Three Japanese ideas that shape how I think about AI

Anyone who knows me well knows I have a complicated relationship with Japan. It's a long story. The short version involves Mount Fuji, a sake bar in Osaka, and a herd of deer in Nara. It's a story for another time.

Even so, and perhaps ironically, three Japanese ideas have quietly shaped the way I think about almost everything, including AI.

When I started Vooee, I noticed a gap. A lot of what I saw was built for enterprise buyers or pitched at people chasing fast returns. There wasn't much that felt right for small businesses that care about their clients and their craft.

So I went looking for a different way to think about it. These three Japanese ideas became my starting point, and a useful first step for the businesses I work with. They're old, they're well known, and once you start seeing them, the whole AI conversation gets a lot calmer.

Ikigai: start with what the business is actually for

Ikigai gets translated as "what makes life worth living." For a business, the same question applies. What is the work actually for? What part of the day, the week, the year, makes someone want to keep showing up?

I start every Vooee engagement with the slow version of this question. What does the business do that matters? What part of the work would you never want a machine to touch? What would you happily hand over tomorrow if you could? The answers are different for everyone, and they shape everything that comes after.

Kaizen: small continuous improvement

Kaizen means "change for the better." In Japanese workplaces it became shorthand for small, steady improvement. The kind that just makes today's version of the work a little better than yesterday's.

AI genuinely can move a business forward in big ways. But sometimes the idea of a leap makes it hard to start at all. If the first step feels too large, kaizen is a useful way in.

Kaizen says: today, fix the one thing that costs you an hour you didn't have. Tomorrow, fix something else. Six months in, you look back and notice your work feels lighter. The change happened, but you didn't have to make it happen all at once.

If an AI move feels too big, it probably is. The kaizen question is: what's the smallest next step?

Kintsugi: the break shows you where the gold goes

Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer. Instead of hiding the crack, you fill it with gold. The repaired piece is considered more valuable than the original, because the breaks are part of its story.

In a business, friction works the same way. The thing that slows you down, the task that keeps falling through the cracks, the part of the day that costs more energy than it should. Those aren't just annoyances. They're where to start.

The gold is the glue that holds everything together. When you fill those cracks with the right tools, the whole thing becomes stronger. The crack doesn't disappear. It becomes the thing that makes the piece worth keeping.

Three ways of seeing

Ikigai asks what your work is actually for. Kaizen asks what the smallest next step is. Kintsugi shows you where the gold goes.

Japan and I remain unresolved. But these three ideas keep showing up in my work, and at some point I stopped questioning why. If one of them lands for you, that's probably where to start.