Sevendex Inc., founded in 2018, operates two businesses: a “Business Creative Studio” that helps companies solve management and business challenges, and an “HR Solutions” business that provides HR-related services starting with recruitment placement. In the Business Creative Studio — the company’s founding business — the team gets to the essence of each client’s challenges and works alongside clients as an “executor” to drive business growth and maximize customer value.
That business is deliberately set apart from conventional consulting services, and “it is our identity,” says Representative Director Nobuhiro Nakamura. We spoke with Nakamura and Shinichiro Nishino, Head of the Business Creative Studio Division, about the company’s business and vision.
Nobuhiro Nakamura
Joined Mynavi Corporation after graduating from university in 2014. After working in advertising direction and service development, he co-founded Sevendex Inc. in 2018 and became Representative Director. He oversees management strategy, business strategy, and finance. The company operates under the vision of “creating companies that become symbols of an exciting future and era,” pursuing customer-centric marketing and design and developing a design studio business that drives business growth. He is working to update Japan’s business landscape.
Shinichiro Nishino
After gaining experience as a PM at a real estate startup during his student years as an intern, he joined Mynavi Corporation as a new graduate. He handled mid-career recruitment support, gaining experience in sales and advertising direction, and received a company-wide commendation and president’s award. He subsequently managed a sales team as a manager. Joined Sevendex Inc. in 2020. Has handled a wide range of clients from startups to enterprise, working as a UX designer to direct branding, UX design, and growth, managing projects, and supporting business growth across domains. Appointed Head of the Business Creative Studio Division in 2023. Responsible for the entire Business Creative Studio operation, from winning engagements to overall management.
Founded in 2018. Client Problem-Solving and HR Services as the Two Pillars of the Business
— Mr. Nakamura, when did you start thinking about starting a business?
Nakamura: I was involved in business from my university days through a food and beverage startup, but it was around the time I started job hunting that I began thinking seriously about how I wanted to live my life. At that point, I read a book by Susumu Fujita of CyberAgent and was inspired — and it was then that I started to think about eventually starting my own company.
As I went through interviews during job hunting, I felt that companies where employees in their early twenties were on the front lines matched my own timeline, and I had in mind the idea of “joining the fastest-growing company in a fast-growing industry.” That led me to choose Mynavi, which had the highest growth rate in the human resources industry — an industry that was growing dramatically at that time in 2014.
— Mr. Nishino, as the head of the business division, what led you to join the company?
Nishino: While I was handling mid-career recruitment support at Mynavi, the concept of “CX (Candidate Experience)” — delivering experience as value to candidates — was beginning to attract attention, and we were incorporating CX thinking into our mid-career recruitment support as well. Through that experience, I found myself wanting to shift to a career centered on building businesses.
When I started to think concretely about making a move, Nakamura — who had been my manager at Mynavi — reached out to me, and I decided to join. I remember feeling a strong alignment with Sevendex’s approach of “designing creative work starting from the experience, and supporting business growth” — a company built around design as its axis.
— Could you tell us about the company’s business?
Nakamura: Currently we operate two businesses: the “Business Creative Studio” and “HR Solutions.” The Business Creative Studio is our founding client-work business, supporting companies in solving their management and business challenges. We primarily focus on the marketing domain, providing broad support spanning strategy and vision formulation, business and service design, growth and improvement, and organizational development.
The HR Solutions business launched in January 2024. Currently we are operating as a recruitment agency, providing a job-change agent service for high-career professionals in their twenties and thirties.
Going forward, we plan to roll out HR solutions covering recruitment, organizational design, and organizational development.
Supporting Problem-Solving Through a Creative Approach — with Directors and Designers
— Your company refers to its members’ roles as “Director” and “Designer.” Given the nature of the Business Creative Studio work, these roles seem close to what would usually be called a consultant. Why did you choose these titles?
