• USA Today, Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:30 AM

An English version of a best-selling book about problem solving that was written for Japanese middle-schoolers is going on sale in the U.S. in early March. Its target is the business market.

Problem Solving 101 by Ken Watanabe is a practical tutorial just 128 pages long. Using juvenile-looking illustrations and flow charts, it walks readers through a diagnosis and the steps toward a solution, writes Del Jones. One example is about a rock band that can't get an audience at concerts. Watanabe instructs readers to think like doctors trying to cure a patient.

Watanabe, who moved to the U.S. as an eighth-grader and got an economics degree at Yale, a Harvard MBA and became a McKinsey consultant, says he wrote the book in response to criticism of the rote memorization that characterizes the Japanese education system. The simplicity of his approach struck a chord with business readers, with more than 370,000 copies in print after six months.

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