Corporate Profile｜First Press, Inc.

In Search of Essential Values



Business leaders who are determined to live through the age of cataclysmic changes know full well that old experience, hunch and grit alone do not help them get any closer to success. They are now turning to the right tools that will enable them to take risks that are worth taking so that they can seize opportunities at the right time.

In the world of business, there is no ready answer to our problems. Business leaders should be able to meet the ever-growing challenges of speedy actions and higher performance. First Press will provide these leaders with the tools that will help them identify the essential meanings of what matter most for their business. First Press will help them arm themselves with “strategic thinking” that will further enhance their power of management and decision making.

What Japanese businesses need most urgently today, we believe, is a new generation of leaders of wisdom and knowledge–the leaders who, having gained a true insight into the quintessential meanings of changing times, can make bold decisions. Aspiring to be a key publisher in Japan’s information industry, First Press was founded with the primary objective of extending every possible support to “the business leaders who create tomorrow.”

Through book publishing and its wide-ranging related programs, First Press will look beyond the transitory horizon of the present, always setting its sights high on what is of quintessential values to business leaders. We will commit ourselves to delivering to our readers the intellectual content of the highest quality possible by networking with colleges and universities as well as distinguished authors here in Japan and abroad.

Shinichi Uesaka
President
First Press

A Corporate Profile
First Press, Inc.

Established: June 7, 2005

Capital: ¥83,000,000

Representatives:
President: Shinichi Uesaka

Address:
Level 27, Shiroyama Trust Tower
4-3-1 Toranomon, Minato-ku
Tokyo 105-6027, Japan

Our mission
To provide Japanese businesspersons who are motivated to reinvigorate their business organizations and social structure with editorial contents of the highest possible relevance and quality; and thus to help develop action-oriented business leaders who are willing to take risks that are worth taking.

Representative
ator in chief of the Japanese-language edition of the Harvard Business Review (1999-2005), published by Diamond, Inc., a prestigious Tokyo-based publisher specialized in journals and books on economy and business administration.
On graduation from Waseda University’s literature department (1984), joined Diamond, Inc., and was inspired greatly by Prof. Peter F. Drucker on working and management practice and its relationship to publishing. Uesaka visited Drucker several times in subsequent years to produce articles and books for publication in Japan.
Among Diamond’s long-selling titles produced by Uesaka is an MBA Series (1 million copies sold after 11 printings since 1994).
In April 1995 assigned to the Japanese edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR-J); deputy editor in chief (April 1997); editor in chief (April 1999-April 2005).
In 2000 proposed on own initiative that henceforth HBR-J be published monthly (whereas it had been published once every two months). The Harvard Business School Press followed suit, as did other foreign language editions. Has organized numerous interviews with, and lectures by, such American gurus as Peter F. Drucker, Michael Porter, Philip Kotler and Theodore Levitt as well as leading Japanese business executives.

Three Guiding Principles
In fulfilling our mission as stated above, we will be guided by three principles.

• 1. The delivery of editorial content of maximum relevance to business leaders who are committed to creating a better future for Japan and the world community.
• 2. The delivery of concepts and philosophy for management strategy and problem solution.
• 3. Act as a group of professionals in delivering editorial content of optimal relevance to our readership that are selected from wide-ranging sources of high credibility (gurus and institutions) at home and abroad.

Launching of the first Press, Inc
Dedicated to our mission as spelled out above, the First Press, Inc. was launched in June 2005 under the leadership of Shinichi Uesaka, former editor in chief of the Japanese-language edition of the Harvard Business Review.