Cogent Language To Open Learning Paths for Innovation in Tokyo

Today Cogent Language confirms plans to launch courses in design, collaboration, and project know-how for the general public.

The company has provided top-of-the-line corporations in Japan with consulting and training in project management for more than a decade. Clients include firms in IT, finance, engineering, and publishing. In these dynamic fields, creativity and design skills are essential. Building them has long been a core competency of Cogent Language. However, in Japan today, innovation is no longer a concern of business and the avant-garde only. To cope with rapid social change, both residents and expats here are increasingly interested. Especially keen are millennials in Tokyo. Many are engaged in multiple projects as freelancers or trying to grow a startup. Others are working in global enterprises short of the requisite agile mindsets, empathy, and/or language skills. As a result, more and more wish for practical, systemic guidance on design, collaboration, and project know-how.

Uniquely positioned to address this demand, Cogent Language has developed quality learning paths to innovation for the interested public. Three courses kick off in Harajuku this month: Silicon Valley Design, Design Thinking for Today’s Projects, and Launching Projects. Each is a creative journey, with learning paths for bilinguals and native speakers of English. The first two explore the development of new mindsets and products. The third focuses on the initiation of major projects.

“Design games” is what all of them are, according to Managing Director, Dan Clapper. “First, they are personal. From early on, they all offer meaningful choices about what to make and learn. Why? Because today’s learners don’t want cookie-cutter instruction. They want to drive, and they want skin-in-the-game. Second, all these courses are playful. They combine language games and role plays so that players have fun seeing from new perspectives, sharing what they see, and accumulating valuable knowledge. Third, they are face-to-face, not online or self-paced. Most innovators succeed by collaborating, with clients, teammates, and/or researchers, and leveraging these perspectives in real time. This challenge, also known as ‘design,’ is one that all participants take up. Finally, all the courses are constructive. Creative people learn best by constructing things that work, and then using them to make a difference – as Steve Jobs said, ‘to put a dent in the universe.’ In a Silicon Valley Design workshop, for example, participants use the ideas, language, and practices of Valley innovators in mini-projects of their own.”

About Cogent Language

Cogent Language is a Project Management Institute (PMI) Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.). It offers innovative learning opportunities in design, collaboration, project know-how, and leadership. It serves businesses, small, medium, and large, as well as universities interested in entrepreneurship, design thinking, or project management, and international schools wishing to launch project-based learning (PBL) or to enhance their ongoing PBL, internship, or career-oriented programs. Managing Director Dan Clapper grew up in Silicon Valley. A neighbor of Steve Jobs and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford, he went on to design instructional systems in more than a dozen countries for some of the leading organizations in intercultural education before setting up Cogent Language in Tokyo.