September 28, 2018. Tokyo - In 2012, Eiichi Okawa, a 28-year-old sales manager at Japan’s largest trading company, was pretty happy with how his career was progressing. He had successfully climbed the corporate ladder to operate in a global role, spending more than half of his time abroad, selling industrial plant equipment to clients across four continents. The world of Mitsubishi Corporation was changing around him though, shifting from a focus on sales and trading, to one of investment and managing subsidiaries. Instead of viewing this development as a threat, the ambitious Eiichi saw it as a golden opportunity to play his part in the company’s new direction. But how could he pivot his career from closing hundred-million-dollar deals to pursuing strategic investments? What he needed was a bigger skillset; which, in turn, led him to pursue an MBA.