[Leave a Nest 20th Anniversary Project・Part 12] Founding of Leave a Nest Knowledge Co., Ltd., a Subsidiary That Aims to Strengthen the Organization in the Field of Information Technology

On 19 August 2022, Leave a Nest Co., Ltd. (LVNS, Head Office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; Founder & Group CEO Dr. Yukihiro Maru) founded Leave a Nest Knowledge Co., Ltd. (Representative Directors: George Yoshida, Joe Inoue; Head Office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo), a wholly-owned subsidiary responsible for strengthening the information technology division, with the aim of refining Leave a Nest Co., Ltd. “knowledge manufacturing” functions and strengthening the Leave a Nest Group as a whole while increasing its value.

On 6 January 2020, Leave a Nest founded its wholly-owned subsidiary, Leave a Nest Capital Co., Ltd. (Representative Directors: Masahiro Ikegami, Shuichiro Takahashi; Head Office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo), through a company split (absorption-type split), with the purpose of strengthening the entire group. The newly founded subsidiary inherited three divisions, i.e. the Investment Development Division, responsible for investments in startups, the Business Environment Development Division, responsible for developing organizations' operating environment and mechanisms, and the Information Development Division, responsible for strengthening Leave a Nest's IT infrastructure.

On 19 August 2022, the information development department of Leave a Nest Capital has been transferred into Leave a Nest Knowledge, a newly founded wholly-owned subsidiary, to focus on further strengthening the IT infrastructure of Leave a Nest and provide external IT support and service based on the expertise and technology developed over the years since Leave a Nest’s founding. 

As a result, our company is expected to further improve its Knowledge Manufacturing Process Technology (KMPT) driven️ by our Science Bridge Communicators® by continuing to pursue its mission as a three-storied organization, thanks to the integration of Leave a Nest Capital's expertise in promoting venture investment development and business environment development, with Leave a Nest Knowledge's expertise in promoting the collection and administration of information in IT. 

Leave a Nest Knowledge's representative directors are Leave a Nest's Chief Information Officer George Yoshida, who has been in charge of the company's IT department since its inception, and Chief Knowledge Officer Joe Inoue, who has been leading Leave a Nest's knowledge manufacturing. 

In order to strengthen the structure of Leave a Nest Capital in conjunction with the founding of Leave a Nest Knowledge, Leave a Nest's Chief Operating Officer Shuichiro Takahashi will be appointed as the new Representative Director at Leave a Nest Capital, joining Leave a Nest's Chief Financial Officer Masahiro Ikegami, in charge of Leave a Nest's finance since the company inception.　

[Group Structure]

[Purpose of Leave a Nest Knowledge]

At Leave a Nest, we introduced the process of DX with the introduction of Salesforce at the end of 2013. By digitalizing operations that originally had a high number of analog interactions, we significantly improved efficiency and increased productivity by 300%. Examples of Salesforce use by Leave a Nest were featured in the Einstein (AI) keynote session, during Dreamforce 2019, the world's largest IT conference hosted by Salesforce.com held in November 2019, where Executive Director George Yoshida became the first Japanese guest featured in the conference's product keynote. The same year, our company released Leave a Nest ID, which became the basis for Leave a Nest's membership platform. As of 2022, the number of users has grown to 25,000 people, constantly involving many researchers, students, and professors. 

With the establishment of Leave a Nest Knowledge, we plan to strengthen the adoption of Leave a Nest’s IT expertise to improve the speed of digital transformation and create an organization that provides the knowledge of Leave a Nest’s IT divisions cultivated over many years as a service to the outside world.

