How a session in Tokyo is put together
Every keynote is tailored after a briefing call, and the larger engagements start before the day rather than on it: a diagnostic of the client's own people, so the room hears its own evidence rather than somebody else's. What the room leaves with is written down.
What that has looked like: a survey of fifty of a client's own people run BEFORE the session, to find where judgement had already been handed to tools they had built themselves, read back to the executive team in their own words, then a workshop in which they named four or five of their own processes and rebuilt them; and a division of a very large company permitted exactly one AI tool, which after the constraint was examined moved to a multi-tool sandbox with different functions choosing different models, then repeated across further divisions.
Six of the seven engagements published on this site produced further work after the session rather than at it. The seven are set out in full at case studies, each with a line saying what it does not show.
How to read these examples. They are published to show how the work is put together, not as a client list for Tokyo. Most engagements are covered by confidentiality and are described without naming anyone; where a client is named anywhere on this site, it is with their agreement.
What Japan actually measured
The Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training surveyed 22,000 employees, stratified on the 2020 Census, with the OECD involved in the design. It found 12.9 per cent reporting any AI use by their employer and 8.4 per cent using it themselves.
That is a serious instrument, not a panel poll, and worth setting beside the others. Singapore measured firm adoption at 28.5 per cent. Korea measured actual firm adoption at 2.7 per cent. Hong Kong does not measure it. Read together, the picture is not a Japanese lag so much as a general gap between how much AI is discussed and how much of it is in use.
For a Tokyo board the useful consequence is time. Adoption is early enough that the decisions about which judgements stay human can still be made in advance, rather than reconstructed afterwards from what happened to be automated first. The full account is at AI and work in Japan.
Why the low number is not the reassuring part
AI rarely takes a whole job. It takes the first draft, the initial analysis, the routine review. Those were also the tasks through which people built the judgement that made them senior. The work still ships, the output often improves, and nothing triggers an alarm.
Low adoption does not protect the apprenticeship. It only means the substitution has not happened yet. Where it has been measured, the effect concentrates on exactly the people who were meant to be learning: France found employment of under-thirties in IT services down 7.4 per cent year on year, and Korea found the impact of AI adoption falling on younger, tertiary-educated workers. Neither country announced a plan to do that. It was the residue of a thousand local decisions.
The question for a leadership team is therefore about mode rather than adoption. Is the organisation drifting into AI through a thousand small reasonable decisions nobody quite made, or designing it by deciding in advance where human judgement has to remain? Drift asks nothing of you. That is what makes it the default.
Practical
Boards, executive committees, global headquarters, and corporate and association conferences in Tokyo and across Japan. Delivery is in English only. Simultaneous interpretation is arranged by the host where required, and the session is structured to work with it. Rahim travels from London, and where travel is not practical the same session is delivered online. He can travel to the region or deliver virtually across all time zones.
Three keynotes, all versions of one argument. Drift versus Design is the signature talk for boards and executive teams. We Are Superheroes covers the seven human skills that grow more valuable as the tools spread. WTH, What the Human is a live judgement test for boards, run in the room, December to March only. Full descriptions are at keynotes.
A Japanese-language summary of this argument is at the Japanese page, which is published in Japanese because the reader reads Japanese, not because the keynote is delivered in it.
Why 12.9 per cent does not reassure me
JILPT found 12.9 per cent of employers using AI, from a national survey of 22,000 employees. The low figure tempts Tokyo leaders to relax. I read it the other way: early adoption is when habits form, and habits formed by default are hard to undo. My book SuperSkills, endorsed by Karim Lakhani of Harvard Business School and Alnoor Bhimani of the LSE, sets out the human skills that decide whether adoption goes well. A few answers from your people in advance shape the session, and your leaders agree which decisions to design now, while the number is small. It is delivered in English.
Rahim's keynotes in Tokyo draw on writing Box of Amazing every week since 2017 and on advisory engagements in Europe, the UAE and the US. Keynotes · Advisory · Box of Amazing
The three keynotes a Tokyo room can book
Keynotes run 30 to 90 minutes, in person or virtual. A 30-minute main-stage version of each talk is available for conferences, and the full talk runs 45 to 60 minutes. The sector examples change for the room; the argument does not. All three, with the showreel, are at keynotes, and the programme copy is at the speaker pack.
