Mickey’s Voice
Insights from our CEO
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Rakuten response to U.S. Executive Order on immigration
As investors and employers in the United States and admirers of American values and its history of openness and innovation, the executive team at Rakuten and our group companies find the United States Executive Order issued last week to exclude people based on their nationality or religion extremely disappointing. As Rakuten has matured over its first twenty years, we have become aware of the resp…
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Mickey’s 2017 New Year greetings
Happy New Year, everyone! 2017 will be a very important year for all of Rakuten Group because it is the 20th anniversary of our founding. As you know, we started Rakuten in 1997, envisioning that we would become one of the most important and influential information service companies in the world. We’ve grown from just 6 people, to a company of more than 14,000 people around the world, and we’re fa…
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Rakuten to become FC Barcelona Main Global Partner
In sport, it takes guts to win! Innovation is no different. Any team or organization that aspires to greatness will face countless challenges along the way. With the right vision, leadership, hard work and skill, however, any obstacle can be overcome. Sports and business have so many things in common – teamwork, leadership, hard work, ambition, humility, respect and risk, just to name a few. Sport…
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Teaching is timeless
Too often we assume teaching begins and ends in the classroom. But teaching is a job we all must embrace, even after we enter the business world. Great leaders must also be great teachers. Whether you lead a company or a department or a team, teaching must be part of your job. These are some ways we can all be teachers: Encourage exploration Just as we want teachers to encourage students to explor…
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Rakuten, the global innovator
In August, we were proud to be named as one of Forbes magazine’s Most Innovative Companies of 2016. This year we improved our rank from 19th to 17th and, as with last year, we were the highest-ranked Japanese company. I say I was “proud” to be on the list, and not “surprised,” because innovation has been at the core of our company culture from our earliest days. From the day I envisioned our firm…
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The secret to mid-career success
Advice to the young is plentiful. What about advice for those in mid-career? October marks the start of the second half of the financial year in Japan, and just this week, 140 mid-career recruits started work at Rakuten with a day of training in Tokyo. The key to success in mid-career is the ability to envision the future as one filled with great change. We may have been at work for a period of ye…
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The best break in life is being empowered
What does it mean to give someone a “break” in business? In my opinion, a break is not about a single opportunity or a nudge in the right direction. It is really about empowerment – giving someone the tools, the environment and encouragement to do their best work. This is what I experienced when I left a banking job to start my own internet company, and it is the core philosophy that we continue t…
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AI and personalized customer service: Japan’s omotenashi
Artificial intelligence is creating a lot of buzz in the tech community nowadays, and recently I spoke to online merchants at our annual Rakuten Ichiba Expo about how we can use AI, the Rakuten way. I am a big believer in AI and its future potential, but I think we need to focus on more than just the tasks AI can perform. We need to consider more deeply how it can be of service to humanity – to ma…
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Rakathons and beyond! Steps to innovation
From every corner of the business world we hear it: Innovate or die! Innovation is the driving force of business today. No longer is it sufficient to provide a good product or service. As business people, we must continuously push ourselves to do better. What can we do to improve? To disrupt old and tired ways of doing business? To better the lives of our customers? These are the big goals of busi…
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Japan’s new business language
In March 2010, I stood before several thousand mostly native Japanese speakers and addressed them in English. From now on, I told them, Rakuten would conduct all of its business, from official meetings to internal emails, in English. I still remember the shocked expressions on listeners’ faces. Their reaction was certainly understandable. No major Japanese company had ever changed its official lan…
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