What does Super Mario have to do with Trader Joe's? Or the karaoke machine with Liquid Death? My latest essay about pop-cultural innovation strategies from Japan is a tag-team with the Kellogg Professor David Schonthal. Read it in the Harvard Business Review: hbr.org/2026/04/how-...
How the Walkman, Game Boy, Liquid Death, and Pokémon Became Surprise HitsGlobal innovators can learn from Japan’s pop-culture playbook, which shows that breakthrough products succeed by reducing friction rather than adding features. Examples like the Walkman, Game Boy, and...hbr.org