Drift versus Design is built from your room. Your audience answers five anonymous questions beforehand, their answers shape the talk, and afterwards you get a one-page readout with the three decisions to look at first.
Also speaking nearby: Seoul · Shanghai · Sydney.
Drift versus Design
Drift versus Design: why most organisations hand their judgement to AI without deciding to, and how to design your way through instead.
Japan is called behind on AI, yet JILPT found 12.9 per cent of employers using it. For a Tokyo leadership team, slow adoption leaves time to design decisions deliberately.
We Are Superheroes
We Are Superheroes: AI is the suit. The human decides.
AI works like a suit worn by a craftsperson: it extends the work, and the person inside still decides what good looks like. Tokyo gets the version built for deliberate adoption.
WTH (What the Human)
WTH (What the Human): a live test of a board's own judgement.
A Tokyo board puts its review habits under test and sees where a confident AI answer would pass unchallenged, then agrees what a director should ask first.
Where these sessions happen in Tokyo, and when they can
Three geography flags first, because each one appears in decks that call these Tokyo events. CEATEC and the autumn Japan IT Week are in Chiba, about forty minutes out. IVS has moved to Kyoto and is now run with the prefecture and the city. And Pacifico Yokohama is in Kanagawa: defensible for a Japan event, not for a Tokyo one.
- Tokyo International Forum, Hall A
- 5,012 seats across two tiers, and the only genuine fixed raked theatre at that scale in the city: proscenium, fly tower, orchestra pit, and sixteen-language simultaneous interpretation built in across eight booths. You get real sightlines and broadcast-grade relay; you cannot reconfigure it, cannot do rounds and cannot split it, so tracks mean renting halls B to E in the same complex.
- Tokyo Big Sight, Ariake
- 115,420 square metres of exhibition, the largest in Japan. But the purpose-built conference room is FIXED THEATRE AND CAPS AT 1,000, with eight-language interpretation and 24 meeting rooms behind it. Above a thousand means staging inside an exhibition hall on a flat floor with hired seating, which is a different budget.
- Grand Prince Hotel Shin Takanawa, Hiten
- 2,013 square metres seating 2,400 theatre, with a ceiling from 7.5 to 23 metres, its own entrance and two pre-function halls of 2,409 and 1,254 square metres, so registration, exhibition and catering never leave the block. The four-property Takanawa cluster advertises over forty banquet rooms. You gain residential and breakouts, you lose the rake.
- Imperial Hotel Tokyo, Peacock Room
- East and West combined give 1,965 square metres and 1,800 theatre under a 6.2 metre ceiling, with six-language interpretation, divisible east, west and south so a keynote plus two tracks fit one block. If you quote 1,800, say combined: the East room alone is 1,000.
- Toranomon Hills Forum
- The Main Hall is 590 square metres and 720 theatre, with motorised battens and a control room, splitting in two with a Hall B and four meeting rooms behind it. A launch and press-conference room rather than a mass keynote room. Note the domain moved: the old Academyhills address now redirects.
Golden Week is statutory and every day of it is set in law. In 2027: 29 April, then 3, 4 and 5 May, with firms bridging Friday 30 April, so treat 29 April to 5 May as a hard block. It costs money as well as dates: Tokyo International Forum quotes about twenty per cent more for Hall A on a holiday than on a weekday.
Obon is the dangerous one, because it is not a public holiday at all. The Cabinet Office list contains exactly one August holiday, 11 August. Yet around 13 to 16 August most corporates take leave and many manufacturers shut for the week. It is invisible to any holiday API an overseas organiser queries: the venue will sell you the room, it is a working day in law, and nobody will come. Block 10 to 17 August.
New Year is one statutory day and a week by convention, with mid-December already taken by year-end party season competing for every ballroom. The usable window opens mid January. Of the recurring events, SusHi Tech Tokyo has published 20 to 22 May 2027, and the spring Japan IT Week is 7 to 9 April 2027 at Tokyo Big Sight, which is the one edition of that brand actually in Tokyo.
