リシャド・トバッカワラの経歴
This is Reinamoto Podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone, welcome to The Creative Mindset, a podcast about what the future holds at the
intersection of creativity and technology. I'm Reinamoto, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
On this podcast, we explore the creative mindset of the world's top creative practitioners from
various industries and explore ways for staying relevant in the 21st century.
In addition to the in-depth conversation with each guest on the show, we have a lightning
questions segment where we ask each guest to react intuitively to a handful of simple
questions on the spot. It often reveals unexpected truth about them as real human beings just
like us. You'll really enjoy it. So, let's get started.
Lightning Questions
During the interview, we dig deep into different topics surrounding creativity. On the contrary,
with this section, we ask the same questions to the guests to react on the spot and we
don't let them see the questions in advance.
The first question, you've been an industry leader in the communications, marketing,
advertising, technology, business industry for a long time. And in the past five years or so,
you've been on your own after you stopped working for the agency network, publicist group.
Yeah.
But if you were to think completely differently, and if you were to start your career again,
or if you could choose a different path, what type of work would you be interested in pursuing?
It's very interesting. The original career I wanted to do, but my parents dissuaded me
from doing was being a writer.
Being a writer?
Yes.
Okay.
I wanted to write and they basically said two things. You know nothing, so I don't know what
exactly you're going to write about. And the second was if it's a passion, you'll get to it,
but it's unlikely you'll be able to make a living writing. So, why don't you keep it
in your wishlist and do it later?
How old were you, by the way?
I was 16 when I wanted to do that.
Oh, wow. Okay.
And I wrote my first book and it was published when I was 60.
Oh, wow.
Okay. But 10 years prior to that, I started writing my original blog, which is on WordPress
called Reinventing. And now it's just, I use my Substack and just also transfer it there.
Substack, yeah.
So, for people who've been reading it there, they read now my Substack, but it's on WordPress. I
just move it over. And I've got my second book. So, in effect, that's what I would have wanted
to do. Now, if I were to start all over again today, which is, I would basically just be
broadening this because in those days, the way you created content was you wrote books.
And today, the way you create content is like what you are doing right now, which is podcast,
or you can have a YouTube channel, you can have a book, right? You can do a whole bunch of stuff.
So, I would want to basically think about how do I invent the new media, but actually,
instead of inventing it for our clients, which is what I used to do, invent it for myself.
Oh, wow. Just to double click into your potential writing path that you could have taken,
創造的な道のり
what was the motive behind it at a pretty young age at 16?
There were two reasons for it. One is I loved reading. And number two, I used to tell my friends
stories that I would make up, right? So, people were always like, we'd sit together and like make
up stories. And the stories were like very imaginative and funny. So, people would say,
you should write. And then I actually, when I was young, actually wrote, which my wife has found
somewhere, like a short 25 or 30 page story. Okay.
And so, people said, you should write. And I preferred writing and I was good in English
and not so good in math. So, I thought that would be my career. But that's not what it turned out
to be. And what is sort of surprising is I ended up doing an advanced degree in mathematics.
Right, right, right.
Okay. Which was the exact opposite.
The opposite.
Exactly. So, sometimes, you know, the world switches around. But as I told people, I've
actually now ended up being a writer. Yeah, yeah. My dad wanted to be a writer as
well when he was 18. He had an uncle who was actually a pretty good professional writer.
This is in Japan, way back, you know, 60 years ago, 70 years ago. And my dad goes to his uncle
and says, hey, uncle, I want to be a writer like you. What do I need to do? And this is when he
was 18. And the uncle goes to my dad, you know what, writing is something that you can practice.
Go back, write five pages every day. Yeah. And five pages in Japanese is like 2,000 words. So,
not an insignificant amount of writing. Yes.
Right. Do this five pages a day for a year, every day. Come back to me in a year, bring
out what you write. He writes every day, five pages. So, thousands of pages later, he goes back
to his uncle, takes a stack of paper. Hey, uncle, I did what you told me to do. I wrote every day,
five pages. Yeah.
