shirota Minoru, who discovered the lactic acid bacteria strain that became Yakult; and Ikeda Kikunae, who discovered glutamic acid as kombu's source of umami, and Suzuki Saburosuke, who turned that discovery into the seasoning "Ajinomoto."

The power of story in the film "DREAM"

Finally, lamenting the decline of TV dramas, Takeda turns to the film "DREAM," based on the true story of Black women mathematicians who supported NASA's rocket launches in the 1960s amid racial and gender discrimination. He points to two scenes as prime examples of a story's power: a supervisor smashing a "White Only" restroom sign with an axe, and astronaut John Glenn trusting the calculations of Katherine, a Black woman, as he prepares for the Apollo mission.