When Kaz Uchida was being recruited by McKinsey & Company’s Tokyo office in the mid-’80s, a friend tried to dissuade him from pursuing a career in consulting and encouraged him to first speak to a consultant he knew at the Boston Consulting Group. While the friend thought that his BCG acquaintance could better reveal the nature of consulting work and thus drive Uchida away, Uchida liked what he heard, and soon agreed to meet with other consultants inside BCG’s offices. It wasn’t long after this that Uchida — with a McKinsey offer in hand — accepted a job offer from BCG.

“The McKinsey office appeared to be very established; on the other hand, BCG people made the work sound more exciting,” explains Uchida, who joined BCG in 1984.

Starting out, Uchida was largely a generalist, but in the 1990s, having attained the rank of partner, he became the primary driver behind BCG Japan’s robust Technology & Commun-ications practice area. Later, from 1999 to 2004, Uchida would serve as leader of BCG Japan.

Today, recognized as one of the firm’s foremost high-tech experts, Uchida (known simply as “Kaz” to his BCG colleagues) is routinely sought out for his insights into the technology community. When not serving BCG clients, he teaches strategy at Waseda, one of Japan’s largest universities.