Terrible choice. NoA is a marketing company essentially, and with Nintendo's direct-to-customer focus now, an HR person that specializes in retail is a horrible idea
Nintendo should have hired someone who had experience recruiting people for digital platforms like iTunes, Kindle, or even eCommerce more generally
Hiring and retaining people who have experience in digital platforms, understanding the kind of work environment they want, is a different thing than hiring and retaining people from retail/services sector
First hire under Iwata as CEO is a terrible one... Only way I see this working out is if she is well-connected around the Seattle Executive community and has excellent working relationships with recruiters and has run transformational performance management programs that are going to address NoA's internal issues in terms of promoting and retaining talent
The danger is she makes up for her lack of competence by pushing for pay increases and trying to build a consumer tech culture internally and pusing hiring into Silicon Valley model which could end up killing Nintendo
At the very least Nintendo could have hired a VP of HR from Lego or Disney, or even promoted someone internally with potential...
EDIT: I think picking up someone from Netflix'es HR group would have been a wise move - my only guess is that Nintendo couldn't attract the real players in the digital distribution and content space without paying an arm and a leg
