Though this is a little away from the main stream of the discussion, let me add the reality of the low English proficiency among the Japanese SME employees, which does not result in any problem in many cases of the overseas trades.
> Those SMEs, who see hiring generalist language experts as a solution,
> are competing against companies
> whose engineers, supply chain and customer service infrastructures
> are increasingly geared up to listen and quickly respond to market needs
> in fluent and compelling English.
I‘ve seen a few hundred of SMEs in my business, where the mechanism described above is not observable. I think that there are several reasons for it including the followings:
1 The SMEs’ organizations are small enough not to suffer from the sectionalism. They won’t have accumulated time lags in communication in the correspondence.
2 The language experts are not mere generalists. The SMEs’ business models are usually so focused as to materialize a careful recruitment process to select and hire someone with the demanded skills. In the cases that SMEs’ businesses are too focused to find someone with ready-made skills, they naturally cover the lack of skills with intense hands-on OJTs in their small organization environment.
3 The profitable SMEs do not listen and respond to market needs. They follow the genba-genbutsu principle and observe and analyze what is wanted among the customers. And they simply lead the needs. So there is not a high necessity for the frequent correspondence with English speaking customers even when they do business with oversea companies.
4 The SMEs’ businesses are too dependent on their core competences to afford some functions outside of the core competences. They would rather expect these lacking functions to the outsourcers equipped with the competences in coping with the oversea markets.
I presently have a client of a fine mold manufacturer for plastic products. The company has 10 employees. All of them can not speak English at all. A few of them are barely able to read and write English. The 80% of the sales are from overseas. The oversea sales volume is also gradually increasing.
I presently have a Japanese largest full line sex toy manufacturer with 50 employees. After the 40 years of its history, it finally decided to expand its business overseas. It first researched the Chinese market. The executives were so surprised to find that the company brands are far more recognized there than in the domestic market.
These companies and many others meet four conditions I listed above.
I myself found “drastic expansion of business opportunities after I started (English) LinkedIn” but I do not have an intention to actively pursue them. As mentioned in my comment, I am a member of the Henkyo-Bunka. I am happy to observe or to witness the opportunities and am willing to keep it for just in case. If any business is brought to me from the world of English LinkedIn, I would be happy to deal with it. There are enormous number of people I can communicate and do business with around me, with absolutely no effort of using a secondary language.
I feel that I am able to express one tenth as much of my thoughts in English as those in Japanese. My English skills to me is here again mainly utilized for knowing the outside of the domestic business & culture in order to enlighten myself.
LOL.