Social impact front of mind at Hult- Q&A with Takeshi Murakami

Boston is a bustling world of startups, innovation, and business accelerators, and has been for quite some time. Having been with Hult Boston for my Master's degree in International Business, I see myself growing up as a future business leader with a strong mindset of giving back to the community.

And Takeshi Murakami, one of my close friends at Hult, also shares the same vision of positively impacting society through business.

My first impression about Takeshi is an agile, goal-oriented student and a challenger himself.

Born in Osaka, Japan, he is currently studying for a Master of Science degree in International Business at Hult International Business School. Apart from Hult's International Business program, he is pursuing his Bachelor's Degree in Medicine at Hokkaido University in Hokkaido, Japan.

Murakami says when it comes to the sole purpose of his start-up, he reflected on his past experience when he was a child.' I want to make the world comfortable for everyone whether they have a disability or not.'

"My dream is to make a positive impact on healthcare on a global scale beyond just a clinical side"

That was the beginning of our conversations about the social entrepreneur, I was able to spend a night with Murakami in late April this year, during the time Hult Business Challenge ( HBC) in Boston was taking place. We began with a short introduction to Murakami about his journey at Hult.

Huyen Le ( HL): Takeshi, I want my readers to hear about your IDEA. I think we all know how much IDEAs can make a great impact on the world, but I would love for my readers to know more about you as a person. I think that we can have a peer-to-peer conversation about you, your work, and your interests- and you can start at whatever point you want to on those topics.

Takeshi Murakami ( TM): Sure. I spent my entire life in Japan, and after medical school in Japan, I have just moved to Boston for my double degree, Master in International Business at Hult. Currently, I am halfway through this program, competing in the HBC with other Hult Postgraduate students.

HL: Oh, that’s interesting. Why did you choose to do that?

TM: It was a long story relevant to my Medical Degree.

During my time at medical school, I found myself interested in certain types of neurological disorders, such as ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) or ASD (Autism Spectrum disorder). One of the reasons I am interested in this topic is that I suffered from ADHD in my early childhood.

HL: Do you mind explaining to us about these neurological diseases?

TM: Sure. Put simply, ASD is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thoughts and behaviors. But some of them have normal intellectual abilities, and others have exceptional abilities in certain parts of areas such as geometry or art. So it is more about how these children study is different than the rest.

HL: I see. Then how could you overcome difficulties to pursue your education goals?

TM: I struggled a lot, but after all, I accepted the fact that I am different from others, and I focused on my uniqueness, I tried to utilize it in my original way instead of trying to cover my fault. But this experience led me to decide to study Medicine and help people who suffered the same condition as I did. During my childhood, it was so stressful to keep my concentration on verbal information in the classroom and react spontaneously.

HL: I see. But how can you help them? Do you have any special treatments for that?

TM: During clinical practice, I learned a great way of curing the condition of these ADHD kids with medicine and therapy, but I realized their fundamental problem lies in their daily life, such as in school or family relationships rather than in the hospital. I wanted to support their lifestyle beyond the hospital.

So I started to pursue solutions for these fields; more specifically, I started to focus on education and worked as a tutor in specialized classes as part-time. For example, parents training to help kids having ADHD study more easily.

I used a psychological model called the VAK model, which uses illustration to help them understand something or memorize words and information.

HL: That is an incredible solution, Takeshi. Did you utilize this VAK model to build up your business IDEA recently?

TM: Exactly! And my business IDEA is to convert these texts into images, which I got from my experience teaching kids how to learn in the classroom. They felt difficult to understand the lessons, but things changed when I created illustrations for them based on their textbook. They love to go to class and study with illustrations. I came to trust the validity of my method of teaching and decided to spread it to the public with the idea of social business.

I decided to make apps that enables users to get visual information , I am confident about design about apps, but I am not sure about how I can make it spread.

Then I think it will be necessary for me to learn about Business, Marketing, and Finance. to get knowledge of how I can approach ADHD and ASD kids to use my apps and manage my budget to develop the apps sustainably.

So I decided to postpone my Medical program to come to Hult for my Master's Degree in International Business.

HL: That’s truly inspiring to hear about your motivation to come to Hult.

TM: Thank you so much.

HL: You want to combine your medical know-how and a business model to create a full solution for ADHD.

TM: Yeah. Now our team just received the budget for the project from the competition, which is held by Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd., one of the biggest Media companies in Japan.

And we are thinking about creating apps, including building databases and exploiting OCR ( Optical Character Recognition technology which enables users to convert scanned documents and images captured by a digital camera into searchable data ). Our team’s priorities are to seek findings and recruit engineers for this app.

HL: I am curious about your team. What do you feel right now about them?

TM: Amazing. I love working with my team members for HBC. In Hult Business Challenge, a business competition held by my school, I am still working on the same topic, ' the aptitude for education for the neuro-minority community (ADHD, ASD, and LD)'. I first met my teammates in the first round pitch session, and they were motivated by my vision to 'make the world comfortable for everyone whether they have a disability or not. '

My team is really diverse in terms of background and expertise. One from Africa, one from South America, one from Europe and two from Asia

HL: So you want to make your solution available for everyone worldwide?

TM: I want to make people aware that there is a problem, and many people suffering from this disease need help. Although they are the minority, they need to be understood and receive help to collaborate effectively with others and perform better in the workplace. History has proved that many artists and scientists suffering from this disease still contribute greatly to our society, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Mozart, Walt Disney, John Lenon, Robbin Williams, and so on.

HL: That’s a brilliant global experience you have right now. One last question, what will be your upcoming plan after this Master's program?

TM: I would like to continue my project and spread its scale. At the same time, I plan to do a clinical residency program in the medical field cause I believe that innovative solutions are made with a mixture of two fields.

HL: I think they sound all relevant to me now, as a Business Student and a fan of your IDEA.

TM: Just like I came up with my idea from a combination of my medical student experience and tutor experience, I expected that I would aspire to new ideas for my business as a business school student and a doctor resident. As a residency, I will rotate in several departments in the hospital as an intern, and I hope his experience will nurture our solution's ability.

HL: Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I wish you and your team all the best for the rest of your journey with Hult. And good luck with your business in the future.

TM: Thank you. I wish you all the same, Huyen.

Time passes, and we all finish our Master's Degree at Hult, but the social values of the business we uphold always stay. And with the TASK mobile app, Takeshi Murakami and his team had the opportunity first-hand to experience how that can be done and to practice doing it themselves.