GLOBIS: The MBA that Puts “Why” First

What happens when a business school makes you find your purpose before it teaches you anything else?

Most MBA programs teach you how to do things. How to value a company, how to read a P&L, how to structure a deal. These skills matter, but there’s a deeper question underneath all of them that almost no program makes you deal with directly: What are you going to use these skills for?

At many schools, that answer is expected to emerge later through work, ambition, or opportunity. Maybe someone will hire you and you’ll discover a direction. At GLOBIS, we take a different approach. 

GLOBIS University is Japan’s largest graduate business school—1,084 students enrolled in 2025, from more than 80 countries. Before those students get into finance or strategy, the school requires them to develop something called a kokorozashi. The word combines kokoro (heart) and sasu (to point). Where the heart points. It comes from bushido — the samurai moral code — and at GLOBIS it means a personal mission connecting what you’re good at to a contribution beyond your own career. Students spend months on it, as it is a core part of the program and a graduation requirement.

That raises an important question: does beginning with purpose actually shape what graduates go on to build?

What kokorozashi graduates actually did

Eri Machii was a pharmacist who’d served as a JICA volunteer in rural Niger. She entered the GLOBIS MBA in 2011. Two years later she’d founded AfriMedico, a non-profit that places medicine kits in rural Tanzanian households. The model comes from okigusuri—a 300-year-old Japanese system where medicine boxes sit in homes and families pay for what they use. AfriMedico won the Tokyo Startup Gateway Grand Prize. Machii was named to Forbes Japan’s list of women taking on global challenges and gave a TED Talk. She has said she developed the idea during GLOBIS’s kokorozashi process.

Toshi Iwata spent 30 years in R&D at Sumitomo, P&G Singapore, and BASF. He enrolled in the Part-time & Online MBA at 54. In a talk he gave to students after graduating in 2024, he described how writing the kokorozashi essay brought back something he’d wanted to do while living in Singapore: reform Japanese science education. His daughter’s international school, he said, was doing things Japanese schools weren’t. He’d tried to act on it once before but had no business training. At GLOBIS he pitched the idea at the G-CHALLENGE venture competition, met a finance partner in his cohort, and started a company called LeadGL. He left BASF at 56 to run it full-time.

Other graduates followed similarly distinctive paths. Fumiaki Kiuchi co-founded Makuake, now Japan’s largest crowdfunding platform, during his GLOBIS MBA. The company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2019 with backing from Sharp, NEC, and Shiseido. Mihoko Suzuki co-founded TASKAJI after clarifying a mission centered on supporting working mothers. Diego Viesca built Skysense, a renewable energy company in Mexico. Hiroyoshi Noro launched DIVE INTO CODE, an IT education company that expanded from Tokyo to Rwanda.

These graduates work in different industries and countries, but they share one important experience. Before the MBA gave them frameworks and tools, it asked them to articulate, in specific terms, the problem they wanted their career to address. That sequence shapes the way many of them use what they learn.

A $2 billion venture fund with a business school attached

The wider GLOBIS ecosystem also helps explain why many graduates move from idea to action.

Alongside the university sits GLOBIS Capital Partners, a venture capital arm managing over $2 billion across seven funds and more than 213 portfolio companies, including Mercari, SmartNews, and BizReach. MBA students tackle live cases from the fund. The school also runs G-CHALLENGE, an annual startup competition where students pitch their business ideas to investors and faculty. When a student pitches a company at G-CHALLENGE, the school can fund it with up to ¥10 million.

That emphasis on real-world execution carries into the classroom: faculty members are practitioners, including former CXOs, bankers, and consultants. GLOBIS deliberately hires people who have run businesses rather than traditional career academics.

Is Japan a good bet in 2026?

The Japan angle matters too, and this is a particularly good time to study—or set up a company —in Japan.

In 2022, the Japanese government launched a Five-Year Startup Plan: 100,000 new startups, 100 unicorns, ¥10 trillion in investment by 2027. Venture capital funding in Japan has grown 13-fold since 2012, crossing ¥950 billion in 2024. Tokyo now ranks in the global top 10 for startup ecosystems and third in the world for knowledge output in Startup Genome’s latest assessment). International student enrollment hit 336,708 in 2024—a new record.

Visa policy has shifted to match. The J-Find visa, introduced in 2023, lets graduates stay up to two years to job-hunt or start a company. No offer required. The Startup Visa, expanded nationwide in January 2025, gives foreign entrepreneurs two years of residence. The Highly Skilled Professional points system can lead to permanent residency in a single year.

Japan is one of the 12 most peaceful nations on the Global Peace Index and life expectancy is 84 years. Tokyo costs less than half what New York does and about 40% less than Singapore once you factor in housing. The weak yen has made it one of the few genuinely world-class cities where an MBA student doesn’t need to bleed savings to live well.

There is also an intellectual and managerial context here that deserves attention. A widely cited survey found that 97 percent of Japanese executives prioritized stakeholder interests over shareholder returns, while the American result was largely the reverse. Long before stakeholder capitalism became a mainstream management theme elsewhere, many Japanese companies were already operating with that orientation in practice. At GLOBIS, ideas such as kaizen and monozukuri are taught by people who have applied them inside companies like Toyota and Honda. For professionals working in India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and other environments where stakeholder complexity is a daily reality, that perspective can feel immediately relevant.

How to start

For those considering the MBA, there are several entry points.

The Full-time MBA is a one-year program in Tokyo, with the next intake beginning in September 2026 and applications open through April. The Part-time & Online MBA runs over two years from October 2026, with classes on weeknights and weekends for professionals who want to continue working while they study.

There are also shorter ways to begin. The nano-MBA is a six-week online program worth 0.5 transferable credits. The Pre-MBA runs for 12 weeks and offers 1.5 credits, with the next intake beginning in April 2026. Credits and fees from both can be carried forward into the full MBA.

The case GLOBIS makes is straightforward. When students begin by defining their kokorozashi, they approach business education differently. The frameworks still matter: the finance, strategy, and leadership tools that are taught are still rigorous. But they are anchored in a clearer sense of direction. For people who want an MBA that connects professional growth with personal mission, that can make all the difference.

The alumni record suggests there’s something to it.

→ Visit our website to find out why GLOBIS is different at globis.ac.jp