Lets be honest, how many readers know (without Googling it) what a keiretsu is? One of the highlights of my career was working with two global Japanese insurance companies back in the 90s. It was an amazing professional experience. I had a chance to learn about their culture and way of doing business. A corner stone of the Japanese business model is the keiretsu.
The word, translated literally, means headless combine. The way I have described it over the years is a powerful chamber of commerce organizations coming together, collaborating, working with each other. It is a corporate structure that ties other corporations together. From a business perspective, the members of your keiretsu (corporate family) act as adviser, business partner, friend, informal board, but also client. What is amazing about the keiretsu is that members make sure they did business with each other. This was powerful to see. In good times you thrived and in difficult times you survived, you had your keiretsu members there.
