Attending the 10x Innovation Culture Pitch Practice Session at Google

Hello, this is Hoka winter.
For about a year, KINTO Technologies (KTC) has been running the 10X Innovation Culture Program announced by Google Cloud Japan G.K. in September 2023 to foster an innovation-driven organizational environment.
This time, aside from the usual 10X, I will talk about the 10x Innovation Culture Pitch practice session we attended.
What is the 10x Innovation Culture Pitch Practice Session? The purpose of this training is to develop the facilitation skills necessary to implement the "10X Innovation Culture Program" within your company. To do this, you need a deep understanding of the 10X Innovation Culture Program. This training is designed to deepen that understanding.
This was our second time taking part in the training. Last time, the training was mainly attended by managers. Since then, the progress of 10X has been dramatic, so this time, volunteer members—mainly team leaders—took part.
The 10x Innovation Culture Pitch practice session is broadly divided into two parts. One part involves “learning the six elements for creating innovation,” and the other focuses on “expressing the six elements in our own words.”
Preparation for the Training
What I've learned about 10X from Google people is that the difficulty level for KTC gradually increases.
In the first training session, all KTC employees “merely participated,” but in the second session, KTC employees took on the role of presenters for the culture session. In other words, they play an important role as presenters who convey the six elements for creating innovation to other participants.
Thankfully, the presentation slides were prepared by the people at Google, so all we at KTC had to do was read out the six elements.
Even though it was just that simple, it was incredibly difficult!!!
The six elements contain many of Google's ideas and examples of how to be an innovative organization. However, simply reading them will not reach the hearts of participants. We practiced many times until we could speak in our own words, incorporating episodes from KTC and our own experiences.
In particular, we remembered the Google presenters from the first training session and focused on speaking confidently and at an easy-to-follow pace.
 ** On the Day of the Training**The day has finally arrived. 27 people gathered at the Google office in Shibuya. Participants once again joined from Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo.
The day kicked off with an opening talk by Google’s Kota-san. Many thanks to Kota-san, as always.
Next, Kissy, the manager who is the main leader of 10X, shared an encouraging message online from the Nagoya office.
Amid an atmosphere of “Huh? What’s starting now? What is this training?” we, the presenters, took turns announcing themes one by one.    Can we get the participants to understand 10X?
Awacchi presented with an original story, I was overly nervous, Yukiki appeared online, Nabeyan was calm like a teacher, Mizuki gave the best performance on the actual day as usual, and Otake had the composure to make others laugh. Everyone performed their best on this very day (if we do say so ourselves).
In the post-event survey, as many as 10 participants chose "The culture session was great.” I was also happy to hear comments like "It was just as great as the last Google presenters" and "The talk flowed so naturally—I could follow everything just by looking at the slides and listening to the presentations."
Next was the output session.
Each team, consisting of six people plus one Googler, moved to their assigned room, and just like the earlier presenters, each person took turns giving a presentation. It was an intensive output time of 20 minutes × 6 people, totaling 120 minutes.
The participants used the same slides that the presenters had used earlier, and each gave a 10-minute presentation. There was a 5-minute preparation time before each presentation.
While listening to the presentations, other members filled out feedback sheets with points they liked and points requiring improvement, and then provided feedback after each presentation.
I was part of Team D, and they were so good that I couldn’t help but wonder, "Did they practice at home?"  During the feedback time, we naturally discussed the good points of the presentations, and the discussion became lively. For example, the following comments were made:
Speak while summarizing, without being bound by slides or a script.
Speak in your own words.
Stories of failure tend to resonate with the audience.
Be empathetic to the audience and avoid imposing too much of a lecturing tone.
Catchy phrases like "Motivation Switch” are effective and make things easy to understand.
In the post-presentation survey, satisfaction with the program was very high, with an average score of 4.7.
The following points were selected as “positive aspects of the program content.”: (n=22, multiple answers allowed)
It was good to be able to listen to other participants' presentations: 20 people
I was glad to have the opportunity to practice myself: 17 people
It was great to receive feedback from others: 21 people
 ClosingAfter the presentations, we held a wrap-up session in the original seminar room. While I wondered how the other groups were doing, Google people summarized the earlier feedback sheets for us using generative AI, "Gemini."
I was planning to check the feedback sheets from the other groups later, but they were instantly converted to text via Gemini and shared with everyone on the spot. It truly was a “Feedback is a gift!” moment.
Not only did we learn the training content itself, but we also gained a lot of tips on how to be more efficient—such as how to install tools quickly, how to make use of feedback sheets, and how to share information from other groups.
Thank you so much to everyone at Google.
 Looking AheadThrough this training, we found that the high-level 10x Innovation Culture Pitch practice sessions are effective even for non-managerial members. So, we plan to implement them at KTC in FY2025.
KTC’s challenge to foster innovation is far from over.