Graduate Studies Blog
Harutaka Ichinoki is making progress in realising his ambition to be a global business leader.
A graduate of the full-time Nanyang MBA programme in 2012 and an executive at Suntory Beverage and Food, which produces beer and consumer goods, Ichinoki is relocating to Australia to work as the company’s senior corporate planning manager. In his new role, he will formulate and carry out corporate strategy for Suntory’s business operations Down Under. He will also analyse business performance in Australia and report his findings to headquarters in Japan.
Having worked for about seven years as a domestic IT project manager in the early part of his career at Suntory, Ichinoki wanted to change his business role.
“My ambition was to work for global business, to be a global business leader. So now I think I’m on the way to achieve my ambition,” he says.
His desire dovetailed with Suntory’s aim of becoming a global business. As such, the company would need to gather a global team of executives, gain overseas exposure, establish foreign subsidiaries, and produce a new governance structure. In Europe, Suntory acquired several companies with the goal of integrating them and setting up new systems and processes.
In 2011, Ichinoki applied for and was awarded a Suntory sponsorship to pursue MBA studies. He was the only Suntory executive awarded that year. The application process involved writing an essay on what the applicant wanted to achieve with an MBA, and several rounds of interviews.
When asked why he chose the Nanyang MBA programme instead of business schools in Europe and America that were popular with Japanese students, Ichinoki says he believed that Asia would be an attractive market for Suntory given the region’s economic growth and large populations. Personally, he liked Asia’s culture, its people and the food, having visited Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
In addition, Ichinoki got to know several MBA students from Nanyang Business School who were visiting Suntory on a business study mission. After talking with them, he thought the Nanyang MBA programme was attractive. He was also impressed by its connections to Waseda University in Japan, which Suntory has affiliations with.
“I thought that the connection with Waseda University was important,” Ichinoki says.
Furthermore, Suntory had hired a Frenchman with a Nanyang-Waseda double MBA. Talking to him persuaded Ichinoki of NBS’s merits.
He says his MBA studies developed his strategic thinking and analytical skills. He also learned to communicate with foreigners and better understand other cultures. Before accepting his posting to Australia, Ichinoki had worked on major projects in Britain and Indonesia, which involved business process transformation, post-merger integration and building a value chain.
Of his time at NBS, Ichinoki says he found his MBA classes “interesting and insightful”. He became good friends with his classmates and learned about the importance of diversity and cultural differences. He adds that his business study mission to China “gave me a lot of insights”.
Undoubtedly, his MBA gave him a “huge opportunity” to advance his career, having moved from the IT field into finance and business development and strategy.
“Now I have the opportunity to be located in other countries outside of Japan and work purely for local [foreign] business. So it’s a significant change from domestic IT to global business,” Ichinoki says.
