19: Dr. Carolina Kawakubo, General Manager of MedSkin Solutions

<p>As a teenager growing up in Germany, Dr. Carolina Kawakubo was fascinated by Japan, which led her to study in Keio University as an exchange student from the University of Dusseldorf. Later, while pursuing her PhD in Business Management and Economics, Dr. Kawakubo began working as Marketing Manager at Henkel Japan. Dr. Kawakubo learned the different thought processes and quality expectations between Europe and Japan. In dealing with such differences, Dr. Kawakubo seeks to understand and talk with both the German headquarters and Japanese clients and find a common ground where the customer is satisfied with the product at a feasible price.</p> <p> </p> <p>After earning an MBA from Beijing Normal University and teaching for a few years, starting a family, and freelancing for different companies between Japan, US, and Germany, Dr. Kawakubo started working at MedSkin Solutions. In taking on the role of General Manager of MedSkin as a woman with many older male employees, Dr. Kawakubo explains, “I personally think it's more about bringing in new ideas and actually performing and bringing in business. I'm also lucky that in my industry 99% of the clients tend to be women. It's also easier to present the product convincingly, because you can talk from your own experience.”  </p> <p> </p> <p>In encouraging innovation, Dr. Kawakubo refers to the saying: “Europeans like old things and new ideas and the Japanese like old ideas and new things.” In Japan, many companies push for innovation in products and technical processes but according to Dr. Kawakubo, “the real challenges is in social processes and in social values.” She adds “Tokyo looks like an extremely high-tech modern city, but if you live here, you start to see that under that surface society in many ways, [they] still follow [traditional] values.” To overcome these restrictions, Dr. Kawakubo relies on her global background to bring in new ideas and perspectives, which she finds many Japanese people are interested in hearing. She also stays takes extra care in st