Pascal is a German Deep Tech founder and empowers leaders and businesses to embrace transformation. Walking a path from being bullied since Kindergarten to losing 100 kg / 220 lbs of weight, undergoing 7 plastic skin surgeries and co-founding a profitable biotech startup with six-figure revenue from its first year in business and 60% YoY growth since, he deeply cares, understands and encourages everyone going through challenging transformative phases in life. Offering guidance and support for leaders and organizations worldwide serves as his north star to elevate human consciousness and remind us that we all share this journey together.
We humans are, for astoundingly many parts, incredibly simple creatures. We like to belong, we like to identify with things and stuff. And then we mentally place them in their very own neatly designed boxes. The same goes for all the things we, let’s say, don’t have so much of a knack for.
When venturing through life and not being aware of this base mechanism, a lot of things tend to be overlooked by individuals and collectives alike. Our current little blip in existence is mostly defined by the constant evolution of industries, organizations and ultimately human consciousness.
And so, the boundary between certain areas like pop culture and the business world is becoming increasingly … porous.
Take Anime for example. Anime represents more than just entertainment. It almost always embodies a complex narrative structure, some degree of philosophical depth, and ethical context, and most genres come with an archetypal storytelling that resonates deeply with our own human experiences. And this goes for everyday life up to the grander scheme of things we tend to notice over the years.
With Gen Y having arrived in the business world completely and Gen Z and Alpha being halfway around the corner, the world adapts to generations increasingly immersed in pop culture. The lessons embedded within anime narratives can provide valuable insights into leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving. These insights then become a vehicle for personal growth, enhanced team dynamics, and organizational innovation systems that thrive on diverse perspectives and creative experimentation.
How Anime serves as a mirror for leadership and visionary thinking
Much as with Hollywood, a typical theme in anime is the exploration of heroic journeys and visionary leadership, albeit often not being completely visible on the surface. Characters in anime often embody the archetype of the hero who embarks on a difficult quest, confronts inner as well as outer challenges, and ultimately embraces some form of transformation. This generally resonates with the entrepreneurial mindset and business leaders‘ journeys around the world. Consider characters like Eren Yeager from Attack on Titan, whose relentless drive for freedom mirrors the visionary, but often ruthlessness, ambition seen in entrepreneurial figures like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. Eren’s pursuit of a seemingly impossible goal speaks to the heart of innovative leadership – the courage to challenge the status quo and pursue change.
For organizations, the narratives found in anime can serve as a blueprint for visionary thinking. Anime characters often deal with moral dilemmas, face complex social challenges, and navigate power dynamics – themes that can be directly translated into leadership training programs. By using these narratives as analogies for real-world leadership challenges, businesses can cultivate leaders who are not only driven by their visions but also capable of navigating the ethical and emotional complexities of leadership and their own corresponding inner worlds towards these challenges.
Incorporating anime-inspired philosophical themes into leadership development helps leaders develop a deeper understanding of human nature, emotional intelligence, and how to balance ambition with responsibility. Characters like Eren serve as cautionary tales about the dangers of ego-driven leadership, highlighting the need for self-awareness and the importance of compassion in guiding a team or organization toward sustainable success.
At the same time, the medium offers audiences more emotional friction surface towards reflecting and reasoning with potentially discomfortable topics while keeping an overall positive outlook and identification achors in the form of likable human characters and deep plot threads.
Fostering Team Collaboration and Empathy Through Pop Culture
Anime is also notable for its ability to explore relationships and collaboration in deeply nuanced ways. Many series focus on the dynamics of teamwork, where characters must navigate personal differences, shared challenges, and collective goals. This focus on collaboration reflects one of the most important qualities of successful business teams today: the ability to work together across diverse backgrounds and perspectives.
In anime, teams are often composed of characters with wildly different personalities and skills and therefore, granted, often represent exaggerated statistical outliers.
Consider the dynamic between Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura in Naruto, or the diverse cast of heroes in My Hero Academia. This is directly applicable to team-building in organizations, where the strength of the team comes from the diversity of thought, skills, and experiences and a well-trained awareness towards toxic or destructive patterns.
Shows like Steins; Gate, which explores time travel and scientific ethics, or Ghost in the Shell, which examines the intersection of humanity and technology, serve as excellent thought experiments that can inspire innovation in technology-driven industries. Businesses can harness these imaginative narratives. For example, an organization developing artificial intelligence can look to anime like Psycho-Pass or Neon Genesis Evangelion for insights into how AI might interact with human psychology.
Anime narratives encourage employees to view their colleagues as part of a shared journey, fostering an environment of empathy and support rather than competition. In business, this translates into psychological safety, where team members feel comfortable sharing ideas even if they are unconventional or experimental. As more teams operate across borders, anime’s global presence offers a common cultural language that transcends national boundaries.
Again with the human simplicity: Sharing a reference to a well-known anime series or character can help break down barriers, create a sense of connection, and enhance communication among diverse team members. This shared cultural touchpoint can make it easier for individuals from different backgrounds to collaborate more effectively.
Leadership Lessons for Gen Y and Z
Millennials and Gen Z – as stated earlier now dominant groups in the workforce – have grown up immersed in pop culture and anime. In anime, leadership is often portrayed as a kind of servant leadership, where the leader puts the needs of the group above their own personal desires. Characters like All Might in My Hero Academia exemplify the focus on empowering others to grow and succeed and to never make them do something they themselves would not ever consider.
This mirrors the values of Millennials and Gen Z, who prefer leaders that are transparent, inclusive, and emotionally intelligent. Incorporating these leadership models into business innovation systems could result in higher attraction of younger generations and support organizations in fostering cultures of trust and shared purpose.
Some concluding thoughts: Anime as an integral part of personal and business innovation
Anime’s philosophies and principles, to the receptive mind, offer strategic advantages in navigating the complex intricacies of our modern world and the political and human dynamics taking place day in day out. Through the rich narratives of anime, we can inspire visionary thinking, teams can develop greater emotional intelligence, and organizations can cultivate sustainable innovation systems that embrace diverse perspectives and unconventional solutions.
As humans, we would do well paying attention to these mediums which explore themes of friendship, trust, love, happiness, relationships, cosmic interconnections of life and nature, action, drama, conflict, nihilism, destruction, anger, fear, and separation.
All of it is embedded within artistically crafted stories and characters to inspire and expand our horizons.