Uncle takes a stack, reads the first few pages, skips the rest, takes the last few pages of the
entire stack, last few pages and reads. And he goes, you know what, I got to be honest, you didn't
improve between the first few pages and in the last few pages. So, I don't think you have it in
you. You should do something else. Wow.
Wow. Brutal. Brutal.
Yeah. That is brutal. And that is brutal because, you know, one of the things that's kind of
important is that I was reading my second book and my first book is really good. I was reading my
second book. It's better. Oh, I see. I see.
Right. And so, the whole idea was people said like, your first book was really good, but your
second book is even better. I said, well, there are two reasons for it. One is the topic is
broader. It's about work. Right. But I said, the other is for five years I've been writing because
in addition to my first book, I've been writing now on Substack. I've been. Yeah.
And so, in effect, I think I got better over the past five years.
Or you are practicing the craft. You are exercising your muscle, writing muscle.
Exactly. And I said, I think what I've combined is craft plus five more years of wisdom, I guess.
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And the third is once you've written your first book,
you begin to understand more about book writing when you write your second one.
Right. So, it's things like that.
Cool. Cool. Just to wrap up that story. So, the funny thing is, is that my dad goes into physics.
That's what he did in college. Wow.
Yeah. See, I went into math. He went into physics.
Yeah. He does it. And then when he was in his early 30s, he started his own company
and he actually started writing again in his early 30s. And he's written probably anywhere
between 15 and 25 books in his career. Wow.
None of it, by the way, sold that much. Right.
So, it was just a side thing that he did. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, you know what? This is supposed to be lightning questions. So,
I'm going to move on to the next one. You said that you're based in Chicago.
都市と文化に関する考察
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
If I could live anywhere in the world, I would probably want to actually,
I've already decided that if budgets were no limitation and language was no limitation,
I would want to spend my time in seven cities in the world.
Seven cities? Chicago and New York City in the United States,
London and Paris in Europe, and then Mumbai, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
Okay. Because I like Chicago. It's my hometown.
I call it the great American city. Okay. But I call New York, the great global city of the
United States. Yeah.
I believe London is still today the center of the financial world. Okay. Paris, I believe,
is the most beautiful city in the world. Yeah.
I believe Tokyo has this combination of energy, what a city should be design and elegance.
And Shanghai and Bombay or Mumbai are the commercial capitals of the two largest
non-American economies. And each of those, I think Tokyo is the one I've visited the least.
I've been to Tokyo three times. Right. But every one of the other cities,
I've been between 10 and 25 to 50 times. So I've been to Shanghai 10, 12 times.
I've been to Paris often a lot because of policies. Yeah.
New York very often. And Bombay because I grew up there. But what basically happens is I truly
believe that different cities make you look at even yourself and the world differently.
And that's the reason I have those cities. Now, obviously, there are a lot of other great
cities in the world that I should go to, have not been to. I mean, you can make a list of them, but
I'd like to look. And if someone says, okay, you can only live in one,
and it is not Chicago. Right. I would probably say London. And the only reason for that
is because of all the cities besides New York, London's the only one that is English speaking.
I see. I see. Okay. It's still very global, but it's very English speaking.
And my lack of Japanese or Mandarin is sort of an issue. And I prefer,
if I just live in an Asian city, I would prefer to live in Tokyo than Bombay.
Okay. And just, I think London has more energy while Paris has more beauty.
And what happens is I'm used to the energy of Shanghai or Tokyo or London.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what happens when you travel around the world.
Yeah. Yeah. You're the first person who gave me seven cities to this question.
You try not to decide. But as I said, if I was forced to decide, it would be London.
Yeah. Yeah. So the next question, not a place to live, but a place to travel to,
next place that you'd like to travel to, where would that be?
I would like to travel to parts of Japan that are not Tokyo and Kyoto or Osaka.
Yeah.
Right. Because people who go there say there's a completely different, amazing Japan,
you know, whether it's those little beds and breakfast, the little different places.
Yeah.
And so I have this amazing thing, and it's not because you're Japanese,
but I have this unique thing about the Japanese culture,
which to me seems to be the most elegant of the Asian cultures. And I'm Asian too.
