We got the new business chance to transform ourselves through the COVID-19 pandemic. We believed that new perspectives from foreigners would boost our business futher growth.

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

We support education and learning in accordance with the mission of creating next-generation leaders, and managed to transform ourselves through the COVID-19 pandemic from a company of overseas internships to a company that provides practical education. We are planning and operating educational content that allows young people to come into contact with social issues that affect them and the world at large as part of our new business. On the other hand, we would like to study places to where we can expand in accordance with the idea of expanding overseas within the scope of our existing program of overseas internships for Japanese students.
In particular, we are undertaking the planning and operations of educational content by leveraging the connections with experts and companies around the world that we have cultivated through our business to date, to deal with such themes as the environment, societal issues, and SDGs in various countries and regions. Content becomes appealing by harnessing what makes our planners unique and their interests. With our members hailing from various backgrounds in Japan and overseas, we felt that we were a diverse organization. However, when we thought that the enrichment of our content would give our business a competitive edge, we believed that new perspectives from foreigners would provide us with a boost for putting together all sorts of projects and accordingly decided to participate in this program.

Having our first seminar for overseas students with the help of the intern. Attracting approximately forty attendees from six countries constituted a significant step forward in our overseas expansion.

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

A student from Indonesia, our intern, Sevina worked on two activities. One was market research on the expansion of our overseas internship program into Indonesia. In order to study the feasibility of Indonesia as an option for expansion, a questionnaire was first administered to fifty local young people to analyze the local internship culture, needs, objectives, income brackets of participants, and other points.
The other activity was the planning and operations of a workshop for Japanese and Asian students. This time we picked up economic issues related to the environment and marine issues as a workshop topic, and we made progress in terms of developing the content while providing her with assistance to explore her own interests in depth with an idea sheet. We were impressed with her attitude as she proactively collected opinions and worked by undertaking a PDCA cycle on her own. The workshop was ultimately a huge success as it managed to attract approximately forty attendees from six countries. We believe that close communication is important for smoothly carrying out activities. We made full use of chat apps to communicate matters, including the background carefully. In addition to making time to interact with her to get to know her better, we implemented such ideas as having her participate in company meetings in an attempt to promote interactions with all members.

Understood the importance of properly defining our target and the necessity of a strategic approach rather than developing what we offer in the same way as services for Japanese people.

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

The fact that we came to see our overseas business as being feasible and the fact that our in-house members were motivated were great success. First, the operations of workshops and the conducting of a market survey demonstrated the feasibility of overseas expansion. The holding of an online workshop for overseas students for the first time in our history was also a huge first step. Rather than providing the same services as those we provide for Japanese people, we realized that a strategy tailored to each country was needed. In this way, we were given an opportunity to reconsider how we might approach overseas expansion.
In addition, the participation of the intern in meetings increased our opportunities to speak English. Sevina seems to be used to communicating with foreigners and her attitude of properly listening to people speak even in poor English and attempting to understand what was being said helped to make a good atmosphere. We were made to realize once again through this project that language barriers constitute a bottleneck that could disrupt business expansion efforts. When we expand our business overseas, we should keep in mind the need to communicate without allowing language to put up barriers. To realize our vision, we would like to also study the possibility of hiring foreign personnel as a means of facilitating the expansion of operations not just across Japan, but also around the world.