Victory over Originality 

Plan

“What an army needs is victory. There is no point in having original weapons if you lose and die,” says Damian McKinney.
Recent wars have also demonstrated the effectiveness of “saturation attacks,” in which large numbers of older missiles are launched to overwhelm the latest missile defence systems.
Japan, too, achieved success both during the Meiji Restoration and in the postwar reconstruction period by pursuing a spirit of “catch up and overtake,” undeterred by criticism that it was merely imitating others.
Organizations that put victory first and choose their methods accordingly are strong.

Deep Dive

Armies are always seeking the latest weapons. But that is because they want to avoid being defeated by an enemy who uses them first. It is very different from simply being fascinated by whatever is new. The latest weapons are a means to achieve victory; inventing them is not the objective in itself.

For an army, where survival and victory come first, if there is a more effective option than an original weapon, it will choose that instead. The U.S. military’s reliance on overwhelming material superiority during the Second World War is a classic example. More recently, in Israel and Ukraine, there have been cases in which saturation attacks using older missiles have overwhelmed the latest interception systems. Even an Aegis destroyer capable of intercepting more than 100 incoming targets at once cannot cope if 200 missiles are fired at it.

What I want to discuss here is not which country is right or which weapon is superior. My point is that if you focus entirely on the means required to win, there is no need to insist on using the latest or most original weapons.

The same applies to tactics. It is sometimes said that only three people in military history truly invented an original way of fighting:

Alexander the Great: built a vast empire through the use of tightly packed formations
Genghis Khan: conquered much of Eurasia through the mobility of mounted forces
Napoleon Bonaparte: swept across Europe by creating local numerical superiority

There have been many other military geniuses, but they generally developed and improved the methods of earlier generations. In the military world, the thinking is that someone who creates an entirely new method of warfare from scratch may appear only once in a thousand years—and that there is no need to create something from zero as long as you win.

When I was a child, Japan was mocked—or rather, criticized—by other countries for producing:
“Nothing but copies.”
“Monkey-see, monkey-do imitations.”

It was the era when Made-in-Japan products dominated markets around the world, from cars and electrical appliances to cameras and watches. As an innocent, science-minded boy, I thought:
“How embarrassing. Japan has no future unless we start creating original products of our own.”

So when Sony’s Walkman and Honda F1’s telemetry system appeared, I was genuinely excited.

But after graduating from university and joining a foreign-owned consulting firm, I could not help laughing. Western companies were copying and imitating others just as enthusiastically.

They simply used better-sounding expressions such as:
“Let’s do some benchmarking.”
“What is best practice?”

I remember thinking:
“That’s not fair! You criticize Japan, and then turn around and do exactly the same thing yourselves!”

Looking back now, however, Western companies were simply using whatever methods they needed in order to win in a capitalist society. Criticizing Japan and trying to hold it back was itself one of those tactics.

Of course, in recent years, geniuses such as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk have changed the world. But one lesson I keep coming back to from the military is that originality is not the only route to victory. In fact, the Prussian military studied the genius Napoleon exhaustively and went on to win the Franco-Prussian War.

Personally, I have never worked in an organization that truly invented something from scratch.

・In the 1980s, we introduced American strategic consulting methods to Japan.
・In the 1990s, we launched the German Protector razor in Japan.
・In the 2000s, we expanded sales of the French brands Dom Pérignon and Moët & Chandon in Japan.
・In the 2010s, we introduced Britain’s Mission Leadership® to Japan.

In each era, when there was a gap in technology, methods, or know-how between Japan and other countries, we turned that gap into a business opportunity.

Recently, a business leader said to me:
“Japan wins on the second lap.”

There may be some truth in that. Japan has not often dominated the world through completely original technologies, but during both the Meiji Restoration and the postwar reconstruction period, it surpassed other countries through the spirit of:
“Catch up and overtake.”

Ryotaro Shiba’s Clouds Above the Hill, a novel depicting the Russo-Japanese War, contains the following line:
“In the end, it is how you use them. You may buy British warships and German guns, but if they are operated by Japanese hands, and Japan wins through the way they are used, then that victory belongs entirely to the Japanese.”

Organizations that put victory first and choose their methods accordingly are strong.