At the 21st Nikkei STOCK League for 2020, sponsored by Nikkei Inc., a research report titled, “Dynamic Capability – Seeking Corporations that Continue to Change” by Mr. Yuki Sato, Mr. Shota Sekiguchi, and Ms. Rei Isogami, a team of Soka University’s Faculty of Business Administration (seniors in the Hiraoka Seminar), was selected as an Outstanding Report. This will be the fifth time and second consecutive year for students of the Hiraoka Seminar to be selected.

The Nikkei STOCK League encourages junior and senior high school and university students to conduct “portfolio learning based on their self-determined theme (setting their research theme and conducting corporate analysis),” and paired with a “report contest” it aims to help the youth of Japan to further learn and improve their understanding of finance and economics, including securities and stocks. The event started in 2001, and this year marks the 21st event.

A total of 6,535 students from 1,643 teams participated this time, and in the college group, 35 teams were selected out of 737 teams with 2,963 students. Soka University’s team was selected together with other state and private universities, including Osaka University and Waseda University.

Mr. Shota Sekiguchi joyfully shared his determination as follows: “For this challenge to win the second consecutive year, we created a report based on the theme of ‘dynamic capability,’ which realizes corporations’ superiority in continuous competition amid an age when uncertainty continues to increase. While it was a challenging theme, I am extremely happy and proud that our report was selected out of many reports. I express my sincere appreciation to Professor Hiraoka, who guided us in earnest, as well as the fellow students of our seminar and the other seniors and juniors. Just like the theme we took up this time, together with the team members, even after graduation, I will continue to self-improve and recreate myself so that I can respond to the quickly changing market environment.”

Professor Hiraoka shared: “The theme ‘dynamic capability’ set by the winning team indicates the self-transformation ability of corporations that can correspond to an intensely changing environment by making maximum use of their existing resources (including human resources and know-how). In the process of screening a group of corporations that possess such ability, needless to mention is the research of theory by Dr. Teece of the University of California, who is an advocate, and the team needed to study other traditional to modern strategic theories as well as high-level financial and portfolio analysis. The team members steadily studied each theory so as to complete their report. Being selected for the second consecutive year and for the fifth time is the culmination of such efforts and is worthy of praise.”