TimeZone Voices Blog

You have done everything right. The meetings have gone well, the proposal is solid, and there is genuine interest on their side. But weeks have passed, and there is still no decision. This is not unusual. It is nemawashi. The word comes from gardening; it refers to carefully preparing a tree's roots before transplanting it. In Japanese business culture, it describes the process of quietly building consensus behind the scenes before any formal decision is made. Every key stake

When Hardware Thinking Meets Hollywood On 25 September 1989, Sony Corporation acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment for $4.8 billion: $3.2 billion in cash and $1.6 billion in assumed debt. The price was widely considered extravagant. Analysts noted that Sony had paid $27 per share for a stock that had been trading at $12 at the start of the year, and roughly 22 times Columbia's annual cash flows. Sony's CEO Norio Ohga was unmoved. The logic, in his view, was inescapable. S