Business Karaoke Podcast with Brittany Arthur How This Community Embraces Unlikely Connections to Provoke New Possibilities with Tak Urushihara
In this episode we are joined by Takuo Urushihara, who just goes by Tak. Tak wears many hats; not only is he the director of Operations at Venture Café Tokyo but he also leads a long standing traditional family business in Japan.
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the importance of embracing unlikely connections in the service of others and how they can provoke new opportunities. And who better to walk us through through this topic with a string of personal stories, than Tak! Tak was born in Japan but raised globally; having spent portions of his life in Malaysia and the United States. Diversity is not only a theme in this personal life but also most certainly also in his professional life, having done creative work for the Boston Red Sox to now building one of the most prominent innovation communities in Japan with Venture Café Tokyo.
In the Business Karaoke community, we, like you and I, we're also in a way like Tak. Striving to make our Japan "and" stories somehow worthwhile maybe not even for ourselves but at least for somebody else.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Please share your feedback with me on your favorite social medial platform.
Let's begin!
💡 Key Conversations
03:33 | Failure is good enough for a t-shirt
08:05 | The unlikely start of building Venture Cafe Tokyo
15:09 | Returning to Japan with new challenge
25:30 | Type "C" people and building communities where diversity is an advantage
44:30 | Putting the "I" in innovation - contributing to a community in your own way
53:40 | Future hopes
To learn more about Tak and Tokyo Venture Cafe and CIC Tokyo follow the links.