Collecting information on the durian industry in Malaysia in general and clarifying their issues and challenges

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

Hoping to do business that bridges Malaysia and Japan, we have been developing businesses including strategic consultation for manufacturers and reatilers expanding into Malaysia for about 16 years. In line with this, we have been considering a new business of introducing and importing Malaysian durians to Japan, as we came to know the high quality and good taste of Malaysian durians, which is hardly recognized in Japan. To this end, we thought we would need to first collect information on the Malaysia's durian industry in general and clarify its issues and challenges. We applied for this internship program because we wanted local talent to help us to consider the viability of durian imports from Malaysia. The 30 days internship scheme included the exploration of durian farms, processing companies, and export companies, and find the ones that can cooperate with us for a test supply to Japan and execute trial delivery to Japan.

We frequently shared information and exchanged opinions so as to be always on the same page.

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

Two college students in Kuala Lumpur cooperated with us. Firstly, we conveyed our mission about the durian business and shared the information we had on the durian industry in Malaysia with them. And then, we asked them to list durian farms and related organizations, and collect basic information regarding export. We also asked them to conduct online questionnaires with multiple stakeholders and follow up with them after receiving the replies. Thanks to their efforts, we were given the opportunity to have hands-on interviews with durian farmers, and our interns actually visited the farms. In this way, we were able to collect live information; we found out that importing the volume we initially planned as trial delivery was difficult, so we changed the goal flexibly and focused on improving the quality of information. In order to roll out better results, we decided to have four short meetings every day and kept to this throughout the project. We frequently shared information and exchanged opinions so that we were always on the same page. This practice avoided errors and mistakes derived from people making judgements on their own while allowing them to act spontaneously. We were distant physically because of the nature of the online internship, but they acted as a member of the team and successfully conducted most of the tasks we planned in advance.

We recognized the company's strength by experiencing management via online communication that goes beyond borders and generations.

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

Our two interns belong to the digital generation. They skillfully use various social networking services to connect outside sources and collected information. In addition, they are capable of using multiple languages (English, Malay, and Chinese). Utilizing their unique strengths and skills in their daily works, they have sucessfully obtained broad information that is beyond the scope of the Japanese perspective. I have long been aware of the convenience and efficiency of online tools, and so I have been using online communication daily. However, what we came to learn from the exchanges with foreign talents is that communication with people abroad is different from that among Japanese. I keenly felt the importance of the volume and quality of communication among people having different ways of thinking and styles. I felt that having short meetings every day was significantly important. Given this opportunity for management and facilitation utilizing online communication that goes beyond borders and generations, I came to realize the strengths of our comapny. I think we can capitalize on this experience for our future business development.