As a teenager growing up in Germany, Dr. Carolina Kawakubo was fascinated by Japan, which led her to study in Keio University as an exchange student from the University of Dusseldorf. Later, while pursuing her PhD in Business Management and Economics, Dr. Kawakubo began working as Marketing Manager at Henkel Japan. Dr. Kawakubo learned the different thought processes and quality expectations between Europe and Japan. In dealing with such differences, Dr. Kawakubo seeks to understand and talk with both the German headquarters and Japanese clients and find a common ground where the customer is satisfied with the product at a feasible price.
After earning an MBA from Beijing Normal University and teaching for a few years, starting a family, and freelancing for different companies between Japan, US, and Germany, Dr. Kawakubo started working at MedSkin Solutions. In taking on the role of General Manager of MedSkin as a woman with many older male employees, Dr. Kawakubo explains, “I personally think it's more about bringing in new ideas and actually performing and bringing in business. I'm also lucky that in my industry 99% of the clients tend to be women. It's also easier to present the product convincingly, because you can talk from your own experience.”
In encouraging innovation, Dr. Kawakubo refers to the saying: “Europeans like old things and new ideas and the Japanese like old ideas and new things.” In Japan, many companies push for innovation in products and technical processes but according to Dr. Kawakubo, “the real challenges is in social processes and in social values.” She adds “Tokyo looks like an extremely high-tech modern city, but if you live here, you start to see that under that surface society in many ways, [they] still follow [traditional] values.” To overcome these restrictions, Dr. Kawakubo relies on her global background to bring in new ideas and perspectives, which she finds many Japanese people are interested in hearing. She also stays takes extra care in staying patient and giving Japanese employees and clients enough time to open up, holding regular face to face meetings. Although as a woman leader, she still faces challenging situations such as dealing with discriminatory comments, Dr. Kawakubo describes it not necessarily as a cultural but human problem that needs to dealt with confidence.
Dr. Kawakubo advises new arrivals in Japan to learn the language, take special care in not blaming everything on Japanese culture, and picking one’s battles. Dr. Kawakubo refers to the subtle Japanese language nuances that can only be understood by those that speak the language. For example, if a Japanese client says “we will think about it,” it will most likely mean they are not interested. If one does not understand these subtleties, communication can be a struggle. Furthermore, Dr. Kawakubo is careful to not fall into the temptation of blaming challenging situations on Japanese culture and generalizing. Lastly, Dr. Kawakubo advises to pick your battles, and understand what can be and what cannot be changed in Japan. She says: “[it’s] the art of the possible. You have to make sure if what you want to do is actually feasible. So you should have somebody who's very familiar with the Japanese industry and at the same time, ambitious enough to question that… you have to have somebody who knows both sides and who can be a consultant to you.”
