Hitotsubashi ICS Welcomes a New Dean
TOKYO, Japan – April 1, 2022: Professor Emi Osono has assumed the deanship at Hitotsubashi ICS (Hitotsubashi University Business School, School of International Corporate Strategy), effective today.
Succeeding Dean and Professor Kazuo (Kaz) Ichijo, Professor Osono is the fifth Dean of Hitotsubashi ICS and the second woman to head the school since its founding in 2000.
Professor Osono leads the Hitotsubashi ICS-based Porter Prize Award initiative, established to recognize Japanese companies that have achieved and can maintain superior profitability in a particular industry by implementing unique strategies. She serves as a board member for Tokyo Marine Holdings, as an advisory board member for Citigroup Japan Holdings G.K., and as a global advisory board member for Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
Professor Osono’s research and advisory expertise is centered on: (1) competitive strategy; (2) organizational capabilities in innovation, creativity, knowledge creation and adaptation to change; (3) organizational specificity and knowledge integration; (4) strategy development; and (5) strategy-level innovation of Japanese companies. Her publications include Extreme Toyota: Radical Contradictions that Drive Success at the World’s Best Manufacturer (with N. Shimizu and H. Takeuchi, 2008); The Contradictions that Drive Toyota’s Success (with H. Takeuchi and N Shimizu); and Embedded Innovation (with H. Yachi, M. Kodama, and I. Nonaka, 2006, in Japanese). In addition, she has written numerous cases on competitive strategy and innovation and conducts executive education sessions on these topics.
Professor Kaz Ichijo, who has served as dean of Hitotsubashi ICS since 2014, retired last month. Over the eight years of his tenure as dean, the school has: (1) built upon its outstanding reputation for teaching excellence and student engagement to become one of the most globally networked business schools in Japan by serving as a founding member (and Japan’s only member school) of the Global Network for Advanced Management, a global network of 32 leading business schools located on seven continents, in 2012; (2) deepened its connections with its parent university through the creation of Hitotsubashi University Business School in 2018; and (3) elevated its international standing and visibility by earning AACSB accreditation in 2021 and winning the No.1 position in Japan from the QS Global MBA Rankings 2022.
As of April 1, 2022, Professor Ichijo is a full-time professor at IMD in Switzerland, where he will continue serving as a bridge between Japan and Europe while furthering his mission of developing global leaders.
Hitotsubashi University Business School
School of International Corporate Strategy (Hitotsubashi ICS)
Media contact: Aiko Tokiyama, Marketing Communications Director, atokiyama@ics.hub.hit-u.ac.jp