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Graduated from Harvard Business School, the 47-year old CEO Mikitani, quit his financial job and founded Rakuten Ichiba.
Unlike other traditional Japanese CEOs, Mikitani emphasized on innovation and globalization.
As a result, he implemented Englishnization at Rakuten 2 years ago.
He also learnt Chinese for three years.
Mikitani try hard to bring Rakuten to tier-one global tech companies like Google and Apple.
Face the competition from Taobao and Amazon
Hello, everybody. I am Rakuten’s CEO, Hiroshi Mikaitani.
Thank you for coming to Rakuten Taiwan EXPO. How about my Chinese skill?
Mikatani, the name is probably new for Taiwanese.
The company Rakuten he founded is not only the largest online shopping mall in Japan, but also sell the most “made in Japan” goods to the world.
Its membership is more than the whole population in Taiwan.
Moreover, Rakuten’s revenue had passed Yahoo in first 3 quarters of 2012.
As the founder, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten, Mikitani’s startup story could be adapted to an interesting Japanese TV drama.
Born in a scholarly family, after Mikitani graduated from Harvard Business School, he entered the Japanese prestigious Industrial Bank.
With lots of business ideas,
Mikitani couldn’t anymore stand with this stable job and decided to quit the job for running startup.
Rakuten was founded in 1997.
At the beginning, he tried hard, door by door, to persuade merchants to sell their products online,
With this optimistic personality, he expand his small online business into a global internet company.
Mikatani’s personality is like the company name “Rakuten in Chinese meaning—“optimistic”.
According Forbes’ “The World’s Billionaires” listing, Mikitani owned 6.2B properties, same with Taiwan richest person Tsai Eng-Meng.
Although Mikitani had active personality like other Japanese, he decided to implement Englishnization for Rakuten’s globalization.
Mikatani’s Englishnization implies Rakuten not only want to be a No.1 in Japan but also become a global internet business.
Face the challenge of low-priced Taobo and the world’s largest Amazon, Rakuten’s strategy is grab the Asian market shares proactively.
With innovative mind,
Mikatani suggests the Taiwan’s lost generation that there is no interesting job in the world,
but everyone can make the job interesting.
Under global competition and economic depression, Mikatani has a long way to go!