The 1995 earthquake that devastated his native Kobe, Japan, was a turning point for Hiroshi Mikitani (MBA 1993). “It made me realize that I wanted to revitalize Japan’s economy,” says Mikitani, who also sponsored relief efforts during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. To aid small-business owners, he developed a web-based shopping mall—Rakuten, which roughly means “optimism”—often called the Amazon.com of Japan.

“We created an online marketplace where customers can interact with shop owners, and we empower our merchants to build relationships with customers,” says Rakuten’s chairman and CEO. To further Rakuten’s global presence, Mikitani established English as the official language for the company’s 10,000 employees worldwide. His “Englishnization” initiative became the subject of an HBS case study.

Mikitani barely knew the word entrepreneur when he arrived in Boston in 1991, but after hundreds of cases, a light clicked on. “It was in an HBS classroom that I first considered starting my own company,” he says. Rakuten operates e-commerce businesses in 13 countries, spearheaded a $100 million investment in Pinterest, and recently acquired eReader Kobo, global video site Viki, and messaging platform Viber. Rakuten also owns a championship baseball team in the city of Sendai.

(Published April 2014)

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