With the goal of engaging in M&A integration in foreign countries, we further strive to globalize the business.

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

Emerging technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) are becoming pervasive in our everyday lives through games and the entertainment industry. We are a start-up company established in 2016. We develop and supply the leading-edge technology for clients in the medical industry. Our service enables precise pre-surgical simulations; when you put on a VR headset, a 3D model of yourself with bones and blood vessels appear before your eyes. Since the device can be shared with multiple persons, it also encourages smoother communication among doctors and with patients. Last but not least, we have been actively involved in business linkages with countries abroad with a view of engaging in M&A integration to become a global company. We have realized that we must improve our English communication skills in order to make further progress towards the goal. Just then, this government-supported internship program caught our attention, and we took advantage of the opportunity; it was not only highly cost-effective and but also offered work opportunities with global talent in Japan where you can consequently expect development of global awareness in the employees.

We compared and adjusted our technical areas; the interns contributed largely to the manual video production and market research on Malaysia.

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

The intern studied software engineering at university and had experience in mobile app development. We spent the first month of the program comparing and adjusting our technical areas and goals by helping her learn more about the functionality and features of our products. She then worked with our business partners in Sweden, India, and Taiwan by lecturing on application installation and set up through Web conferencing software. The communication went a lot smoother this time thanks to her advanced English skills. We also asked her to take part in manual video production as she turned out to be a great video editor. We expect all users to operate intuitively and imagine what they see through the VR headset when using our app. She contributed to the initiative by creating a video with captions, making it easier for users to grasp the contents that could otherwise be confusing in text-only format. Furthermore, her research efforts helped us gain further knowledge of the market in Malaysia, her home country and a country particularly important in our business expansion strategies. We appreciate her persistence; she was very responsible with her work and stuck it out until the end.

Hands-on experiences helped us improve our cross-cultural skills.

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

This was not our first time to communicate in English with people from abroad but the experience of working with her drew our attention to a difference between English and Japanese phrasing and sentence construction. English must be spoken in a logical order; you must make greater efforts to organize your speech (than when you speak Japanese). We must be aware of it all the time. Since she is Muslim, there were some Islamic dietary restrictions and several daily prayer times during the work hours. We however, did not make a deal out of it; we respected her and her religion just as everyone is supposed to do. She took us to a mosque in Tokyo one day, and we were able to see the inside of the facilities. The experience was very soothing and relaxing. We learned that the mosques are not only for Muslims but actually, a place for a variety of people. It was a great opportunity for us to deepen understanding of her country as well as the culture in Islamic society. It taught us the importance of respecting the personality and individuality of others; we must not be caught up in stereotypes and understand the fact that our values vary among countries, cultures, and individuals. The hands-on opportunity of hosting an intern from a different cultural background became a stepping-stone towards globalization of our activities.