Nishimoto

I currently have two roles. One is manager of the data scientist team that drives our clients' success, and the other is product manager — planning new features for our product and using them to improve the service. Holding both roles allows me to feed client feedback directly into product improvements.

Oishi

I'm responsible for sales and marketing for miHub®. To help more people discover MI, I'm always on the lookout for ways to reach new clients — through exhibitions, online outreach and other sales activities — and I manage the entire process, from initial outreach through to establishing new client relationships.

Hiraoka

As product marketing manager, I'm involved in everything from strategy to execution for new products, and I've also joined the newly formed enterprise client support team. What led the two of you to join MI-6?

Nishimoto

I originally studied computational life sciences at graduate school, and that's what drew me to the vision of bringing Materials Informatics into real-world R&D — so I decided to join MI-6. When I joined, there were only five of us on the team, less than a tenth the size we are now. I couldn't have imagined we'd grow into an organisation this size.

Oishi

Before joining MI-6, I'd always worked in R&D support. When research and development in Japan advances, better products can reach the world sooner, improving lives today and for future generations. I wanted to help bring more innovation to day-to-day R&D, and that's what led me to MI-6 while I was job-hunting.

Hiraoka

Before joining MI-6, I had no experience in chemistry — I'd been at a startup driving the digital transformation of accounting work. After around five years there, I could feel the accounting industry starting to change, and I found myself wanting to take on a completely fresh challenge, starting from scratch, in a field SaaS hadn't reached yet. That's when I came across MI-6.

Oishi

What's interesting about working at MI-6 is that real feeling of having sparked change for people who'd never even come across MI before. There's nothing quite like the joy of hearing clients who've used our services tell us their R&D has 'progressed dramatically.'

Hiraoka

One of the unique aspects of this business is being able to see the industry changing first-hand. Recently, we have seen clients who previously relied on external specialists begin working with their own data, substantially improving both the quality and frequency of their decision-making.

Nishimoto

I'm in close contact with clients myself, every day, helping solve the problems that come up on the ground. What I find really rewarding is combining the depth of knowledge they bring with our data-driven approach and technology, and working through trial and error together.

Hiraoka

Another appeal of MI-6 is its culture of mutual respect, both within the company and in the way we work with clients. Every day, I see how people with such different backgrounds can combine their perspectives to deliver better outcomes for clients.

Nishimoto

That's true — maybe that's one of the things that really defines MI-6: nobody comes at things assuming the other person's wrong. Everyone has their own ideas about what they want to do, while also thinking about the role the team needs from them, and acting on that.

Oishi

Even members who've only recently joined are encouraged to go ahead and try things out if they have an idea like 'wouldn't it be better this way?' And even with an almost fully remote way of working, everyone communicates so carefully that it gives you real peace of mind.

Hiraoka

What was particularly meaningful to me was that, with the new version of miHub®, we were able to begin approaching clients before the launch. Rather than waiting until the product was released, we presented the concept to around 30 companies and invited four of them to trial it and provide feedback.

Nishimoto

What Hiraoka's describing is exactly the kind of strategy that's essential in SaaS. We hadn't really put that into practice much here before, so having someone with his experience join the team meant we could all pull together and build something more strategic.

Oishi

What's memorable for me is being involved in launching miLab, MI-6's research and insights platform. The idea behind miLab is to make MI more approachable by publishing practical content on digital transformation in R&D, and I'm really pleased to see the site attracting more visitors recently.

Nishimoto

One experience that really stands out for me is helping a client frame their experimental process as a problem that could be addressed using Materials Informatics. We needed to understand both the experiments they were conducting and the underlying challenges they faced. By identifying insights the client hadn't yet fully articulated themselves, we were able to structure the problem in a way that could be addressed using MI — and I believe that was what ultimately made the difference.

Hiraoka

While people like Oishi and Nishimoto apply their expertise within their own functional teams, my role is to work across those boundaries. I felt that launching a new product while also growing our existing one would need someone to connect teams across themes and departments — so I volunteered for the challenge.

Oishi

That kind of agility is one of the best things about MI-6. I think the way we are organised will continue to evolve as the company enters new phases.

Oishi

It's been about a year since I joined MI-6, and I've grown to love not just our products and services, but MI-6's culture as a company, too. We have an open, relatively flat culture where people can speak honestly regardless of age or length of service, and I often catch myself smiling at the playful custom emoji our engineers share on Slack.

Hiraoka

That playfulness helps keep communication flowing smoothly, too. Speaking for myself, I'll soon be taking on client support work as well, and every company's different — how well they understand MI, what they need from R&D digital transformation, all of it varies. That's really going to put my own skills to the test: how smoothly can I get each client to a shared understanding?

Nishimoto

The organisation's grown a lot since I joined, and what we deal with has become more complex and sophisticated, too. With all that going on, I feel it's even more important now, as a product manager, to face clients directly, get to the heart of what the real issue is, and work out how to build that into the product. On top of that, I want to stay closely involved with clients as a data scientist too, so we can deliver the product's value in a more hands-on way.

Oishi

I believe the services we provide are capable of bringing real innovation to R&D across Japan. Going forward, I want to see MI used to bring one new material after another into the world — materials that enrich the lives of the next generation.

Hiraoka

There's still boundless room for digital transformation in R&D across manufacturing, one of Japan's biggest industries. Running alongside that front line, supporting the challenges researchers and companies take on, and getting to witness the moment a new breakthrough that changes the world comes into being — just thinking about it genuinely excites me.

Nishimoto

To make that happen, our platform's going to need to keep evolving too. I believe there's an even deeper world of MI out there, beyond what we're doing now — and holding on to that belief, I want to keep engaging with the clients in front of us, honestly and wholeheartedly.