Denko, Yesterday and Today

Our 5-year journey since 2016

When we started Denko 7 years ago, our mission was:
We bring out, decipher and reconstruct people’s emotions and concepts, thereby contributing to society.

As of 2016, Denko’s new mission is:
Based on our deep insights on people, we bring out, decipher and reconstruct people’s emotions and concepts which fluidly waver between avoiding and seeking change, thereby contributing to society.

We have articulated our thoughts on people.

Let us go into detail on why we chose to do so. If people interest you, keep reading.

Denko’s Key Asset

Denko began by offering marketing support: developing products and services which people would want, and disseminating the news.

With our ravenous interest in people, we would observe them intensely, ask tons of questions, shadow their activities–all old school yet fruitful methods, done to assess human cognition, attitude, and behavior. Being human ourselves, our own subjectivity would sometimes affect us, a problem which totally objective extraterrestrials who are observing earthlings as test subjects would not face. Anyway, throughout our work, we would repeatedly witness human phenomena that just did not seem to make sense. We call this “Patterns of Irrationality.” To explain the observed “Patterns of Irrationality,” or “human phenomena that do not make sense” to our Clients, we would often pore over academic studies from the fields of psychology, cultural anthropology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience. Frequent observations of irrationality lead to frequent analyses of these papers, resulting in us developing a sound understanding of the phenomena.
On irrationality, the finding: “Human beings are supposed to be rational, but in fact have irrational facets,” was thought to become widely known when the Prospect Theory received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002. However, in the business world where logic (supposedly) dictates, strangely, not many were willing to accept and apply this fact to their own business. Rational or irrational, we are who we are.
At Denko, we embrace the rationality and irrationality of human beings. Our key asset is our experience, knowledge, and foresight in this area. We believe our comprehension of the profuse human phenomena that, can and will be beneficial to marketing activities.

Understanding Patterns of Irrationality means understanding the “Predictably Irrational” phenomena. In our marketing services work, we needed to identify these phenomena and develop plans which will boost our Clients’ marketing results accordingly. As we plowed on, we came to realize there was a critical business issue at hand.

The Business Issue: Tackling It Head On

In a nutshell, our critical business issue was: Are we doing enough?

• Simply incorporating the predictable irrationalities which our Clients face in our marketing proposals can only deliver short-term results, and may only be a self-congratulatory exercise. This is insufficient as our support to our Clients, whose employees and organization are pursuing long-term results in their products and services.
• Beyond marketing, assuming the predictable irrationalities challenging the Client affect their whole organization, it is essential to develop employees and organizations who can embrace the Predictably Irrational as a relevant factor and apply it in their business operations, in order to attain continual growth.

Were we doing enough? No. Actually, we were aware of this issue early on, because we saw that leading companies were already undertaking the challenge of having their organization embrace irrationality. While the challenge was critically important, it was also colossal, yet Denko is a small corporate unit… so we chose to look the other way.
As time went by, however, there were several academic advancements in the field of “Patterns of Irrationality,” i.e. newly identified phenomena, evidence, etc. For example, while human beings are quite magnificent, we are far from attaining what we see as our ideal self, and we are filled with irrationalities and contradictions. New evidence has emerged indicating that even those who are extremely intellectual are still controlled by their subconscious, rather than the conscious ego.

Ultimately, the goal of Denko’s marketing support is to move the Clients’ products/services. Our expertise in the irrationality, contradictions and the subconscious of human beings can arguably be categorized as a marketing methodology.
If so, an HR development program which takes all of the human irrationality, contradictions, and the subconscious into account may seem to be fruitful in generating sales growth. However, the program may also bewilder participants in the process. This is because for the program to be effective, we will all need to admit that we– Denko, employees, and even Top Management– are human beings, fascinating yet irrational, full of contradictions and quite ignorant about ourselves. Yikes. Even if the program is designed to deliver sustainable and substantial strengthening of employee capabilities, if played the wrong way, the premise itself could infuriate Clients. In the business scene where rational decision making supposedly dictates, could a minuscule company like Denko tell a Client: “You and your team are irrational!” and get away with it?

