Japan's Unique Talent: Athlete skills shine in new careers

Japan faces labor shortages, skills-to-jobs mismatch, and a lack of innovation-spurring diversity. But it is unique talent who will break Japan free from its rut. Previously marginalized when it comes to career development, success in their pursuits must be a central concern moving forward.

We define unique talent as those who have acquired experience in domains outside the usual corporate framework. They are people with dormant strengths, like get-up-and-go and the ability to influence others, that are almost impossible to foster within the confines of the business realm. Given their potential, they could well take the whole labor market to a higher level: They would be a boon for greater diversity and spur diversity-fueled innovation giving full play to their aptitudes.

Athletes are a prime example of what we mean by unique talent. Professional athletes in many countries study for degrees or qualifications to ready themselves for post-competition careers. In Japan, however, occupation-oriented education and competition–oriented education tend to be discrete, unrelated tracks. This situation hardly lends itself to enabling athletes to flourish in areas outside the competitive arena.

At Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI), we propose the FLAP cycle as an original framework for building careers and enlivening the workforce. FLAP comprises finding where you are, learning the skills and knowledge you need to make further progress, acting to realize the career you’re aiming for, and performing in your chosen field.

It holds a key for enabling athletes to exhibit the competencies they’ve acquired through sports in other areas of endeavor, which otherwise might just atrophy. Athletes post marks meeting and surpassing the average among businesspersons for core capabilities like drive for results. We see this as evidence that in sports, people are already running through the FLAP cycle on their own, having stumbled onto its principles independently. And this, we believe, suggests that athletes are already prepped to put their strengths to good use outside the world of sports.

In line with this thinking, we at MRI have launched a project to help athletes make the most of their latent capabilities at companies and in communities. We offer them opportunities during and after their sports careers. We have already seen a spectrum of athletes, beginning with several currently active tennis players, become engaged in a number of activities through involvement in the project.

Nishikawa Co., Ltd., a major bedding maker in Japan, offers one success story of athlete involvement. Nishikawa’s mission is to ensure better sleep for all. It brings athletes onboard in sales roles so they can advise customers on better sleep, drawing on their empirical knowledge about recovering from physical and mental fatigue. A number of municipalities have also expressed interest in hiring athletes to provide citizens with guidance on sports or participate in events meant to liven up their communities.

Initiatives like these, which leverage the strengths of diverse individuals, are also a source of insights for businesses and communities that want to innovate or create new value. Awareness of this, though, has yet to set down roots with much depth.

We are working to foster the needed awareness among athletes, businesses, and municipalities alike by publishing data on the workforce capabilities of athletes and examples of their potential careers. These insights make their way across our network of businesses and local governments spanning the archipelago.

Our undertaking also foresees putting to work unique talent from other fields of endeavor who have similar potential. For example, artists and creators are—like athletes—quite adept at applying the FLAP cycle to problem solving. Full-time homemakers also routinely apply the FLAP cycle to their work, as do parents to raising children. Extending this tapping of such self-guiding unique talent to encompass more people with non-mainstream backgrounds, could help bring about a labor market able to effectively leverage the strengths of a greater diversity of human resources. And that would enable unique talent to flourish in all sorts of fields of endeavor.