Nakamura: Our Business Creative Studio is deliberately positioned as something distinct from conventional consulting services. When a company thinks about using consulting services, it typically chooses from options such as engaging a consulting firm for its strategy formulation capabilities, calling on a production house to handle creative execution, or consulting a full-service advertising agency. We want to be none of those — a partner to clients that combines elements of all of them from a different position entirely.
That is why we have given the business the name “Business Creative Studio.” It is our identity, and we have registered the trademark. For that reason, we don’t call ourselves a “consulting company” or our people “consultants” — and we title our roles “Director” or “Designer,” not “Project Manager” or “Consultant.”
— Could you tell us about the typical team composition for a Business Creative Studio project?
Nakamura: It depends on the client and the scale of the engagement, but on average we tend to form teams of three to five people. The team consists of a project lead, a Director, and a Designer. In terms of conventional job titles, Directors might correspond to a Marketing Director, Brand Director, or UX Director — but the scope of what a Director covers changes depending on the project.
Each member of our team handles an average of around two projects simultaneously. If working on smaller engagements, one person might handle as many as four, but there are also cases where someone handles just one large engagement. Project durations vary widely, and long-term engagements can span several years.
Nishino: The clients we actually communicate with range from executives and C-suite level to department heads and below. The breadth of experience available — different business models, different approaches to building businesses, different stages of the process — is remarkable, as is the opportunity to gain enormous input through conversations with business leaders and all kinds of other people. For me personally, that was one of the decisive factors in joining, and I believe it offers experiences you simply can’t get elsewhere.
— What are the working arrangements at your company?
Nakamura: The default is three days in the office and two days remote per week. Whether client interactions are held in person or online is decided by the person responsible on a case-by-case basis depending on the engagement and its phase. The baseline, however, is always “three days in the office, two days remote.”
Clients sometimes ask for on-site presence, but what we provide is not resources — it is a service in which a team supports the client’s problem-solving. Every team assignment involves at least two people; we never station a single person on-site at a client’s office alone.
Those Who Want to Get to the Root of Problems — and Are Open to Co-creating with Others — Will Thrive Here
— You are currently recruiting primarily for Directors in the Business Creative Studio. What skills will people develop and what career paths are available to them at your company?
Nishino: In this business, you engage with clients’ management and business challenges, get to the essence of the problem, and support the path to resolving it through the most effective approach available — using creative as a tool. Within that, the Director consistently owns everything from strategy formulation through to execution.
Consulting is often described as “accompanying the client,” but we see ourselves not as companions alongside clients but as “executors” working together to drive business growth. The Director’s mission is to lead execution at the front line of a project, with the goal of growing the client’s business and maximizing its value.
Through that experience, you develop the ability to identify the true nature of a problem, the ability to map a path to resolution, and the knowledge and skills of a designer who uses creative tools. You also gain the knowledge, skills, and practical experience of project management.
In terms of career path, potential steps include moving into a lead role that oversees multiple projects simultaneously, or becoming a manager with your own team. That said, we make a point of listening to each member’s individual aspirations and thinking about paths flexibly.
— Are there particular skills you hope applicants already have?
Nakamura: Since this is a mid-career hire, we’d like candidates to have a foundation of basic business knowledge and professional ethics. Beyond that, problem-solving ability, logical reasoning, hypothesis-testing capability, and task management skills are all necessary for executing projects. Conversely, these are the only things that are really required — we don’t necessarily expect deep knowledge in areas like marketing.
— What kind of mindset are you hoping to find? What kind of person do you want to join the team?
Nishino: Some companies that run advertising take the approach of “this product has a problem, but rather than getting to the root of it, let’s try to fix it with advertising.” That is not what we do. We dig relentlessly to the root of the problem. People who are oriented toward genuinely solving problems and growing businesses will be able to do what they want here, and I think they’ll find they can bring their full abilities to bear.
