Our program (MBA in Design and Leadership for Societal Innovation) provides a starting point of leadership journey for aspiring professionals with a passion to drive transformation and innovation. Its unique design is based  upon Shizenkan’s unique philosophy and approach, and has the following severn features.

1. Nurture and Support the Challengers with Frontier Spirits, who Embark on Their Own Leadership Journey

We define leadership as driving oneself and taking actions to create a new future that no one has seen yet. There is no single person who is born as a leader. A person becomes a leader by taking actions, getting fellows and supporters, and generating change and innovation in an organization or society. With this philosophy in mind, our program is designed as a starting point for each students’ leadership journey, which continues after graduation, as a challenger with frontier spirits.
To achieve this aim, the program provides opportunities to nurture abilities to envision an unseen future while facing with the reality, professional skills to drive change and innovation and leadership capabilities to gain trust and empathy from others. In addition, we provide chances to develop a network of likeminded friends, role models, and supporters who help you navigate the journey.

2. Develop Key Skills as Management Professionals

Shizenkan program is designed to develop management skills and capabilities that you need to drive change and innovation. The foundation is quantitative analysis, as well as logical and strategic thinking. These have long been on the core curriculum of traditional business schools, since they are an essential skill set for management professionals. You will also work on design thinking; the observation of what the real needs and potential wants and the envisioning of what business and society should be. Further, we nurture abilities to think outside the box to conceive a future state beyond a mere extension of the past or present and deal with the exponential and disruptive innovations in science and technology facing us today. We aim to develop a new breed of management professionals by uniquely combining traditional business school education along with these new methods from design schools and innovation schools.

3. Nurture the Perspective of the Corporate Manager, Entrepreneur, and Social Leader

One problem faced by business schools is the compartmentalization of education. Each course focuses on a narrow segment of management, such as accounting, finance, marketing, and strategy, merely delivering a patchwork of compartmentalized knowledge and frameworks. As a result, traditional business school education lacks integration of such elements from the perspective of management. Shizenkan’s curriculum constantly encourages students to capture each aspect of management/organizational activities from the perspective of corporate manager, entrepreneur, or social leader. Furthermore, we place business policy, a discipline that holistically captures business, organization and management, at the very core of the program. Thus, unlike other educational institutions, our objective is not to produce experts in specific functional areas, such as finance and accounting, but well-rounded managers, entrepreneurs, and social leaders.

4. Establish a Clear Set of Values and Insights into the Future through Liberal Arts Education

Business-related knowledge and skills are essential for the success of management and professionals. However, they only address questions regarding how to achieve something, but more fundamental questions such as “for whom?”, “for what?”, and “why?”. Hence, business-related knowledge and skills are about means but ends. We believe educational approach that simply teaches “how” is fundamentally flawed. To address the questions about ends, our curriculum includes liberal arts courses that deal with history, religions, philosophy, sociology, science, and the arts. By doing so we aim to help students inquire their own views about human history, world, society and people and establish their own values that guide their decision and actions as a leader. At the same time, liberal arts provide students the basis for comprehending the current state of the world and gain insights into the future. Shizenkan program nurtures abilities to gain deep insights into the long-term current of human history as well as the transformation of the world, society, and human existence as a result of globalization and innovation through liberal arts education.

5. Cultivate Leadership by Facing Society and Others and Reflecting Upon Oneself

We think that the first and foremost important element of leadership is contemplation of the meaning and goal of life through self-reflection. This is normally defined as recognition of one’s inner voice and values. However, for management professionals, who often wield influence over society, self-reflection should also include examining our relationship with society and other people; to question the meaning of our lives and goals within the context of society. Hence, in our program, self-reflection plays a critical role in cultivating a foundation for students’ growth as a whole-person management leader, and we incorporate various educational approaches such as coaching, assessments, psychology-based workshops and experiential learning to facilitate students’ self-reflection.

6. Collaborate Globally with People and Institutions Who Share Similar Values

Shizenkan operates in partnership with the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, the School of Inspired Leadership (SOIL) based in Delhi, India, and Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With these partners, our institution has a faculty exchange program to conduct joint workshops and research projects relating to global business management and the future of leadership education. Shizenkan also collaborates with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Japan and plans to create an interactive network with the Chinese business community in Asia. In addition, we operate a platform to discuss the future of capitalism and the responsibilities and roles of companies with business schools around the world that support Shizenkan’s educational philosophy, including schools from South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Belgium, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, Nigeria, and South Africa. Shizenkan students can also participate in these discussions.

7. Explore Leadership and Management, Grounded in Asian and Japanese Values

As the business school education that orginates from the United States pspread across the globe, many business schools in Europe and Asia accept Anglo-American perspectives as implicit assumption of their education. Shizenkan distance itself from this trend, as a business school from Japan and Asia. The 21st century is considered as the era of Asia, and the region has unique cultural and philosophical traditions, such as monism and the emphasis on living in symbiosis with nature. At Shizenkan, we incorporate Eastern philosophies as well as Zen and meditation are part of our curriculum, while drawing on American business school education, which is based on Western rationalism. We seek to become a bridge between the East and the West, and a model of management leadership that is best adapted for the future. Jointly with business schools around Asia, we organize study trips in Japan (Kyoto) as well as to Hong Kong/Shenzhen to provide hands-on learning experiences that go beyond the classroom.