1. How Rakuten is plannig
to run their entire
business in English
Hiroaki Ohtake

2. Outline
● Introduction
● How about Rakuten
● Why Rakuten use English?
● Strategies of Rakuten
● Current
● Conclusion
● Referrences

3. Introduction
On June 30, 2010, Hiroshi Mikitani a founder
and CEO of Rakuten, Inc. said that English as
a common language in company. Employees of
Rakuten have to use English in meeting,
bussiness e-mail, presentation, and so on.
Mikitani says "English as a common language
is necessary for the company to grow into a
global corporation"

4. How about Rakuten
● Rakuten, Inc. is a Japanese electronic
commerece and Internet company based in
Tokyo, Japan.
● Rakuten has over 6,000 employees globaly,
and about 10% of them are not Japanese.

5. Why Rakuten use English?
1. Information sharing in group companies
Rakuten establish or joint company in overseas. English is
common language in group companies.
2. Educate global person
To educate human resources with global applications, will
continue to expand overseas.
3. Securing excellent human resources
Adopt a more excellent human resources.

6. Strategies of Rakuten
TOEIC Score:
Rakuten's employees have specific targets scores of
TOEIC
750 points, manager
700 points, middle manager
650 points, Beginner management positions
600 points in the assistant manager.
However 600 points is also recommended for all
employees.

7. Strategies of Rakuten
Provide learning opportunities:
- Internal study sessions in each division by
external lecturers
- Short-term studying abroad of few weeks to
Philippines · Cebu island for some employees.

8. Current
English skill of Rakuten employees as improved
remarkably. Percentage of green zone(over
600 score of TOEIC test) in March '11 was 29%
of all employees, but as of January '12 is up to
60 percent.
However, due to rapid changes in corporate
environment, some employees had retired...

9. Conclusion
At least, It seems to have achieved the goal of
English proficiency to improve employee.
But whether there was the effect on doing the
work? That they would need time yet.

10. References
Rakuten’s all-English edict a bold move, but risky too
URL: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/07/16/news/rakutens-all-english-edict-a-bold-move-but-
risky-too/#.UbfV6pVJPHg
凄絶！楽天の「英語公用語化」
URL:
http://diamond.jp/articles/-/16303
Rakuten to make English official language inside company by end of 2012
URL:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100703202517/http://mdn.mainichi.
jp/mdnnews/news/20100701p2a00m0na006000c.html