Originally written in Traditional Chinese: Minerva Immersion Week 第 4 天：客人付的錢，到底買到了什麼？
Minerva Immersion Week, Day 4 (Oct 21): what are customers really paying for?
Context: Minerva's MDA is an online master's for working professionals. Immersion Weeks bring us to one city for a week. I have finished my MDA; Tokyo is my third and last.
Morning, Aoyama Gakuin University's entrepreneurship center, with Dean Eric Matsunaga: professional musician at 15, Berklee, then years as a consultant at Accenture, IBM, Deloitte and PwC.
On Day 1, as soon as I learned he had written a book, I searched bookstore after bookstore until I found it, and read it with AI since I don't read Japanese. Before the workshop he signed it, and he engaged with me throughout the session. That is the value of writing a book: it closes the distance between strangers in a moment.
He was blunt: "University is very difficult to do new things." So he built his own company outside the university, with consultants, lawyers and tax experts, designs programs there, and brings them in. And he disagrees with a common view in Japan: "Creating the company is one of the choice." The point is ideas and creativity.
His case: an 8-seat shop serving only tea and wagashi as a course, made live by an artisan under 30. Silent, mostly foreign visitors, booked a month ahead, several times the price of fine wagashi elsewhere. "What is guest really paying for?"
I answered first: rarity, and showing off. A Japanese student paused, then said many guests at such places don't take photos at all, because it breaks the atmosphere. The dean went further: a shop built on photos is a one-time visit; two quiet hours without a phone, like meditation, brings people back. My answer was the shallowest one in the room.
His conclusion: "We never pay for the product." "Japan is very good at manufacturing, and Japan is a little bit bad at experience." Products are easy to imitate, quickly. The point is experience, value, and culture.
Afternoon, two companies. Andy of Anchorstar, which helps global companies enter Japan, told us about a chef friend who said Japanese people eat "with hashtags": every dish comes with context, and an old ramen master carries all of it. Products can be copied; what lives in a person cannot. Then: "Japan is super trust society. If you do one introduction wrong, you lose the trust of your partner."
tonari builds life-size portals with eye contact: "Humans are built to be together." Video calls can't build trust.
Experience comes from people. Business between people runs on trust. Trust grows when we are together. Choose who you surround yourself with, and become someone they are confident introducing to others.
MDA if you want a degree that changes how you think without leaving your job; World Wise if you lead a team.
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