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The Key to Success – Collating Information& Connecting It to Business

By Mukesh Williams

Author Mukesh Williams

On June 4, 2019 I met the CEO of System Shared Inc., Iruchu Jo, a third generation Korean, in his officein Akihabara and asked him questions regarding his early life, dreams, setbacks, corporate philosophy
and business challenges. Doing part-time work and playing soccer, Jo learnt to develop practical skills.
Adversity in his early life gave him an intense passion to realize his goals and never give up. After manyfailures he set up an IT company at the age of 25 called System Shared (2007) which now creates software
for companies and trains employees in information technology and system development. Young andenergetic, Jo believes in taking up small practical projects closer to home and then globalizing them.
Initially training company employees in computer languages and educational philosophy, he expanded hiscompany to open an IT school in Nihombashi to train young Japanese in computer languages. Realizing
the urgency to innovate and keep abreast of new technology, Jo has introduced artificial intelligence (AI)and cloud computing in the workings of his company. He believes that passion is of paramountimportance to achieve success and therefore his motto in life is “Never give up”.
generate that money?

Life & Struggles
Williams: What were your ambitions in your youth andthe hardships you faced realizing them?

Jo: I did not go to university. My family was not rich at that time andthey could not afford my higher education. I always wanted to be aprofessional football player and go to Paraguay to hone my skills infootball. At the age of 18, I made 400,000 yen per month doing parttime jobs to realize this goal, which meant working 16 hours per day.
Williams: What kind of part-time jobs did you do to
Photo: Author

CEO Iruchu Jo at his Akihabara office

62 Japan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 2019

Jo: Well, I did different kinds of part-time jobs such as Koreantranslation in Chiba, working in an izakaya, at a convenience store
and also delivering newspapers.
Williams: What did you learn from this? And what did

you do with your money?

Jo: I understood that there was always a limitation to physical work,
but any work can be fun if you do it joyfully. So, after I worked parttime for one year I could collect the requisite money. I asked myfather to keep the money in safe custody as I feared that I might use
it up. Meanwhile, I also learnt Portuguese and practiced football. So
one day I asked my father for the money but he tearfully told me that
he had used it up to unsuccessfully revive his business.
After this incident, I decided to give up my dream of becoming afootball player and started to look for job opportunities in Japan. I
worked in 20 different sectors but in the end concluded that systems
development was the most interesting work as it had no limits. Also I
liked the people around it. There are two points I wish to mention
here: first, there is no physical limit in working with IT, and second, it
requires team work which allows people to communicate. My
knowledge of soccer did not result in success in that area but I used
my soccer experience in system engineering. For five years I worked
in this industry and in my last year as a ‘would-be’ systems engineer
I worked on projects related to flip phones making a Contents
Management System (CMS) and Sales Force Automation (SFA). But
neither sold. When I first started this, I took action before thinking. Ithought I should first take action before being worried about whether
https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

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something will work out or not.

Photo: Author

Williams: If you act without thinking it may lead tomany problems.

Jo: My philosophy was never to be scared of anything but try it out
first. Since I took action first I lost out on many things. I had threeemployees in my company but things did not go well. Soon I realized
I had no money, no food, and no time. When things were taken awayfrom me I began to realize their value. In my business I did not see
results but in my life I did. During these hard times, I wanted to runaway. In the first year, as the banks did not lend me money,
I borrowed 37 million yen from people I knew. Sales were only about
200,000 yen and profits kept decreasing for two years and I wanted
to run away.
Williams: Why did you not succeed in the beginning?
Jo: I then I realized that my heart was the reason for this; I was not
100% in it. From that day on I decided not to run away and succeedin this sector, and from that day onward sales went up. In threemonths, sales went up three times. It was unbelievable. I now hadtime to breathe and look at what I was doing. I learnt and felt manythings deeply. It is not just profit figures that develop a business butwhat values we create as a human being. So, after my success,I focused more on the purpose, the ultimate goal and importance ofdoing business. I always embrace challenges and never give up until
I succeed. Therefore “challenges” are central to our company. This
comes from the hard experience that I have gained in the past.
Williams: Was there someone you would discuss someof your problems with, maybe a best friend?

