VISIONS Magazine (October 2026 Edition)

Americas Week 2026 Turns Digital AI Strategy into Action

pictured above: The Americas Week 2026 leadership panel

Every year, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (SCOA) brings employees across the region together through Americas Week, an annual employee engagement program. Leadership conversations, professional development, community engagement and local events give colleagues in different countries, offices and businesses an opportunity to connect, exchange ideas and learn from one another.

This year, Americas Week focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and a practical question: How can employees turn emerging technology into something useful for their businesses?

Held during the week of October 12th, Americas Week 2026 carried the theme “Digital AI Strategy (DAIS) in Action: Turning Business Expertise, Data, and AI into New Value Across the Americas.” The program combined executive perspectives with business use cases, technology demonstrations and hands-on learning, and kicked off with a special video greeting from Kotaro Tameda, President and CEO of SCOA, about AI learning.

The week opened with a leadership panel that brought the conversation to the organization’s digital strategy. President and CEO Kotaro Tameda, SCOA Chief Development & Information Officer & Chief Strategy Officer Takashi Naniwa, and SCOA Chief People Officer Teresa Oakley discussed the company’s Digital AI Strategy, employee learning and the responsibilities that accompany wider AI adoption. Christopher Watts, Corporate Counsel and SCOA AI Governance Committee member, moderated the conversation, which also examined governance and the importance of human judgment as AI takes on a larger role in business.

The program also featured a session called “AI in Action,” which moved the conversation from strategy to the work itself. Presenters from businesses and functions across the region shared AI-enabled projects and showed how teams are approaching business challenges with data, automation, and AI tools.

Masatsugu “Max” Mitsuyama, General Manager of SCOA’s DX Department, encouraged employees to practice active listening during the presentation, for their own advantage.

“Keep your operation or business in mind and keep asking yourself,” Mitsuyama said, “how could you utilize these use cases or the solution? Ask this about your business while listening to our use cases.”

The point was not simply to showcase technology. The session asked employees to consider the business challenge behind each project and what they might learn from colleagues tackling problems elsewhere across the organization.

“I would like you to learn from your colleagues’ use cases across SC Americas,” he noted. “Especially, I would like you to understand what the business challenge of each of these organizations is, and how digital and AI worked toward better solutions.”

A technology expo widened that view, with vendors AWS, Deloitte, IBM, Microsoft, SCSK and Tredence sharing demonstrations and use cases. This gave our employees another look at how companies apply digital technology and AI to business.

pictured above: Employees visit the SCSK USA booth at the technology expo

Employees were also able to take advantage of a special training session, “Copilot Co-Work Launch & Learn,” turning the focus toward AI-supported workflows with the launch of a new tool: Cowork. Led by Kazuaki Asada, who leads company-wide generative AI adoption at Sumitomo Corporation, the session introduced the new tool made available to SC Americas’ employees and the intent behind making it broadly available.

Yosuke Nakatani, GM of SCOA’s IT Planning & Promotion department, cohosted the session while Mark Quitoy of SCSK USA presented an example involving Copilot Co-Work and document-intensive IT due diligence. The session explored a question that crosses departments: how can digital tools help employees spend less time searching for and transferring information and more time thinking, deciding and solving problems?

Mr. Asada also hosted a special training session for employees showcasing how to use Copilot with PowerPoint and encouraged employees to identify applications relevant to their own work.

pictured above: Masatsugu “Max” Mitsuyama, General Manager of SCOA’s DX Department (right) speaks with employees about DAIS as Yosuke Nakatani, General Manager of SCOA's IT Planning & Promotion department (left) looks on.

The week extended well beyond presentations. Regional activations included shared meals, happy hours and special information sharing sessions to support the buzz around DAIS and what’s possible for future business operations. In addition to connection, the Kifinity Giving Campaign offered an avenue for giving back, supporting nonprofit organizations focused on STEM education, digital skills, workforce development and access to technology. The #DAISInAction campaign encouraged employees to share what they learned and recognize colleagues during the week.

Americas Week 2026 promoted the company’s regional Digital AI Strategy across the week, connecting employees with information on everything from strategy and responsible AI to business applications, technology demonstrations and practical learning. DAIS needs adopters, though, because helpful tech only matters when people can use it to create greater value. Kazuaki Asada emphasized this philosophy when discussing the future of work when speaking on the company-wide generative AI adoption at SC.

“Ultimately, if you hand everything over to AI, you lose your competitive edge and won’t survive in the market,” Asada said. “The Copilot we use literally means ‘co-pilot,’ but the pilot is still you. We must never lose sight of that and keep creating higher-value work of our own volition.”

Within the employee engagement mission baked into Americas Week 2026, DAIS serves to equip employees with new tools; the aim is for employees to fuse that technology with their current business knowledge and experience – sometimes even across boundaries and borders heretofore unreached. This annual program allowed employees to truly engage and use AI, not only in the pursuit of creating new value, but in reaching our omnipresent goal of enriching lives and the world.