Morinosuke Kawaguchi

Morinosuke Kawaguchi
Morinosuke Kawaguchi in Akihabara in 2008
Born	May 1, 1961 ( Age 56), Ashiya, Hyogo, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Known for	Technology management, Product Design, Product Engineering, Strategy, otaku, subculture, innovation, Futurist

Morinosuke Kawaguchi (川口盛之助, b. May 1, 1961 in Ashiya, Hyogo, Japan) is a Japanese futurist and innovation expert. He is the founder of Morinoske Company Ltd., a Tokyo-based management and design consultancy. Previously, from 2002 till 2013 he was working for Arthur D. Little Japan. Also a lecturer in the postgraduate program at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2008 and in 2009, and Doshisha Business School in 2012 and in 2013, his approach to Japanese subculture and how it comprises a competitive advantage in R&D has made him popular in Japan.

Kawaguchi is renowned as a strategy expert in Management of Technology (MOT), intellectual property management and also technology & innovation management (TIM) in various industries such as telecommunications, electronics and the automotive industry. In Japan, he is considered the inventor of the concept in product engineering and technology development of drawing from Japanese culture, especially the concepts of monozukuri and otaku subcultures.

He is a bilingual lecturer on this topic and has appeared on several Japanese radio and Television shows. Kawaguchi writes regularly on Japanese technology development, creating a bridge between the hard-boiled industry and creative subculture. From 2007 until 2010 he had an ongoing biweekly column for the Nikkei BP online and another for TechOn online. Also, from February 2009 until January 2010, he wrote a series of articles on anime-like engineering and technology for DIME, a magazine comparable to WIRED in the US.

Kawaguchi became well known after his book Otaku de onnanoko na kuni no monozukuri (Neon Genesis of Geeky-Girly Japanese Engineering) was published in 2007 by Kodansha, earning the prestigious Nikkei BP BizTech Book Award in 2008. The central message of the book is how to leverage Japanese subculture for top-tier product development and innovation. It has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Thai and English.