Who: Kazue Kikawada kazue.kikawada@fujixerox.co.jp

Organization: Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.

Age: 50

Has Held Title For: 18 months

Previous Title: Senior Staff Manager

Degree: BA in law, Waseda University

After spending most of his quarter-century career at Tokyo-based Fuji Xerox Co. as a manager, Kazue Kikawada busted out of the executive suite and took to the open range as the company's lone "Free-lance Bandit." Too many spaghetti Westerns? A Robin Hood complex? A midlife crisis? No, Kikawada simply realized that the best way to shake up the organization was from the outside. So he traded in his management duties for a broad mandate "to make new things happen at Fuji Xerox," he says.

Why did you resort to banditry?

I didn't like being a manager. I'm more interested in nurturing people.

That doesn't sound very criminal.

I became a bandit so I could act as a catalyst for change outside the organization. I'm an outlaw from the traditional hierarchy.

Robbed any stagecoaches lately?

No, but I did take $1 million from Fuji Xerox and Xerox Corp. to establish the Xerox Distinguished Professorship in Knowledge at the Haas School of Business.

Do you wear a mask?

I dress strictly MIB (Men in Black) when I'm abroad: black jeans, black T-shirt.