About the Founder and CPO
Henry Andersen
Henry Andersen is a former Professor of Global Management Practice at Meiji University in Japan. Meiji is one of the Tokyo Big Six Universities, similar to the Ivy League in the US. He founded and ran TDA Associates as an executive development company alongside his university work. Since taking an early retirement in 2019, he returned to Southern California and has devoted himself to his company.
Prior to academia, Andersen worked for 20 years as a marketing, innovation and strategy executive in multinational companies around the world: Mitsubishi while based in Japan, the US and UK; Columbia Pictures while based in the US, the Netherlands and Brazil; and Scott Paper (now part of Kimberly-Clark) in Brazil. His last position in industry was as Chief Marketing Officer at a global Japanese industrial equipment firm.
Andersen has a BA from Harvard University in Japanese literature (with a minor in physics), an MBA from INSEAD in France, as well as an MS in journalism from Columbia University. He was also a postgraduate research student in social psychology at the University of Tokyo.
Before starting TDA Associates, Andersen developed and applied his TDA technique in his work at Mitsubishi. Later he also became an innovation consultant with Synectics (now Synecticsworld), where he facilitated and trained customer insight-led innovation and strategy teams worldwide for Global Fortune 500 companies.
His work in innovation at Mitsubishi has been spotlighted in the international business press including the Financial Times. His creativity tool TDA (transdisciplinary analogy) has also been featured in a number of business books on thinking skills (which have been translated into six languages), as well as in academic journals and case studies.
About the CMO and COO
Filipe Andersen
Filipe has worked for over 15 years as a global business development, sales, marketing, innovation and strategy executive in multinational companies in the electronics, technology, safety and training industries.
Filipe has a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration from the University of California, Riverside and is currently pursuing his Master’s in Management from Harvard University. He intends to further his studies in a Doctorate of Business Administration or Education program.
Past customers prior to rejoining TDA Associates included GE, Mitsubishi, UPS, Honda, Toyota, the University of California, and Los Angeles County.
Always innovating . I recently taught myself how to use WordPress to create, along with our CEO, this unique website from scratch. Also, a content creator and enhancer for many of the slides and animations used in our courses and on this site. Please enjoy 🍿 and we wish you the best in your innovation journeys💡🚀!
About TDA
TDA Thinking Approach Video
TDA Mission Statement
TDA Associates helps both organizations and individuals worldwide to develop global wisdom leadership skills and allow them to create true new value for for the common good of humankind and the earth.
The following slides summarize some of the key concepts and tools used at TDA Associates.
Transdisciplinary is the most complex of the four disciplinary examples as it applies a holistic approach.
While working at Mitsubishi in the early 1990s, I had the chance to develop and apply in my work a multidisciplinary approach to creative problem-solving which I named Transdisciplinary Analogy (TDA). The key idea is that any concept from any field can be applied to help solve problems in any other field, no matter how distant and unrelated they seem.
This is an example of how we applied the concept of a pirouette from the world of ballet to a mechanical engineering problem at Mitsubishi. Looking at the ballet dancer who was demonstrating the move, the engineer suddenly drew a connection to the roller mechanism of a hot strip mill that makes steel sheets. He was then able to solve the problem that had plagued the company for many years.
Inventory your specialties and use your treasure chest of experiences from any categories.
This is an example of how you can use your specialty from the world of liberal arts to an area of opportunity in the world of business. Think about the different parts of your specialty, and see if you are able to draw a connection to the area of opportunity in the world of business to see if able to solve the problem that had previously been difficult to overcome.
In this TDA example, the specialty (marketing), key concepts (4 Ps) and attributes of your specialty are used to see what possible ideas apply to related concepts in the world of problem. In this example, the problem statement for the world of problem is how to increase participant involvement in online meetings?
With repeated and habitual use TDA can also help develop the ability to see core shared concepts or "metaconcepts" that exist across all fields of human endeavor. The ability to see this is the first step in developing personal wisdom and wise leadership skills.
I also developed another methodology called Transcultural Insights (TCI) which allows its users to gain a deep understanding and appreciation of foreign cultures, values and lifestyles.
