Saturday, December 08, 2007

VS Business School

Some students studying in American business school came to my company recently, in order to reseach Japanese company. I and my coworkers had the meeting with them. It was our first experience to help students to study the business in Japan, but we enjoyed it very much.

Their theme was to study how international companies mamange their business in Japan. Some foreign companies can make a success in Japan. Some can not. What is the key point for success? What is the diffrence between Japan and other countries?
The theme is too big to answer smoothly, of course. So, the students asked us for a lot of things for our daily working.

Unfortunately I don't have the experience to work in foreign companies, so I can not compare Japanese company with other countries', but I think Japan is special.
Because Japanese market is big and matured, it has their own rules, diffrent from the world. That's why many foreign companies are comfused when they try their business in Japan.
One of my company's business partners introduced the students to us, so they came to my company. The business partner is an american company, but only Japanese staffs are hired in their Tokyo office. For their success, it seems to be the easiest way that Japanese sells something to Japanese.

Before the meeting, we thougt we should give them a souvenir. We prepared a coffee cup with my company's logo.
At the beginning of the meeting, after the introducing each other, the student told us that they had a souvenir for us. It was a coffee cup.
As you know, the exchanging same items is one of the worst happenings in a party.
Please understand how unhappy our feeling was when getting their kind gift.

Anyhow, I hope they can successfuly finish their study after coming back to America.

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