Khaldon Azhari

TOKYO: Education and training company GLOBIS is aiming to ramp up its services in Saudi Arabia as the Kingdom invests more and more in digitalization and broadens its economic horizons.

Aiste Dewulf, Chief Learning and Business Development Officer for GLOBIS Europe, says the company is looking to invest in Saudi Arabia and develop its partnerships there to bring cutting-edge Japanese business knowledge to local clients. 

GLOBIS Europe’s CEO headed to Riyadh on Nov. 21 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of its partnership with Saudi Telecom Company. The company, a leader in learning and innovation, is a part of the STC group driving digital and cultural transformation in Saudi Arabia and beyond. 

“Saudi Arabia is investing a lot into digitalization and the Saudi Vision as they really want to influence society as well the economy,” Dewulf said in an interview with Arab News Japan. “To embrace this, they are trying, from what I understand, to learn from different regions in the world and to bring best practices back to Saudi Arabia.”

Among the Saudi targets were the best practices to be found in Japan, and GLOBIS was a natural partner.

“GLOBIS has an ecosystem of ‘people capital’ and knowledge and we try to use that comprehensively in order to have the most effective results,” Dewulf says. “They like the idea that we have this ecosystem and they reached out and we started talking.”

GLOBIS started its first program in Saudi Arabia in November last year and has been involved with three more programs this year.

“They invited us to do that in person in Riyadh and somehow the style and the approach that we do in Japan had a really good fit,” Dewulf said. “They appreciated the results and they are looking into tripling the program next year and adding maybe some other programs that would more directly encourage cooperation between participants and what Japan can offer them.”

GLOBIS, says Dewulf, is in the business of trying to “enable people, and with them wanting to promote digitalization and so on, they see many areas where we could cooperate with them.”  

Dewulf said she was “surprised and impressed by the speed of growth and by their openness to really embrace new things. If I speak with many people who knew Saudi Arabia from five or 10 years ago, for them it is difficult to understand how something like this could be going on.  But if you see how the mindset is there, how many things have changed in the past years, it is like they are just trying to learn as aggressively as they can from everywhere in the world.”

GLOBIS’ role is to take that desire for change and teach the participants how to harness it and use that to enhance business and to create opportunities in business.  

“Innovation does not happen only about technology,” Dewulf explains. “It has a lot to do with people, with people’s mindset, with the way how to adapt that technology within their organizations, how to achieve organizational development, how to design that so that it is effective. I am really impressed with the speed of doing things and with the commitment to embrace change. [The Saudis] are action oriented, they work to make things happen.”

Dewulf says success in Saudi Arabia could have a ripple effect on businesses in the Middle East.

“Hopefully, we can share with other companies about how Saudi Arabia is, how companies in Saudi Arabia think, how aggressive they are towards change, how much they take care of their people and facilitate learning, and invest in the learning,” she said.  “I haven’t seen another country or another organization that would invest so much effort into learning and development.  So, it’s impressive; it is really impressive.”