Our 4th collaboration with the Japan Management Consultant Association
We produced a special creative tour for Japanese business owners in October 2017. This marks our 4th collaboration with the Japan Management Consultant Association led by Kota Sakagami. Japan Management Consultant Association is the largest business consultant organization in Japan with over 10,000 membership with small to mid- sized business owners throughout Japan.
UPLIFT + JMAC
Each year, Mr. Sakagami recruits 15 business owners from the vast member base who particularly show special interest in learning more about the market trend and business culture in Portland for this tour. Based on the participants’ business interests and needs, UPLIFT then tailored the tour to incorporate relevant topics and businesses to visit. The tour compromised of a series of lectures and discussion with curated Portland creatives and business leaders.
One of the unique features of our tour is incorporating Portland culture into the itinerary. We began our day with morning Yoga and Qi Gong lessons to ease participants’ mind and body. Then we headed to Portland’s famous coffee shop to enjoy a freshly brewed coffee before we began our busy day.
We believe that providing participants with the unique Portland experience is immensely important in order for them to fully immerse themselves into the Portland culture and understand what the city is built upon. We would like to give a special thanks to our UPLIFT members Brenda Russel and Mikaela Jones for the amazing body movement and sound bath lessons.
At the end of our busy day, we introduced our participants to our Portland’s extraordinary food culture and had dinner at some of the renown restaurants. Special Thanks to Jason French at Ned Ludd and Joshua Macedden at Tusk, who served them with some incredibly impressive selection of food for this special occasion.
A fruitful collaboration
We also visited various creative companies that are based in Portland, such as W+K, Nike, Ziba Design, Airbnb, Wework, Central Co-working space, Eggpress, OMFGco, Coava Coffee Roasters, The Good Mod, Big Giant and Evolve Collab to learn about their businesses. The participants had the opportunity to ask intriguing questions at the end of the visit and they all seemed very inspired by these companies and their business leaders.
Special thanks to our UPLIFT members Jeremy Pelley at OMFGco and Spenser Staley for taking their busy time to give inspirational and informative presentations to our participants.
The main objective of our creative tour is to provoke and inspire new perspectives for the participants, whether in their personal lifestyle or work style. Portland is a city that people can lead well-balanced life. It is our genuine desire that the participants took away some valuable perspectives to bring back home and apply to their personal life and their businesses.
On our last day of the week, we celebrated the success of our tour at KIRIKO Studio that was founded by UPLIFT Founder Katsu Tanaka. We celebrated over some delicious appetizers that were catered by our UPLIFT member, OBON PDX. All the participants were very engaging with one another and they all had a great conversation about their business ideas and their new perspectives and also enjoyed each other’s company into the night.
We look forward to continuing this fruitful collaboration with the Japan Management Consultant Association.
