Turning Ideas Into Innovation
In-house YouTube Channel “UP Channel”

The September issue of UNI-SQUARE introduces the UNIVA Paycast (UPC) challenge event "Innovation Challenge Pitch" and the winning team. “Innovation Challenge Pitch”, commonly known as “Inochare”, is a large internal event in which teams of two or more people work together for 11 months to realize new ideas, and employees themselves evaluate the process and results. It is not just a festival, but a serious event for both companies and employees involved in annual personnel evaluations. Seven people from the in-house YouTube channel "UP Channel" team led by Terry BRUNIER won this year's fiercely contested Inochare! Mr. Nakao also has great expectations, saying, "Now that payments have become a common infrastructure, UPC must create a future with a new initiative called 'payment + α.' UP Channel is an initiative that can be a trigger for that '+α'.” How "UP Channel" was born, how it developed, and how it will lead to the future? We asked leader Terry about the hardships and achievements of the past 11 months.

Thank you, Terry for your cooperation!
And congratulations to the UP Channel team!

"Innovative company" envisioned beyond problem solving

At Inochare, employees evaluate the 7-minute presentation by the leader of each group on a 4-point scale and compete for points. Judging items are the novelty of the idea, the degree of contribution to the company, the clarity of the presentation, whether the team was able to make good use of diversity, and whether the voters were excited to hear the process. The UP Channel team with the highest total score won. Only 1 point difference from 2nd place! Where did the idea for UP Channel come from in the first place?

“It was a little before Inochare, but the origin of UP Channel was my experience creating a bilingual feature video for UNIVA Pay, a UPC service. I felt that there was a low level of understanding and communication barriers for people whose native language was not Japanese. By making videos in two languages, changes were born in internal communication. So, I used videos. I thought that communication would lead to collaboration with other departments and promotion of innovation, so I decided to take on the challenge of Inochare.”

The purpose of establishing "UP Channel" is to gain a deep understanding of UPC's business and promote collaboration between departments. And it was to activate communication between employees.

“I thought we needed a platform to understand not only the business itself, but also the overall picture and strategy. Miscommunication would occur if it was conveyed by human, but if it was a video, the message could be delivered directly without misunderstanding. Receiving messages in your favorite language minimizes language barriers and stress.”

Terry emphasized that ideas can only be born and shared when there is mutual understanding. Terry's real goal in Inochare was to foster a culture within UPC in which innovation is commonplace.

One Point Difference Created by "Power to Never Give Up"

However, Terry is inexperienced in video shooting and editing. Terry bought the video editing software "Adobe Premiere Pro" with pocket money and taught himself video editing. However, in the case of video production, there are a wide variety of tasks from planning to shooting, editing, and distribution. It is impossible to set up an in-house YouTube channel alone, including translation and subtitling work.

Terry proactively casted people who are good at English, who have a nice voice, and so on. On the other hand, NAKAMA, who agreed with Terry's thoughts, and NAKAMA, who wanted to shape their own ideas together, also appeared, and the "UP Channel" team started with seven members.

The main members are Shinichi Tanaka, who is in charge of planning, appearance negotiations, and interviews, Shinya Tanaka, who is in charge of Internet radio "Podcast," Satoru Onozuka, an interviewer, Monami Kaneko and Taichi Terashima, who are in charge of script and translation. Takafumi Hino, who is in charge of audio archive creation and video editing, and Terry, who is video shooting / editing.

Inochare has a rule that 20% of work time can be devoted to Inochare, but it seems that most of the activities of the "UP Channel" team were outside of business hours, even though they were busy with their regular work.

“In addition to the editing software, we also used our own resources for the microphone and camera. And everyone worked really hard."

Project management plays a major role in video production where there are many work processes and schedule management is important. Of course this is Terry's job.

“Busy days can be exhausting, and members become less motivated. We were always looking for a way of working that would allow us to balance work and Inochare. I think that subdividing the work of each person in charge and clearly stating 'when, how much work, and by when' gave everyone a sense of security. I think the one-point difference from second place is the result of everyone's efforts without giving up. Whether at work, in your personal life, or in sports, it is important to work hard until the end. The coach's line from 'Slam Dunk', a manga about Japanese basketball, is exactly right: 'If you give up, the game ends right there,' and it has had a great impact on my life."