[Functions as DX accelerator]

Many projects continue to emerge in Leave a Nest on a daily basis, and the number has been constantly increasing over the years. Therefore, we needed to figure out how to use DX for better time efficiency. Representative Director George Yoshida is an expert in many tools provided by Salesforce, such as Sales Cloud, Slack, Heroku, Tableau, and other SaaS/PaaS, as well as in system development. His expertise has seen recognition even outside the organization and he has been asked to present case studies at various events in addition to Dreamforce 2019, prompting him to invest in making available to the public, the knowledge acquired through his long experience at our company. Generally, information systems require a certain cost to be implemented, and implementation is not enough to use them efficiently; so it is important to consider how systems can be integrated into the target organization to make it run more smoothly. On the other hand, it is difficult to properly estimate the ROI when there is no record of implementation, especially when the return is estimated before the transition is completed. Moreover, In many cases the implementation of a system is entrusted to the provider, posing a risk of losing the main essence of the organization’s system. However, Leave a Nest Knowledge provides DX support to organizations based on the experience gained by implementing and developing IT systems within Leave a Nest, and provides organizations with a smooth implementation process through ongoing support. 

[Service of Leave a Nest Knowledge]

Between 2014 and 2022, Leave a Nest has grown threefold in sales, increasing the number of employees from 40 to 100 and multiplying its operating profit 16 times. Knowledge acquisition was improved by launching a sales organization based on DX, building an employee evaluation system, and developing a communication and rating system centered on Slack. Through what Leave a Nest calls KMPT (Knowledge Manufacturing Process Technology), we contribute to building and promoting a culture that allows organizations and teams to grow, not just adopt information technologies for the sake of progress. 

◆ Strengths in the field of IT

The following tools provided by Salesforce

CRM: Sales Cloud and Sales Cloud Einstein
MA: Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) and Pardot Einstein
Communication: Slack
BI: Tableau
BI: CRM Analytics (formerly Tableau CRM, formerly Einstein Analytics)
PaaS: Heroku

Expertise in increasing the performance of these tools, by linking tools to each other's systems, and developing API linkage methods. Many such systems have been developed, so if you are interested, please refer to the following examples. 

Qiita in Leave a Nest: https://qiita.com/organizations/leaveanest
Representative Director George Yoshida's note: https://note.com/geeorgey
Representative Director George Yoshida's presentation materials: https://lne.st/geeorgey
Case Studies on Leave a Nest Knowledge's Website: https://k.lne.st/works/

◆Leave a Nest Knowledge Co., Ltd. Overview

Trade name: Leave a Nest Knowledge Co., Ltd.
Executives: Representative Director and President George Yoshida (Leave a Nest Co., Ltd., CIO)
Representative Director Joe Inoue (Leave a Nest Co., Ltd., CKO Representative Director)
Head Office: Iidabashi Miyuki Building 6F, 1-4 Shimomihabicho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Website: https://k.lne.st/

◆ Biographical information of the Representative Director

George Yoshida, President, and CEO at Leave a Nest Knowledge Co., Ltd.

George Yoshida graduated from the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, with a Master's Degree in Engineering. In 2004, he became Managing Director and CMO of Leave a Nest, where he participated in promotional and media development projects as well as marketing activities. He then became the current CIO in 2014. He introduced SaaS for Google Workspace, Salesforce, Slack, etc. into the organization and in 2019 implemented the use of AI in the company’s business operations. Successively, he presented a case study of AI use during Einstein Keynote at Dreamforce 2019, a worldwide conference hosted by Salesforce. In the same year, he released Leave a Nest ID, a platform where users can register to access Leave a Nest’s service, which he used to further improve the company’s IT infrastructure by releasing in 2021 LID media, Leave a Nest’s media platform. 

Joe Inoue, Representative Director at Leave a Nest Knowledge Co., Ltd.

Ph.D. in Pharmacy at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo. In 2002, while in graduate school, he founded Leave a Nest as a company for students who graduated from a bachelor's or master's course in scientific disciplines. After completing the doctoral course, he became an assistant lecturer at the School of Science of Kitasato University, an assistant lecturer at the Graduate School of Medicine of Kyoto University, and an associate professor on special appointment at Keio University. Since 2018, he has been a leading professor of pharmacy at Kumamoto University School of Pharmacy and a visiting professor at Keio University Faculty of Pharmacy. While conducting research and development, it has been involved in backing collaborative research projects with universities and research institutions and supporting the establishment of research institutes. He is also involved in the launching of many startup companies and serves as an advisor for entrepreneurs. In 2022, he became CKO, representative director and president of Leave a Nest Co., Ltd.