Professor Shoji Shiba, world-renowned professor of breakthrough management, is the Chief Advisor of VLFM Programme. Prof. Shiba has already dedicated three years of his life from 2005 to India. He guides and leads the Visionary Leaders for Manufacturing (VLFM) Programme and personally delivers Module 1 of the programme. According to Prof. Shiba, Indian Manufacturing has certain strengths that could hold it in good stead in the long run. The first being that Indians respect the teacher, i.e. they respect knowledge. Two, Indians respect the process; and three Indians respect the spiritual. There is a huge difference between India and China on these fronts and India scores.

Prof. Shiba was recently felicitated by the Government of India for his contribution to transformation of India’s manufacturing sector through the implementation of VLFM programme.

Professor Shoji Shiba visited India for the first time about 25 years ago for conducting cross-cultural studies and worked in an Indian power station for almost six months. For the first time in 1994, Professor Shoji Shiba conducted a top management seminar in Bangalore at the invitation of CII followed by others in 1998 and 2000.

Professor Shiba then initiated the first CII Learning Community with 11 Indian companies in July 2004 for learning about Breakthrough Management and applying this in the Indian context. This learning community received inputs in various forms – seminars (Top management seminar and Real Change Leaders workshop), mutual visits amongst the members along with Professor Shiba, individual visits and a CEO workshop. The members of this community have been using Prof. Shiba’s tools to innovate new products and expand or capture new markets. CII alongwith Professor Shiba, has published a number books to enable a larger percentage of the manufacturing community to benefit from his teachings.

Prof. Shiba has designed a number of tools that facilitate a thinking process leading to innovation. His latest contribution focuses on breakthrough strategies for management and how the principles of business breakthrough can drive innovation and growth in large and small enterprises. These include the Five Step Discovery Process, Concept Engineering and the Nine Step Planning Process. He advocates building individual and team competencies in seeing the invisible and managing the ‘innovation cycle’.

Visiting professor at MIT for over ten years, professor of business administration and dean of the School of Applied International Studies of Tokiwa University, Prof. Shiba is also professor emeritus of Tsukuba University in Japan. Distinguished internationally for his outstanding contribution to quality management methods, Professor Shiba was awarded the Deming prize in 2002 and holds the 2003 Chair of Innovation at Queens University, Belfast. The Ministry of Industry in Hungary honored him by the establishment of the annual IIASA Shiba award for his work there in TQM. In 2004, he received the Nikkei Quality Management Literature Award for his last publication on Breakthrough management in Japan.