International management consulting firm Kearney runs an employee satisfaction survey every six months. In 2023, scores for belonging and purpose had been showing up particularly low, indicating that many employees were struggling to find meaning in their roles or realise the impact they were having.

Chairman emeritus Alex Liu, who at the time was Kearney’s global managing partner, had learnt about the concept of Ikigai on one of his visits to Japan, where he’d spent time with Kearney’s managing director there, Shigeru Sekinada.