CEO message

Over the past few decades, many interconnected factors have drastically altered today’s needs for business education as well as the way that education is being delivered. With the shift away from long-term employment in Japan and elsewhere, with a single employer with OJT, to a more mobile and global-oriented business professional job market, the needs of continued business education – especially delivered in English – have dramatically increased.

This was the reason that I came up with the idea of offering a comprehensive MBA-like business curriculum in English - open for any business people in Tokyo to join on a part-time basis - and joined with two Japanese Harvard/MIT MBAs to establish CICOM International (now CICOM Brains) in Tokyo in 1996, the first private business education institution in Japan to offer such practical skill-based management training.

Since that time, many thousands of young Japanese business professionals have passed through the doors of CICOM seeking to improve their global business skills in an English based environment and, although I am no longer a full-time director, I remain active as a part-time faculty member there focused on “Strategy” and ”Global leadership”, especially how to implement positive change.

The world in Japan has continued to change since CICOM was founded and the possibilities of delivering business education have been revolutionized with the advent of the Internet and rapid advances in technology as well as the rapidly shifting dynamics of the global business economy, especially here in Asia-Pacific. Indeed, business education has reached out to the mainstream over the past decade, and broad access to management concepts has been pushed down to just about anyone.

On the other hand, while the needs and the context of delivering business education to the working community in Japan (and elsewhere) have shifted immeasurably, the capabilities of Japanese education institutions to deliver what the market is demanding have for the most part not been transformed, and remain entrenched in many of the old ways of doing things and caught up with stakeholder priorities routed in substantially different scenarios than exist now and somewhat trapped in old traditions.

Nigel Denscombe

Harvard MBA & AB

Mission:

Our goal at Denscombe Corporation – as business education transformers and turnaround specialists – is to provide critical strategic consulting and wide-ranging management support to business education institutions in Japan and elsewhere to reshape and refocus their assets and human resources to meet the realities of the new business education situation

Qualifications:

We at Denscombe Corporation are able to meet this mission because of a unique management skill-set and experience that cannot be found elsewhere:

1.As a newly minted Harvard MBA, our CEO (then working for a big New York bank Bankers Trust Company) learned at young age the meaning of value creation and the sometimes painful tradeoffs associated withy that as the point man first responsible for drastically repositioning the organization strategy and stakeholder priorities (with the aim of not just survival but of becoming the top profitable bank in the US), and then creating new markets to operate in and gain the top market share

2.Deep hands-on experience and proven track record in restructuring business enterprises through a successful pre-Japan merchant banking and strategic financial consultant career focused on strategically refocusing businesses for growth and shareholder value creation

3.Top management and entrepreneurial experience in creating, building and running Japan’s “number one” privately controlled business school focused on delivering global-oriented management education in English (CICOM Brains, Inc), since its foundation in Tokyo in 1996.

4.Well regarded ability as a results-oriented business educator within business organizations (Ex. Managing director of Bank America charged with re-training senior management to strategically reposition the organization) and as a faculty member at business schools (Ex. Market-entry/Business planning specialist at Waseda University School of Commerce, Strategy and Financial Management at CICOM Brains)

Denscombe Corporation

1) Consulting/alliances/investor tie-ups

Management consultant and strategist/turnaround specialist in the business education industry

Business and finance strategist/consultant for existing business education organizations – Business education entrepreneur and turnaround specialist