The Sumitomo Group Public Affairs Committee strives to support college students’ negotiation skills, assist in upgrading higher education, and contribute to global human resource development through the Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition.

The 12th Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition was held at Sophia University in Tokyo, November 30th and December 1st, 2013. This year’s competition featured students from 16 schools: Osaka University, Gakushuin University, Kyushu University, Kyoto University, Keio University, Sophia University, Chuo University, University of Tokyo, Tohoku University, Doshisha University, Nagoya University, Hitotsubashi University, Hokkaido University, Ritsumeikan University, Waseda University, and Nihon University. In total, 232 undergraduate and graduate students from these 16 universities enthusiastically performed and competed with each other throughout.

The competition is separated into two major parts, Round A which is the “arbitration” round and Round B which serves as the “negotiation” portion, with each part having both a Japanese and English version. Each team was divided into two sides, the Red company, which played the role of a railway and real estate company, as well as a travel and resort development conglomerate in the fictional country of Negoland. While the Blue company, played the role of a travel, hotel, and resort management company in Arbitria, a neighboring country of Negoland.

On the first day in Round A, the teams aimed to resolve these problems through "Arbitration" and very passionately argued their points and proposals. The point of the discussions were "the travel case" and "the hotel case". The travel case concerned the trouble caused from a mistake concerning hotel and cruise reservations. The Red company made the travel arrangements while serving as the travel agency vendor for the Blue company and the situation had to be settled. The hotel case covered the challenges stemming from the poor performance of a hotel. Negotiations began between the Red company, the owner of the hotel and the Blue company who was the vendor of the business management company that was running the hotel for the Red company. On the second day in Round B, during the "Negotiation" element of the competition, they debated on how to solve the problem from "The hotel case". It was training for a negotiation in a real business format and looked extremely accurate to a real world negotiation.

The final results for 2013 are as follows: