Kazuo Ichijo returns to IMD Faculty - IMD Business School
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Kazuo Ichijo returns to IMD Faculty

Professor Ichijo will become a full-time member of IMD’s Faculty from April 2022, extending the business school’s international reach, growing its ties with Japan’s business community, and helping drive the development of its future leaders.
October 2021

IMD Business School has confirmed that Professor Kazuo Ichijo will become a full-time Faculty Member, accelerating the institute’s commitment to grow Japanese executives as global leaders.

Building on a decade’s programme of ties with Japan’s business community, led by Naoshi Takatsu, IMD representative for Northeast Asia, Professor Ichijo’s presence in Switzerland will deepen a long-standing international alignment.

With research interests and expertise in innovation through organizational knowledge creation and in corporate transformation, Ichijo will offer Japanese businesses a powerful international perspective, and a guide them through their interaction with global economy, public policy, culture change, public perception and regulation.

Ichijo’s ties with business leaders in Japan, and with the coalition of businesses working for more effective climate change policy, will help IMD activate and grow a network of executives able to shape their leadership and approach internationally.

“I am truly excited. Enabling innovation of Corporate Japan with IMD’s expertise, is one of the very purposes of my return to IMD. I look forward to supporting Japan’s transformation, and to seeing it impacting the world.” says Ichijo.

Takatsu added “I am thrilled to work closely with Professor Ichijo, to take IMD’s contribution to a new level.  We can now aim to create even larger, more fundamental impact to Japan’s business community.”

He [Ichijo] is the holder of a BA (social sciences) and MS (social sciences) from Hitotsubashi University and PhD (business administration) from the University of Michigan. Currently he is also Dean and Professor of School of International Corporate Strategy, at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and on March 31, 2022, he will quit from this position to join IMD.