Okay. But it's sort of the most elegant. And there's this unique combination,
whether it's this old wabi-sabi thing or whatever it is,
it's this unique combination of technology and nature.
日本の旅行と料理
Yeah. Yeah.
And the ability to integrate, balance, and unify things like I've never seen before.
And it tends to happen a little bit more outside the cities, I sense.
So if I were to give you a piece of advice to travel to Japan and places to visit,
so Japan is an island country, Hokkaido in the north, Main Island, Honshu, Shikoku,
which is a separated piece of land, and in Kyushu, southern part, and Okinawa is the tropical.
And I would pick, in Honshu, which is where Tokyo is, right,
very selfishly and very biased, but my hometown, Takayama.
Really? Okay.
Which is, by the way, considered to be the small version of, very small version of Kyoto.
Fantastic. All right.
Yeah. So that's one.
The second is, I would pick a city in Hokkaido.
Yep.
Yeah. Hokkaido is this northern island.
And this is only if you're into seafood, but some of the best seafood that you can get.
Perfect. Fantastic.
Well, I'm definitely going to follow up because that's what my wife and I want to do.
Yeah.
Right.
And so our thing is we're going to do that in 2025, so we'll figure out when to do it.
Yeah.
Question number four, what's your favorite food or favorite type of food?
Right. So my very favorite food is an Indian vegetarian dish called Dal Tadka.
I grew up where it was made at home.
So it's like a home kind of thing.
And occasionally I come up across there.
And then the other thing that I like, which is a different version of Dal,
is the Sambar that goes with Idli, you know, like Idli Sambar, Sambar.
So those are some of my favorites.
Most of my favorite foods tend to be Indian, like Tandoori chicken and things like that.
Yeah.
My go-to food in the United States, because you don't end up finding that right,
happens to be a well, you know, a medium rare hamburger without cheese.
Medium rare hamburger without cheese.
Oh, yeah.
But with lettuce, onion and tomato, extra tomato.
That's what my, so that whether it's healthy or not, for someone who lives in airports,
what I've discovered is that's the one that people don't mess up.
Oh, interesting.
Okay.
So you'll see it airports.
That's the one food that nobody messes up.
That's a great piece of advice.
Everything else, whether it's even like chicken tenders or pizza or things like that.
Yeah, yeah.
You're never sure.
If you just basically say, give me a medium rare hamburger with tomato and lettuce thing,
right?
You'd be perfectly fine.
Excellent.
All right.
音楽の好み
Question number five.
What's your favorite type of music or even a song?
Do you have a favorite song?
Yeah.
So I have two favorites.
So I'm very much into classical, but two types of classical.
One happens to basically be just Western classical music.
And there, I would say Beethoven is my favorite composer.
Okay.
Okay.
The other is a, I would say modern, which is modern Western, which is I'm a massive fan
of the Beatles.
Oh, yes.
And so I would say in Beatles, it's probably everything from some of the more popular things
like Hey Jude and Yesterday.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
When I was like studying in India, I had an old album, which I would play at the end of
my studies every night before I had a shower.
And it was called A Hard Day's Night.
Okay.
And it was just like an inspirational thing.
Like it's been a hard day's night before I went to sleep and I was working.
Right.
But in that same album, there's a great song called I Should Have Known Better.
Yeah, yeah.
And those are some of my favorite sort of albums.
I see, I see.
気分を上げる方法
When you're feeling down, how do you motivate yourself?
So there are two ways that I actually do it.
One, which has become a drug of sorts, a good drug of sorts, is I exercise.
Okay.
Okay.
So there are two things that I love doing, which is running and swimming.
Okay.
But also lift weights, but running and swimming.
And I belong to, like in Chicago, there's a fantastic peninsula hotel with an amazing
pool.
And I've been a member of the spa there for 20 years, so you don't have to live in the
hotel to use it.
I see, I see.
And then I run or swim almost every single day.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Okay.
And usually what that does, it kind of like lifts my mood, regardless of what I get up
in the morning.
And it's almost like my kids basically say, if dad doesn't run or swim, he won't be in
a good mood, you know, or do something.
So that happens to be one.
The other one, which is not necessarily, it's actually clinically a depressant, but it
actually is interesting, is I love drinking cold draft beer.
