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眞鍋かをりのBUSINESS FRONTIERS【2026年3月30日】　ゲスト：東京コンサルティンググループ取締役会長、公認会計士・税理士　久野康成さん

March 30, 2026·29 min·2 clips

After losing 30 million yen in Fukuoka, Kuno decided to expand worldwide instead of giving up.

1. Manabe Kaori's Business Frontiers interviews Kuno Yasunari, Chairman of Tokyo Consulting Group, about his path from audit work to running an international consulting operation across 26 countries. 2. Kuno trained as a certified public accountant at PricewaterhouseCoopers (then operating under that name) and worked in audit and stock exchange consulting. 3. He noticed that roughly 90% of his audit clients were unable to grow sales and profits as projected and would go bankrupt mid-process, leading him to want to shift from compliance work to growth consulting — a move his employer could not accommodate. 4. At age 32 in 1998, he founded the Kuno Yasunari Accounting Office in Yoyogi, Tokyo, with a distinctive hiring model: taking inexperienced staff, training them, and deploying them to clients as subcontractors. 5. The inexperienced-hire model grew the firm to approximately 400 employees in three years, significantly faster than the industry norm of hiring only experienced accountants. 6. National expansion into Fukuoka failed due to a price mismatch between Tokyo and local markets, resulting in a 30 million yen loss that forced Kuno to reconsider the entire growth strategy. 7. Rather than retreat, Kuno reasoned that Japan's shrinking demographic meant domestic margins would only decline further, and that major world cities offered the same market size as Tokyo with better growth prospects. 8. The first international attempt — Shanghai and Hong Kong — failed in three months due to the strength of established local competition. 9. In 2006, Kuno opened in Delhi, India, identifying it as a market where he could establish a presence without facing dominant incumbents; four Indian offices opened within three years. 10. In 2011, Kuno opened simultaneously in Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, finding this 'surface attack' strategy effective for markets at the same early stage of international business consulting development. 11. The group now operates in 26 countries and claims more overseas subsidiaries than any other independent Japanese firm, with approximately 360 staff globally, the majority being local hires rather than Japanese nationals. 12. Organisation building across different countries and cultures has been the firm's primary challenge; Kuno's solution is to prioritise 'education of the heart' — values alignment and shared vision — over skill training alone. 13. The firm uses a Credo card in English to standardise its values across all national offices, treating the core philosophy as universal even as operational methods vary by country. 14. Kuno's four management principles, introduced in the second half, are: ask why you work (philosophy formation), give what you want to receive (attributed to Yukio Funai), define success as social value creation rather than financial achievement, and practise gratitude as a way to continually reaffirm who you are serving. 15. The 'giver philosophy' — that people who consistently give eventually receive more in return — is cited as the common characteristic Kuno observes in successful entrepreneurs he has studied. 16. Kuno argues that if a business leader defines success as personal financial or status outcomes, they become self-centred and lose motivation when growth slows; defining success as social value allows motivation to persist regardless of results. 17. The gratitude principle is described not as spiritual advice but as a practical mechanism: expressing gratitude to a person reaffirms your purpose of creating value for them, which sustains focus and prevents drift. 18. The programme format is a structured two-part interview with Manabe Kaori as host, conducted in a mix of Japanese and English; the tone is warm and somewhat promotional but contains specific biographical and strategic content. 19. Listeners interested in international business expansion strategy, Japanese management philosophy, or small-to-medium enterprise growth will find usable frameworks. 20. Those expecting in-depth financial analysis or sector-specific consulting methodology will find the content focused on values and motivation rather than technical practice.

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