1. How Rakuten is planning to run their entire business in English?

2. Outline ・ Introduction ・ History of Rakuten ・ Strategy ・ Advantage ・ Disadvantage ・ Part of global ・ Summary ・ Reference

3. Introduction ・ Rakuten is the major Internet shopping site. ・ There are the group's 6,000 employees. ・ Rakuten sets up a business enterprise as below. - EC, bank card, banking corporation, portal media, travel, certificate, sports, connection

4. History of Rakuten ・ In 1997, MDM Inc. was founded by Hiroshi Mikitani. ・ In 1999, it is renamed as Rakuten Inc. ・ It announced the company’s official language will become English by the end of fiscal 2012.

5. Strategy ・ Rakuten supports employees by providing an English conversation school. ・ Rakuten plans to expand reach from current six countries to 27 major countries or more. ・ Rakuten plans to raise the ratio to 70 percent and aims to increase annual sales of group companies.

6. Advantage ・ Rakuten encouraged the use of English. - Employees can make presentation and the meeting documents in English. ・ Rakuten has bought overseas Internet shopping site operators. ・ By employees can speak English, they can improve their abilities and broaden their perspectives.

7. Disadvantage ・ There is two possibility. (a)The positive aspects of employees who have subpar English ability may be overlooked. (b)Inter-company communication may suffer. ・ Some people wonder if a high goal that change the way Japan does business is possible.

8. Part of Global ・ Rakuten will conduct all board meeting in English. ・ All internal documents will be written in English. ・ Rakuten focus more energy on English. - Other companies are not comfortable.

9. Summary ・ Rakuten's goal is to become the No.1 Internet service company in the world. ・ Rakuten will be to become not Japanese company but “World company”.

10. References ・ Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten ・ Asahi.com http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201007010404.html ・ Japan Today http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi/view/rakutens-decision-on-english-not-welcomed-by-everyone