NEWS

In the Global Management capstone course, a required subject for fourth-year College of International Management (APM) students, guest lecturers are invited from companies to discuss actual issues their companies face, with domestic and international students working together apply the business knowledge they have accumulated in the course of their studies to explore solutions to the issues raised. APM encourages systematic learning in its curriculum, and the Capstone serves as the culmination of four years of study.

This semester, the capstone course is being held in cooperation with electrical equipment manufacturer Hitachi.

Although APU is holding all its classes online this semester, Mr. Toshiharu Miwa, Senior Manager of the Strategy Planning Division at Hitachi, and his colleagues gave an online lecture for capstone students. The corporate mission of Hitachi, which celebrated its 110th anniversary this year, is to “contribute to society through the development of superior, original technology and products.” After providing an overview of the company, Mr. Miwa explained how the roles companies are expected to fulfill are changing as the world changes, and discussed how Hitachi aims to expand its business activities going forward. The project for this semester’s capstone course is to propose a global growth business that can realize the three values that Hitachi’s aims to achieve simultaneously—namely, social values, environmental values, and economic values. After the presentation, Mr. Miwa and his colleagues responded to students’ questions about Hitachi’s businesses.

For the remainder of the semester, students will attend lectures and workshops taught by the College of International Management faculty in charge of the capstone course as they seek to deepen their knowledge and plan their projects. They will apply the insights and skills they have developed by way of APU’s signature multicultural collaborative learning to their projects. Students have been divided into small groups, each group composed of a mixture of Japanese- and English-basis students from different countries and regions who are studying different specializations, and together they will think about how to apply what they have learned at APU since their first year to real-world situations. They will comprehensively research and analyze the company’s businesses and resources, and at the end of the semester, they will present proposals to Hitachi for attractive global growth businesses that can realize the company’s social values, environmental values, and economic values.