Jo: I received help from a friend who is three years senior to me. He
listened to my issues connected to business and helped me. He
sensed my weighty problems and took me out for dinners. With him
I could organize my thoughts. There were several other people whowould also ask me to go out. Also, every weekend I worked as a
football coach for children and at that time I forgot my problems.
Williams: Do you remember any memorable advice thatyour senior gave to you?

Jo: He said that being human is most important, and everything will
be fine. Be positive and look forward, not backwards.

CEO Iruchu Jo at his Akihabara office with the author

Work & Company
Williams: Can you describe your company’s general

structure, target, goals and a little bit of history?

Jo: As I have mentioned, the solutions I created initially for clients
did not sell. So I decided to throw away these early products andstart from the systems that the clients wanted. I started focusing on
systems development, which meant engineers were necessary. Fromthe day I started my company in 2007, I have put my energy andmoney into educating employees. As my company was busy withsales activities, I asked four other companies to take care of training
our employees to become capable systems engineers. But when ouremployees returned from the training there was no substantial
improvement in their skills. Later I got to know that such IT training
programs were mainly for employees who had basic knowledge of
information systems or who had a degree in technology. The
problem was that the employees that we were sending to thecompanies came from a humanities background and did not haveany knowledge in the IT sector. There was no first step for them.
Because of this, I felt that we needed to train our own employees inour own company, and to create a training course indigenously andmake it number one in Japan. Once we created our internal training
program, our IT business partners asked us to train their employees
as well. This would mean that we would be helping our competitors
by increasing competition in the same sector. But I decided to thinkin terms of the philosophy of the company and thought it would beJapan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 201963SpecialArticle 3

Photo: Author

Photo: Author

Tokyo IT School Nihombashi

A class in session at Tokyo IT School

important to include our competitors and enrich our lives.

company that sets you apart from other Computer
Based Testing (CBT) companies?

Williams: How has the internal training program helped

your company?

Jo: At present we run two main businesses areas, systems
development and IT education. The IT education business started
with 20 students who had no experience in technology. But at theclosing ceremony they were all crying with happiness. When I saw
this scene from the back of the classroom, I had goose bumps andthat was when I decided to do business in this area. For three years
the sales were slack but after the fourth year sales balanced
themselves out. Our target is to bring in new employees of 15,000 IT
companies in Japan as our students, which is around 30,000
students nationwide. Now we are also targeting CEOs of big
companies in Japan to do private IT lessons and thereby expand ourIT education to non-IT companies as well. In the IT era we live in,I feel there is growing demand for acquiring basic IT skills. As it isimportant to understand the actual systems development projects weuse our systems engineers in projects related to development. Even
the programming lecturers develop input and output programs.
I believe this is IT education in Japan. We have engineers going intosystems development and IT education. We have systems
development engineers researching in big data and teaching at thesame time. The situation is quite fluid.
Williams: What are the unique aspects of your64 Japan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 2019

Jo: The specialized point of our IT educational business is that wehave active engineers who work as lecturers and who haveexperience in systems development projects. They can impart
education in both IT education and systems development.
Williams: What is the strength of your company, ascompared to other companies, that you would like toproject?