Okay.
Okay.
And so what I often tell people is I've exercised takeoffs and beer landings.
Oh, I see.
Right.
So at the end of the day, right.
So it's become almost like a thing.
I actually have this entire thing.
I start up in the morning with two dopios, which are two coffees.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Exercise.
And in the evening, I basically have two beers.
Excellent.
Right.
Two more questions.
Rishadのスーパーパワーとキャリアの転機
What's your superpower?
If I have one, and I'm not sure I have one, I think my superpower is the ability to connect
dots in new ways to help people see things differently.
But that was obvious before.
So it's almost like when I talk with someone, they basically say, you've just revealed to
me something that I actually knew.
But the way you connected the dots tells me that it's actually I knew that, which is sort
of one.
And the second is the ability, I often think, to separate the signal from the noise.
So if you give me a lot of information, very quickly, I'll tell you what's the most
important information and how they're connected and what to do with it.
So it's almost like a processing of different ideas, but then being able to communicate
what you should do with it.
So it's this connecting dots in new ways and then communicating in a way that engages with
people.
So they find it resonates with them versus me telling them stuff that doesn't resonate.
But what I tell them isn't necessarily what they want to hear.
Right, right.
What was the biggest turning point in your life?
So there have been many turning points, you know, personally, obviously, turning points
like meeting my wife, having my kids, all of those kinds of things.
But I would say from a career perspective, it was when 10 years into my career, in order
to get promoted, I had to leave the type of work I was doing, which is account service
at Leo Burnett and join the direct marketing group, which was considered a second rate
group, because it wasn't like account service and creative and TV commercials.
And doing that made me understand and begin to realize the importance of interactive marketing.
And I launched the interactive marketing group.
And that little thing started to make me differentiated in being digital before it was
cool.
Okay, and so I got to it literally by going to a place which I didn't want to go to as
the only way to get promoted.
And finding that direct marketing itself, the traditional way tended not to work for
most clients, because you had to cut trees and get mailing lists and mail things.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
But I discovered things like Prodigy and AOL those days.
Back in the day.
And that started my new career.
Yeah.
1994, 1993.
Right, right, right.
So when people say like digital is cool, I said, yeah, I did it 30 years ago.
Email marketing is still there.
We still, I mean, now it's 70% of the American media spending is digital.
And, you know, not going into politics, but one of the key things is you begin to realize
that the digital platforms tend to be much more influential and larger than the analog
platforms.
You know, most people don't realize that on any given day, CNN has less than a million
viewers.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
And Joe Rogan has 24 billion.
Yeah.
You know, 10 years ago, that wasn't a reality.
And my whole thing is the entire media ecosystem has changed.
And a lot of it is because of digital, which brings me back to that.
Remember my first question?
You know, you said like, right.
So what would I do?
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
I said, hey, today I can be a media company by working by myself, which I could never
be.
Forget about being a writer.
I could be a media company.
Circle of life.
Yeah.
Last question.
クリエイティビティの定義
What is creativity to you?
So the two definitions that I have of creativity, my definition, and both of those have been
taken from other people's definitions.
OK.
But one definition is creativity is connecting dots in new ways.
The other one is, I believe, from Steve Jobs, which is creativity is not copying.
OK.
So something is creative when it's completely new and you haven't copied anybody.
But even though he said, like, I'm a very fast copy thing, but creativity is not copying.
But I also believe creativity is connecting dots in new ways, because for creativity,
you need to have, you know, it's like putting things together.
It's like Reese's peanut butter pieces, right?
Reese's peanut butter coming together with chocolate is a new creative thing.
Peanut butter was around and chocolate was around.
Yeah.
And so in effect, anybody who is a creative, which everybody in the world can be,
is influenced by what they've read, seen, watched, listened to and experienced.
And then they connect to the new ways.
Excellent.
So that was the lightning questions.
Hope you enjoyed this segment as much as I did.
If you're listening to this on Spotify, there's a Q&A field.
So please do send us your questions and comments.
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We'll be so grateful.
I'm Ray Nomoto, and this is The Creative Mindset.
See you next time.
