POWERING SOCIAL GOOD

Hitachi has redefined its mission as a ‘social innovation business’ and is walking the talk, says vice-president Kojin Nakakita.

Ask Kojin Nakakita to talk about himself and the chairman of Hitachi Asia will tell you he is an ice hockey player, after opening with a rather enigmatic declaration: “I’ve had a bit of a different life from everyone else.”

His accent too is hard to place. It is definitely Japanese but mixed with something else, and peppered with colloquialisms like “man” — enunciated with a full-on Southern twang — to convey exasperated disbelief.

It is probably safe to say that this Hitachi lifer — who is vice-president and executive officer at the Japanese conglomerate, and concurrently serving as chairman of Hitachi Asia and Hitachi India — did not see corporate life as his future when he was a boy.

Introduced to ice hockey from the age of six, Mr Nakakita started travelling at 12 to Canada for training during the summer holidays. At 15, he moved to Vancouver (and later Wilcox, Saskatchewan) to pursue a career as a professional ice hockey player.

It was hard going, but good for his sporting passion, he says. Which might explain his decision to move to San Diego for his undergraduate studies.

“Why San Diego? Because it was from minus-40 degrees to plus-30 degrees in one year,” says Mr Nakakita with a chuckle. “No, they offered me a scholarship. For a Japanese to earn a scholarship, it was very difficult back then.”

But the expected hard-won fruits of those years of labour were not to be. “Before a tryout for the pros, in my senior year, I broke my knee. I was hospitalised for three months and that was the end of my hockey career. So I came back to Japan and started working for Hitachi.” He pauses and adds drily: “Hitachi didn’t have a hockey team, obviously.”

BREAKING THE MOULD

A mix of luck and destiny was to take centre stage in what had been, thus far, a focused drive to the end-game.

Back in Japan, Mr Nakakita simply did not fit the mould of Hitachi’s previous hires. Having completed high school in North America, his last recognised degree from Japan was junior high. And up until then, Hitachi did not take in people with international degrees; all previous hires were graduates from top-tier Japanese universities.

But the company was looking to grow, says Mr Nakakita, and he became Hitachi’s first recruit with university accreditation from outside of Japan.

In 2002, this decision was to bear fruit for the company — Mr Nakakita’s years of experience in the United States put him in a good position to negotiate with the US Transport Security Administration (TSA). Indeed, in 2005, Hitachi announced that the regulator had certified one of its explosives trace detection systems, making it the world’s first company outside of the US to receive TSA certification.

Despite many successes in the physical security systems, the company decided to make a change. In his words, “it wasn’t right for Hitachi, so I closed it down”.

It wasn’t the first programme Mr Nakakita was to close down, or was unable to quite pull off, in his years at Hitachi.

Another initiative that was ultimately ditched was a US$600-million desalination plant in Dahej, India. The joint-venture project was expected to be able to process more than 330,000 tonnes of water a day, and would have been among the largest in Asia.

Mr Nakakita does not go into details, but he speaks openly about his varied experiences, which included ending projects and ventures that ultimately proved not to be a good fit for Hitachi.

While he maintains that Hitachi — which was founded in 1910, with industrial motors as its first products — is still a traditional Japanese firm, the company’s growth and transformation over the decades to a highly diversified conglomerate reflects a progressive mindset ready to embrace the business and societal trends of the day.

The company is actively innovating and repositioning itself — its current portfolio is quite different from the customer-facing one that people in the region might probably be more familiar with.

Gone is the image of the Japanese manufacturing powerhouse that was closely associated with the production of television sets and other consumer electronics. In its stead is a “social innovation business”, defined as a business that resolves issues faced by society and customers. The Tokyo-headquartered company’s products and services are now structured around five key sectors: mobility, smart life, industry, energy and IT solutions.

The entire system is supported by its Lumada IoT platform, a culmination of the company’s drive to turn data into insights to drive digital innovation.

This embodies what Mr Nakakita defines as Hitachi’s key differentiator — the ownership of expertise in information technology (IT), operational technology (OT) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Hitachi is even dabbling in workplace happiness. In 2015, the conglomerate announced it had developed wearable technology that can wirelessly measure whether or not a group of people is happy.

Despite impressive strides in its identified fields, and adopting some principles that might be more closely identified with those of a startup culture, the company seems to draw a clear line between innovating within its areas of expertise and identifying too closely with a “fledgling firm” mentality.

Instead of simply disrupting, there is untold value in doing what Mr Nakakita describes as “conservative work”.

BACK TO BASICS

When people turn on their taps they expect water to flow; when they wake up in the morning, they expect their phones to be fully charged overnight. But none of this is possible without power. “After the 2011 tsunami, everything was wiped out,” he says. “No lights, no water, darkness for one week in Tokyo. I had to walk home 42 kilometres from my office to my home. … Can you imagine? All the lifts were dead, water didn’t come out. It’s a terrible thing.

“People don’t appreciate this anymore. Behind the scenes we have to work hard to maintain this.” And “maintain this” means ensuring basic infrastructure is in place, up and running, and also ensuring that resources are used in a sustainable manner.

“We don’t need to be fancy about it, we don’t talk about it, but from time to time, I tell my guys, this is the true meaning of contributing to society,” says Mr Nakakita.

And as to whether he would ever put on a wearable to measure his happiness?

“I’m okay,” he says. “I can tell whether I’m happy or not happy, thank you very much!”

Instead of simply disrupting, there is untold

value in doing what Mr Nakakita describes as “conservative work”