As Nakamura mentioned earlier, working here means working as part of a team — because we care deeply about becoming strong as an organization, not just as individuals. We believe this approach to team-building is what delivers the best outcomes for clients and accelerates the company’s progress to the next level. For that reason, we want to bring on people who are enthusiastic about teaming up with others, collaborating, and co-creating.
“Romance and the Abacus” — Establishing the Business Creative Studio in the Market and Creating New Value
— Mr. Nakamura, what kind of person would you most like to join the company?
Nakamura: I think active, motivated people are the best fit. Our role is not to execute what clients ask us to do as instructed — if anything, doing things clients haven’t asked for, and things clients can’t see, is our role. So I want to work alongside people who can engage with clients with genuine enthusiasm.
Beyond that, people who can use both “romance” and “the abacus” — who can talk about grand ambitions while keeping a sharp eye on the numbers — are also a great fit. What the abacus can achieve is executing what you’ve been told. But creating a new answer in a situation where no answer yet exists is something you’ll never get to by running the abacus alone. What matters for creating new answers is whether you can articulate the romance — the vision. I’d love to work with people who bring both of those perspectives.
Our company also requires people who can act on fact rather than subjective opinion. Achieving goals and ideals requires calmly accepting facts and deriving the optimal solution based on them. Someone who never loses their passion for the work, and who can also think and act from a fact-based standpoint, is exactly the kind of person suited to what we do here.
— Finally, could you share your vision for the future?
Nishino: Most conventional consulting services are structured through a division of labor among multiple organizations — consulting firms, production houses, advertising agencies. Our Business Creative Studio challenges this conventional model by offering a service that provides end-to-end support from strategy through customer experience design to growth.
If the strengths of the Business Creative Studio contribute to improved client satisfaction, we should be able to accumulate a strong body of work. Our recognition will naturally grow as a result. Creating this kind of virtuous cycle is the first thing we want to achieve.
If this recruitment effort brings together members who share a belief in what we’re building, we’ll be able to support a greater number of clients. Once this business is working as a cash engine, new businesses that deliver value to society should be able to emerge continuously. That is the growth path we want to chart.
Nakamura: The players that support companies in solving their challenges currently include consulting firms, production houses, and advertising agencies. We want to establish the Business Creative Studio as a fourth player alongside them — this is our medium- to long-term vision.
For example, I want it to become natural for university students in job-hunting conversations to say “should I go to a consulting firm, a production house, an advertising agency, or a Business Creative Studio?” Once that conversation is commonplace and the Business Creative Studio is recognized as an established category in the market, I believe we can change the very direction of marketing in Japan.
Our theme as a company is building something strong, large, and exciting. We want to create many businesses, and within that, build a structure where young people can make their mark and build their careers. On top of that, we want to become a company that shapes the direction of an era. We’d love to hear from people who want to walk that path alongside us.
【Post-Interview Note】
The distinctive positioning of the “Business Creative Studio” that Representative Director Nakamura describes felt to me like a new weapon for updating Japanese business. The company doesn’t use the word “consultant” — instead, the entire process is defined by “executors” who dig relentlessly to the root of problems and design creative work starting from the experience.
What I felt most strongly in the interview was the excitement of wanting to turn the two wheels of “romance and the abacus” together to build a company that shapes the direction of an era. A culture that values co-creation in teams — with three days in the office as the baseline — and where young people lead from the front to drive business growth, is one that draws out the maximum drive to grow. For anyone active and passionate about creating “an exciting future” by fusing design and business — not as a mere advisor but as an executor — this creative challenge is one I would wholeheartedly encourage you to be part of.
ConsulNext Senior Consultant
Masahito Tsukada
Sevendex Inc. — Company Information
| Company Name | Sevendex Inc. |
| Representative Directors | Nobuhiro Nakamura / Nobuharu Hotta |
| Founded | October 2018 |
| Head Office | Tokyo Tatemono Shibuya Building 5F, 3-9-9 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0002 |
| Business Activities | Business Creative Studio / HR Solutions |
