Across 26 offices in 15 countries, Monstar Lab has been developing a range of services including mobile apps and games, IoT systems, social networks and e-commerce sites. As we launch our new website, I’d like to talk about the importance we put in a new keyword — Be Borderless.

Why “Be Borderless”?

Since 2006 when we started Monstar Lab in Japan, we’ve been cultivating the idea of transcending borders to help us realize our mission — to create an ecosystem for empowering diversity.

In the same way that both the Internet and creativity are themselves borderless, we’ve used this idea to express our hopes to expand our business across borders too. In the following years, our commitment to this hasn’t changed, but we felt now was a good opportunity to revisit how we communicate it.

Monstar Lab’s locations in cities all over the world has made us incredibly diverse, and filled the company with highly-skilled people. But our scale and diversity aren’t what I want to emphasize here. The questions we must ask are, “What can we do with all this? What can we offer, and to whom?”

We have two answers. Firstly, this helps us create value for our clients and end users who need digital products. And secondly, it creates opportunities for the members and partners of Monstar Lab to work in ways they like — anytime, anywhere.

Ultimately, when those involved with Monstar Lab become borderless, they gain value. And it was from this perspective that the concept “Be Borderless” was born.

Greater benefits for clients and users

As the world becomes more globalized, companies limit their growth when only pursuing business locally. It’s essential for growing companies to develop digital products for global markets.

However, in the process of product development for global markets, it’s important to understand the needs of the launch country — how their cultures and customs differ, and so on. It’s not easy to do this though, and surveys to do so are costly.

Monstar Lab is made up of over 30 nationalities, and from this rich multicultural network, we can gather engineers and creators who better understand the needs of their local markets.

For example, when we work with a client who wants to launch a product in China, we can assemble a project team from our locations in Shanghai, Chengdu and Qingdao. We’re able to immediately assign members with specialist skills, not only in China but from wherever they are needed.

Monstar Lab is a unique company managing projects and human resources on a global scale, while simultaneously operating teams on a very local level. This makes it possible to gather true market insight and meet our end users’ needs.

Providing new work opportunities

We’re expanding globally by forming capital alliances, and during this process we’ve noticed cases of unbalance across the world.

For example, we have development locations in Southeast Asia where we hire top-notch engineers and creators locally. They are actively working in digital product development on a global scale.

There are cases though, where talented people are in countries where they do not have enough job opportunities and internationally competitive companies to sustain them. These countries have failed to grow their domestic industries, causing talented people to emigrate. Japan, on the other hand is suffering from a lack of manpower despite plenty of job opportunities due to a decreasing population. Insufficient engineers results in lower productivity.

Monstar Lab believes we can create an ecosystem to improve this unbalance for the future by utilizing human resources beyond borders. We will provide job opportunities for Asian countries where there are lots of talented people but few job opportunities. In Japan, we will provide overseas talent to deal with the lack of domestic manpower and declining productivity, and in doing so, help make things more sustainable.

Our hope is for people not only be able to use their skills in their own countries, but also to develop industries that grow the economy in their countries too.

Building a more borderless world

We don’t want to provide the exact same products across the globe. Instead, through our borderless approach to development and top level talent, we can provide what people truly need. We make use of the differences of cultures and markets in each country, as well as the skills and feelings of the people working there.

This is what we are uniquely positioned to do, and what being borderless really means. Our next step is to become a company that champions this idea, and encourages others to be borderless too.

Hiroki Inagawa, CEO