Jo: Our strength is a unique IT education philosophy – that is, tolearn and teach others. We have created an environment for students
to learn, to practice and to teach others. Also, we have solutions forthe various needs of clients. Some clients ask for software only,
some for a system. Depending on each need, we combine both IT
and IT education to solve these issues. There are over 15,000 IT
companies in Japan of which 40 companies are doing IT education,and only three companies doing both systems development and IT
education, including us. Moreover, we are capable of listening to aclient’s specific needs in technology, like a certain type of framework
in programming or a specialized knowledge of business. We canprovide detailed specifications for training company groups orindividuals. We started our IT education as a free internal program totrain candidates and then hired them. We considered the program asa B-to-C project whose primary focus was to provide freeSpecial

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programming skills to those who wanted them. At that time, there
was a trend in teaching people for free and then hiring them if they
developed requisite skills. Now we do not do these things as it is notprofitable.
Williams: As Japanese companies are globalizing into

India there is a new need for IT education ofJapanese employees through the Japanese
language. Would you like to globalize yourcompany’s CBT in Java and Oracle to a Japaneseclientele in India?

Jo: We are not focusing on globalizing Java and Oracle. I believe theproducts to be globalized depend on country and era. I want toprovide the necessary IT education for clients. For instance, I want toprovide programming training to countries strong in offshoredevelopment, and advanced technology for countries that haveachieved development in technology. Also, we are now trying tocreate a hiring support system in the country and expanding ourbusiness in three sections, namely recruitment, systems
development and IT education. I believe that B-to-B is needed fornational markets and B-to-C for foreign markets. For those who arefinancially healthy, we will work with this model but for those whoare not, we want to change the monetization procedure.
We do not currently have a concrete plan to expand abroad. We
have set our goal to be number one in Japan by 2025 and believe
this is one way to globalize our business as it will connect tobranding outside the country. In the process of achieving this goal,
we will be going abroad to assess new possibilities. We haveexperience as Japan once faced the same situation in the past. Byand large, Southeast Asia is marginally interested in improving
business efficiency through IT as it enjoys a cheap labor force. In thecoming five to 10 years, as IT spreads in societies, we would plan toenter the global market. Once we develop our IT training courses
abroad, we want to give the opportunity to students in thosecountries to become lecturers and teach others.
Williams: What is the most important consideration

while imparting IT education to students?

Jo: I am talking not necessarily of IT education but of education per
se. Research done by Prof. Robert O. Brinkerhoff and Anne M.
Apking on high impact learning claims that students absorb only
20% of training courses as compared to development of skills (HighImpact Learning, Perseus Publishing, 2001). These days anythingcan be looked up on the Internet by using the Google search engine,
including teaching materials. So the most important factor is tocreate a desire to learn amongst students. As for CBT, we have notyet developed this area. We have materials for flipped learning where
we ask students to learn online and study offline throughdevelopment exercises, and then give them certification according to
the skills they have developed. This style has been used at Harvard
University and has proved quite successful; we too have
implemented this method in our courses.
Williams: The modern banking sector is shifting

towards AI and cloud technology. How do you plan todirect your company in this direction?

Jo: We have been teaching AI. AI is used as a marketing tool and thetechnology is still in its infancy. We are emphasizing cloudcomputing such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). First of all, ourengineers need to learn the technology. Compared to olden times,
creating a system has become much easier. For instance, in hostcomputing, programmers were only required to check the logic. Afterthe opening of technology, it became necessary to haveunderstanding of hardware. Now there is a narrow borderline
between software and hardware. We are currently in an era where
information is an asset. How we can bring together information andconnect it to business is the key to success. In order to go forward
in AI technology, it is necessary to move into cloud technology,
including retailing it. These days, the front-end IT businesses havebecome free and a shift is taking place in back-end businesses where
all the information is accumulating. Some of the important
information in our sector would be information related to systems
engineers, work evaluation, skills, and educational personality.
Williams: How did you train yourself in the rather

difficult field of technology?

Jo: The point here is to like the work you are doing. I look up thesubject, the field I am interested in. I have an interest in learning.
I have become aware of technology. I try to listen to people in actual
projects and input knowledge and try to speak to people. By doing
so, I can realize my mistakes.

Mukesh Williams is a professor at Soka University, visiting faculty at Keio
University, consultant/news analyst for the BBC World Service, and St.
Stephen’s College Alumni representative and Academic Exchange Programs
Coordinator in Japan.

Japan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 201965