Morinosuke Kawaguchi

Morinosuke Kawaguchi (川口盛之助, b. May 1, 1961 in Ashiya, Japan) is a Japanese technology consultant currently working for Arthur D. Little Japan. Also a lecturer in the postgraduate program at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, 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 car 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 TV shows. Kawaguchi writes regularly on Japanese technology development, creating a bridge between the hard-boiled industry and creative subculture. Since 2007, he has 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.

This book was reviewed by all the five major Japanese newspapers, a rare honor for a business book there. Famed fashion designer Hanae Mori had a lot of praise for Kawaguchi's book, reviewing it for the Sankei Shimbun newspaper. On the cover of the book, Taro Aso, the 59th Prime Minister of Japan, gives a blurb, describing the book as one "filled with wisdom and hints on how to leverage Japanese subculture’s potential." Korea and Taiwan published translated versions of the title at the end of 2009.