Building an AI-ready culture for lasting transformation at Rakuten Product Conference 2025
What’s the secret to becoming a truly AI-ready organization? At the recent Rakuten Product Conference 2025 hosted by Rakuten India, industry leaders, Rakuten executives and tech enthusiasts from around the globe gathered to explore this crucial question and lay the blueprint for the future of AI innovation.
Held April 23, the conference covered a range of topics, from the transformative power of AI agents andthe critical need for responsible AI development, to the fundamental cultural shift required to weave AI into the very DNA of a company to drive lasting transformation.
Rakuten’s vision for AI-nization
Akihito Kurozumi, Rakuten Group’s CIO & CTO, set the stage with an inspiring keynote, emphasizing the company’s commitment to leveraging technology to empower society. Highlighting the efficiency gains achieved through AI implementation within the Rakuten Ecosystem, including Rakuten OneCloud and Rakuten Mobile’s disruptive technology, Kurozumi underscored Rakuten’s vision for AI-nization, stating that “AI is not here to replace humans. AI is here to augment human creativity with the power of AI.” This vision emphasizes the importance of AI as a strategic imperative, not just a technological add-on.
Cultivating an AI-native culture
Building on Kurozumi’s vision, CEO of Rakuten India Sunil Gopinath emphasized the critical missing pieces in driving an AI-native culture. Gopinath highlighted Rakuten’s view of AI as a tool to augment human creativity, explaining a three-wave implementation strategy that includes rapid prototyping, business applications and consumer-facing AI.
He shared a structure for success that includes a hybrid organizational model – balancing centralized AI expertise with domain-specific implementation – and a robust governance framework. Gopinath stressed that successful companies need conscious evolution, and that customer experience is the battlefield for AI businesses. He also emphasized that simply adopting AI tools isn’t enough; companies must cultivate a culture that embraces AI as a core value.
Gopinath’s presentation underscored Rakuten’s commitment to AI-nization, highlighting its efforts to empower employees with AI tools and drive measurable business impact. He noted that around 30,000 Rakuten employees are actively using AI tools, with over 8,000 daily users, resulting in significant efficiency improvements, such as a 48% reduction in time creating sales materials and a 54% reduction in time composing sales emails. These efforts are contributing to the company’s Triple 20 goals, targeting 20% improvement in operating, marketing and client productivity.
Empowering innovation in the agentic revolution
A central panel discussion, “What’s Next in AI: The Agentic Revolution,” explored the transformative potential of AI agents. Rakuten leaders on the panel emphasized the company’s unique position to leverage its data and domain expertise in building AI agents, particularly as user behavior shifts towards chatbots. They highlighted how Agentic AI is already transforming product management at Rakuten, empowering product managers to rapidly prototype and iterate on new product ideas using AI-powered tools for creating user stories, detailed product specifications and visual designs.
The panel emphasized the importance of a ‘human-in-the-loop’ approach, where humans set guidelines and guardrails for AI agents to ensure that the results are aligned with human values and objectives. Looking ahead, the panelists envisioned a future where AI empowers individuals to pursue their dreams by providing access to resources that were previously unavailable, potentially leading to a surge in ‘one-person startups.’
Culture as the foundation for AI success
Rakuten Product Conference 2025 served as a powerful reminder that the future of innovation lies in embracing AI and building a culture that is ready to harness its potential. As Gopinath emphasized in his address on driving an AI-native culture, Rakuten recognizes that AI transformation requires a fundamental cultural shift.
This aligns with Rakuten’s broader AI-nization initiative, which aims to integrate AI as much as possible across its ecosystem. By fostering AI-first leadership, aligning AI initiatives with business strategy and developing a culture that embraces AI, companies can unlock AI’s true potential and achieve sustainable growth.
Rakuten is committed to fostering such a culture, recognizing that a company-wide embrace of AI is essential for achieving sustainable growth and maintaining a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving technological landscape.
