Brain Navi Vol.3:
Looking forward to year 2015 – Year of speeding up in Vietnam-Japan cooperative business relationship
2014/12/06
Dear our precious customers, I am Kondo Noboru, CEO of Brain Works Group.
For a businessman who has a long time working in Vietnam as me, there is good news that I’ve just heard. It is an article with topic “Vietnam has become the most interesting spot to Japanese enterprises in Asia” on a Japanese economic newspaper called Nikkei Sangyo. This article was established last November.
Our company has operated in Vietnam for 18 years. However, Vietnam has still been a mysterious country for Japanese entrepreneurs who have plans to expand their business to Asia several years ago. Those who really think seriously about expanding their business to Vietnam are just minority. However, with my experiences, I believed that Japanese entrepreneurs are seriously paying attention to Vietnam at the present. Japanese are not being called “NATO” anymore.
People usually ask me about which potential business fields in Vietnam-Japan cooperative business are. I usually answer them: all of them. It is because I can feel the strong and hurry growth rate of all business fields. However, if you ask me about which the most potential business field in Vietnam that Japanese enterprises could cooperate, the answer is agriculture and construction.
In present, Japan industry is facing with a big problem of lack of labors. Superficial cooperation is obviously not enough to solve this problem. We need to improve the current system of exporting low basic labors and have a clear strategy about training and developing human resources in both medium and long terms.
Under that circumstance, frequent cooperative activities in human resources training between Vietnam and Japan in both government sector and private sector are being conducted. This is a good sign.
---- What things Vietnam can learn from Japan are ----
When it comes to this topic, Japanese usually have superior attitude caused by gap in understanding. It is obviously that Japanese enterprises have much experience in environment policy and food safety and quality management policy which are their proud with the world. However, not much people know about what Japan was 40 years ago. Almost Japanese youth don’t know about that, and Vietnamese entrepreneurs either. To catch up with developed countries, Japan was in hurry in many policies and made many mistakes. The matters such as pollution, air pollution and agriculture problems which are happening in China and other Asia countries nowadays are the matters that were happened in Japan years ago. The only thing that they did was just continuous solving those problems under outside pressure. There is no secret in making remarkable products and service at the first time. Therefore, experiences and technical know-how of solving problems and improving process are suitable for Asia countries which earn to join the rank of developed countries such as Vietnam.
On the other hand, Japanese lost many good traditions such as “no-waste culture” (culture denouncing wastefulness) and are suffering a disease called “vanity”. Hard working, endeavour, unceasing hopes are the precious values fading away.
Therefore, even for a developed country like Japan, innovation is indispensable. However, this innovation is not the thing that happened inside Japan, but the thing that happened in developing country like Vietnam in cooperating process between Vietnam and Japan.
Our company has launched many activities to boost up business cooperation and also create new way in doing business between Vietnam and Japan. The key of all these things is “human resources”. It might be said that this is the most prerequisite condition for success of Vietnam-Japan business cooperation. We will develop “Brain Works Academy” more and more. “Brain Works Academy” is school of business, in which we will instruct about experiences and know-how and business method of Japanese enterprises.
Next year we are going to open new office in Hanoi. We will keep conducting training human resources courses and holding seminars in Hanoi. Please keep support our company!
And the last thing is event schedule. In April 2015, we will especially invite Vietnamese entrepreneurs go to Japan to join our event. Even this event is still far but we expect that you could arrange time for that from now on!
■ Event in Vietnam
On 2015/03/10: Asia Business Conference in HCMC
2015/03/11 – 2015/03/12: Vietnam-Japan executive networking golf competition in HCMC
■ Event in Japan
April 2015: Asia Business Conference in Tokyo
April 2015: Vietnam-Japan executive networking golf competition in Yamanashi
Brain Works Group
CEO Kondo Noboru