Back in 2012, we were throwing around ideas for CACTUS’s 10^th anniversary celebrations in Japan.

We wanted to keep it simple: hosting a party with some 100 loyal customers in a hotel and starting with a speech about our growth. But I started asking myself, if I was the client, would I enjoy attending a party just to hear someone’s success story? Shouldn’t we do anything that will be meaningful to our customers?

The team started a year-long exercise to meet customers—individual  researchers and universities—and understand how they function, what obstacles they faced, and what could be done to improve the research environment. I also started meeting industry leaders and sought their views on how science was managed and conducted today.

Japan’s economy was seeing a downswing, and many researchers were concerned about the future of research in the country. Researchers criticized the poor science and technology policies. Science policymakers were also unhappy with the way research was managed in Japan, but they had a different perspective.

It was clear that both sides wanted things to improve, but they weren’t talking to each other. This was an important issue to solve and efforts to identify solutions would definitely be widely supported by the scientific community.

This led to an idea—What if we brought together researchers, policymakers and government representatives, and the presidents of institutes and gave them a platform to discuss and debate what’s ailing science in Japan and what can be done to fix it. This idea birthed Science Talks.

I knew nothing about this topic though and had never managed such an initiative before. I met people from the industry every week to learn more about the industry. I needed someone who could give me direction. Someone from this new network I had formed suggested that I meet Mr. Oyamada, who went on to host Science Talks for three years. He agreed to come onboard after rejecting the offer twice. But third time’s the charm! He brought onboard young researchers and policymakers as well as senior industry leaders, and we formed the Science Talks committee. We held more than 10 events with the committee.

I went from thinking it was an impossible task to pull off to pushing for it after being inspired by the people I met who saw hope in the initiative. CACTUS wasn’t an established name in Japan like it is now, but I had faith in what we were trying to achieve and I overcame my inhibitions about approaching senior people. One senior industry leader even said, “I have not come across a private company that is so committed to connecting academia; it is too much work with little reward. I will do my best to support you.” This spurred me on. There were some difficult interactions with people who didn’t think I knew enough, but I considered it a learning opportunity.

Science Talks took off in 2013 and now it’s widely known by academia. People now see us as a partner to academia. This initiative helped us differentiate ourselves from competitors and helped me grow. If you truly believe in what you do, then you have no fear of failure because you’re only thinking about success.

This writeup is part of a series called The CACTUS Way Leader Stories. The CACTUS Way is what we collectively call our 8 guiding principles. We asked the senior cadre at CACTUS to share personal experiences where they practiced or identified with these guiding principles. These stories of struggle and reinvention, despair and hope, conflict and collaboration, and self-doubt and self-discovery make for an interesting read.

Learn more about The CACTUS Way here: https://cactusglobal.com/careers/about-us/culture-and-values/

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I’ve been associated with CACTUS since its early days. I started as an intern in 2003 and worked on building the first Japanese website for Editage, to date the biggest brand at CACTUS. When I returned to CACTUS to take on business development in Japan after a brief hiatus, the website I built was still playing a pivotal role in helping us reach out to Japanese researchers who wanted to get published but felt handicapped by language.

After we started the subsidiary in Japan, we built our first corporate website for CACTUS Japan, which was heavily customized for Japanese customers and had a very different look and feel from that of the global brand site.

Today, with CACTUS establishing its presence in multiple markets and becoming a global player, we felt the need to standardize and afford a seamless experience on our sites for customers across markets. Also, we wanted our customers to know that we offer solutions other than the Editage services they were already familiar with.

It is with this intention that we have launched a brand new look for the CACTUS Japan website!

This new website offers the following advantages:

1. Our customers can access all our solutions offered under the Editage, Impact Science, R, Cactus Life Sciences, UNSILO, and Cactus Labs brands on one platform.
2. Customers can seamlessly switch between English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
3. While the website is standardized across markets, customers can access information relevant to their region through blogs and newsroom content.

We used to believe that catering to local customers with customized content and design was the right way. But today, with the world becoming more mobile and with fewer boundaries of language and geography, our approach and thought has changed.

A global company requires a website that is accessible to anyone from anywhere and that can communicate the brand message correctly. To keep up with this global trend, CACTUS wants to build a strong brand identity that’s recognizable around the world. And we will continue providing our customers in Japan with the best services and solutions.

We look forward to your feedback on the website: cactusglobal.com/jp/

The post A new website for CACTUS’s first and biggest market appeared first on CACTUS.

Japan started hearing of confirmed cases from mid-Feb. Our China offices had to be closed for more than a month and I was getting detailed information from colleagues in Shanghai and Beijing about how they were dealing with the situation.

The Tokyo office, which I oversee, has many working mothers and we had started experimenting with work-from-home a few years ago. So, when it was time for the entire office to work from home, we did not face any issues. I believe CACTUS is one of the few companies in Japan that was able to transition quickly and smoothly, and it’s been a little over a month since we have been working from home.

As expected, our employees settled in quickly. They seem to be happy that they save a lot of time they would have otherwise spent commuting.

Since most of us have worked from home for varying durations, how to focus on work was not a big challenge. Arrangements for additional monitors (since we use laptops), IP phones, and tools/software were made in advance. It seemed we were well prepared for the situation we were put in by the COVID-19 outbreak.

When Japan was hit by the earthquake in 2011, its electricity supply was affected and Japan was forced to think of innovative ways to save electricity. Concepts like “cool biz”—no jacket, no tie—were introduced to the working population in summer. Until then, employees in Japan always wore complete formal attire in the office; now, casual wear has become acceptable. Similarly, I feel like the work-from-home model will gradually become the norm.

I must acknowledge the HR team. When news of the rapidly increasing cases started trickling in, HR asked all global offices to scale up work-from-home irrespective of the number of cases in the country.  This foresight, backed by regular updates, helped us avoid panic and put the safety of our employees at the stop of the priority list. This is in sharp contrast to many companies in Japan that asked their employees to commute to the office in packed trains. I must also thank the employees in the Tokyo office for understanding the gravity of the situation and exercising precautions. It is thanks to their cooperation that we are still able to serve our customers.

I’m sure we’ll come out of this better, wiser, and stronger.

The post Working around a crisis: lessons from Japan appeared first on CACTUS.