Japan's Globalization

[Lunch Talk] It is encouraging to see Mikitani-san and some of the other great business leaders take on a challenge to become real globalization of Japan, as seen in WSJ Japan Real Time - "Rakuten’s English Policy: Just Speak It."

Certainly, speaking English in the global business helps. Each day, our products and services are becoming more sensory, not obviously noticing the differences, and require more communication to get the appeal of the products, technology and services to customers. We, Japanese, then all must understand that there are important things are lying in the base of the globalization or global thinking, and they are so commonly noticed in the day-to-day business scenes. Here are what I think for the Japan's musts:

* must be able to think globally from global perspective, not from just Japanese perspective alone.

* must be able to to understand the existence of diversity-gaps (available choices on many of the things are much greater here than in Japan, which naturally making difficult for them to put themselves into others'(markets') shoes) in the business and market from the rest of the world. This is by far the most problematic in preparation to communicate, as they do not recognize the importance of narrowing down the information.

* must be able to become articulate about everything and then to be able to broadcast ideas and opinions globally. The lack of details in the information is another big hurdle as they generally do not need to provide such details with homogeneous race and limited offering market.

* must level and balance out the all of the involved business parties (clients, vendors, service providers, etc.) relationships to the same level and same eye level.

* The Japanese labor regulations and standard must catch up with the rest of the world to be able to work and hire more fairly.

Although there are more items of practice, nonetheless, above-mentioned points are what we are discussing each and everyday here and can be realized by more Japanese and practiced more for KAIZEN. ...and many of you have much more greater insights and tips too. Many of the Japanese are curious on their rooms for improvement. Yes, of course, we can all do it together.

「製造業苦境の原因は英語力欠如」　社内を英語公用語化した楽天・三木谷社長が講演でバッサリ

ITA japan