After all the pondering, we have decided to step up, developing training programs for employees and organizations which reflect the human irrationality, to provide better services to our Clients.

Again, modern advancements in the study of mankind served as a backdrop to our decision. Being flustered and rejecting these discoveries is an irrational reaction to the fundamental challenge we face, the sustainability of mankind and society. We realized that once we go beyond the confusion and choose to accept the irrationality, we will come to realize that it will lead to the pursuit of our happiness.

Let’s take a moment to look back at the history of mankind.
The Agricultural Revolution freed us from constant hunger, the Industrial Revolution changed our living standards, and the Information Revolution connected all of us across the globe. The Information Revolution has continued to evolve, and now we are in the midst of the Neuro-Revolution: the seismic changes brought on by the study of the human brain, the key source of information. Historically, the first two revolutions resulted from pursuits which were external to the human body; i.e. the Agricultural Revolution produced/manufactured foods, and the Industrial Revolution yielded mass-produced products. However, since the Information Revolution, the pursuit is facing inwards: the internal/mental workings of people, such as their irrationality, contradictions, and subconscious reactions. This shift has the potential to bring substantial changes to people and society. For example, deep learning has already evolved and the current crucial topic is: “what is the meaning of human labor?” Assuming future generations are the self-serving extension of ourselves, and as we considered what our future generations will face, a new sense of urgency set in among us working at Denko. This was not the juncture to disengage from our Predictably Irrational selves out of fear of embarrassing our Clients.
With the emergence of artificial intelligence and the progress made in deep learning, AI is already replacing humans in the workforce, begging the question: “What is the work that humans should do, or that only humans can do?” This, of course, leads to the essential question: What is the meaning of life, or, what are we meant to do?

From a macro level, history shows that as a species, we tend to veer towards irreversible change. However, on a micro level which focuses on humanity’s here and now, human beings do have biological limitations as organisms which are trying bring their DNA forward. Sustaining a safe, familiar environment, devoid of any changes from yesterday, becomes critical to ensure that our DNAs flourish. This is why we are inherently change-averse. Our own survival depends on consecutive, significant decision making. To simplify this process, our limited decision-making capabilities drive us towards options which are extensions of what we already know, for our own well-being. Factors which are unrecognizable, without any point of reference from the past, complicate the decision-making process, making the process an unpleasant experience. Even if a particular change is imperative, if the change is perceived to be unpleasant, humans will not act.
If we frame human behavior on a spectrum of change, the length of the spectrum could be defined by the ability to process information, and human activities could just be snapshots of pendulum swings between seeking, and avoiding, change.
Simply put, we are just insignificant beings wandering on this spectrum of change. An extraterrestrial who is capable of total objectivity may exclaim, “Insignificant? Perhaps, but yet how fascinating and profound!”
Space odysseys aside, this change-spectrum concept travels well. Other activities can also be framed as a continuum of activities between seeking and avoiding change: people’s lives, companies’ history, and of course, people’s reactions towards marketing activities, and HR/organizational development programs as well.

Denko’s New Mission

At the time of founding Denko, our Mission was:
We bring out, decipher and reconstruct people’s emotions and concepts, thereby contributing to society.

We are now ready to provide human resource and organizational development/training services which reflect how human beings sway between seeking and avoiding change, on top of our current service of providing Denko-unique marketing support which takes into account the irrationality of people. Thus, our new Mission Statement is as follows:

Based on our deep insights on people, we bring out, decipher and reconstruct people’s emotions and concepts which fluidly waver between avoiding and seeking change, thereby contributing to society.

Denko is not a huge entity. But our size also minimizes any risk associated with our change. Since our founding, we have always been observing people. In the coming five years, through the two services of marketing and HR development support, we are excited to embark on a new adventure which may reveal a new stage in humanity.