Finding Drucker—and Fast

“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer,” Peter Drucker declared.

This week, in a dispatch from Tokyo, Bloomberg explores how Tadashi Yanai, the CEO of Japan’s Fast Retailing Co., is trying to recapture that simple—but often elusive—principle at his clothing company.

“Drucker is not only my management professor, but he is like the compass to provide a path I should follow,” Yanai has said. Specifically, he has taken to heart Drucker’s essential lesson “to first think what customers want and provide more value, rather than what a company wants to sell.”