Last November, together with 17 Catalan clusters, we were discovering how the business fabric of one of the world's leading countries is structured, participating in the Strategic Cluster Week, the key event in the training of cluster teams of ACCIÓ.

The week became a unique opportunity to visit companies as relevant as Rakuten, with more than 1.7 billion users worldwide; Panasonic, which is already working on its transition towards B2B and the transformation of cities towards more SMART models; or Mitsubishi Corporation, which has drawn up an ambitious plan for decarbonisation in all its global activities.

In addition, we connected with the entrepreneurial traveltech ecosystem of the Japanese country where the clear commitment to AI to facilitate multilingual interaction, the traceability of transactions with blockchain, geolocation to control tourist flows, and the interaction between different sectors such as fintech.

During the mission we delved into Japanese business culture to discover how Japan continues to be the world's 3rd largest economy:

- A long-term planning vision (20, 30 or 50 years).

- Making reasoned decisions with the management team and agreed with data.

- Industry 4.0 is a thing of the past, we are already working on Industry 5.0.

- A business fabric supported by keiretsus (the big corporations like Mitsubishi, Sony, Rakuten...).

- The obsession with kaizen, continuous improvement on a daily basis. 

- Creation of unique sectoral hubs as points of innovation.