Platform and Alliance thinking for your success
~lessons from the success story of mobile payment service in Japan
Professor at Business Breakthrough University,
President, NetStrategy, Inc.
Carl
Atsushi HIRANO
Carl
Atsushi HIRANO is well-known as bestselling author in Japan
and currently President and CEO of NetStrategy, Inc.,
Professor at Business Breakthrough University hosted by Kennichi
Ohmae, guest speaker at the Harvard Business School, visiting
professor of Okinawa Graduate School, world famous as the mastermind
of the Osaifu-Keitai mobile
wallet credit system.
Born in the United States, he has a B.A.
in economics from the University of Tokyo. Joined the Industrial Bank
of Japan (IBJ now merged to Mizuho Financial Group) in 1987, where he
was a manager in the International and Investment Banking divisions.
He moved to NTTDoCoMo in 1999. There, as head of i-mode strategic
alliances, he was a core member of the core project for long-term
growth and, embarked on the project to develop and popularize
the Mobile Wallet. In 2006, he moved it forward with alliances
involving credit card companies. In 2006, he joined Market Platform
Dynamics as Senior Advisor. In 2007, he founded NetStrategy, Inc., a
company providing support for strategic planning, with Dr. Andrei
Hagiu , Associate Professor of Harvard Business School, who is
well-known for his multi-sided platform theory or MSP.
NetStrategy,
Inc.
http://netstrategy.co.jp/
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/carlhirano
Foreword
You
try hard everyday, but your work doesn’t go well. Your sales
figures are stagnant. Relationships with those around you are
strained. You’re wondering whether you should change jobs. You’d
like to launch collaborations with other companies or other new
projects, but things just don’t go as planned. Perhaps you’re
struggling with anxieties such as these.
After working at The
Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ), the leading investment bank at that
time, for 13 years, these were the sort of worries that I had to face
up to when, 35-years-old and hopelessly out-of-touch with information
technology, I arrived at NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile operator in
Japan.
But mastering one certain skill enabled me to realize
the massive project of launching the Osaifu-Keitai
(“mobile wallet”) credit service, which was hitherto unchartered
territory. Moreover, during the four years of the venture investment
over 10 companies were able to gain a listing on the Tokyo Stock
Exchange, and the company earn profits of over 10 billion yen. Now
I’m Professor at BBT University teaching Corporate Strategy,
Platform Strategy and also most of my six books were ranked in No1 in
Amazon Japan bestselling ranking as bestsellers. The method that
enables these formidable achievements and the subject of this case is
what I call “Platform way of thinking and business alliance
skills.”
As I moved from financial institution, the idea
hit me. What will happen if DoCoMo as Carrier entered Credit Card
(not card) business?
When we buy something at a convenience
store, we take the money out of our wallets and pay for it. If our
wallets are empty we use our cash cards to take some out of the ATM.
We use a membership card when we rent a DVD, and various store cards
when we shop at a department store. The same goes for restaurants,
fast food joints, clothes shops, music stores and so on. If you think
about it, our wallets are crammed full with cards of every
description.
Now these are all merged into a single mobile phone,
enabling easy payment in every store and on every train. Don’t you
think that sounds rather handy?
It was the Osaifu-Keitai
service that actually made this possible.
note: Osaifu-Keitai
is trade mark by NTTDoCoMo
Osaifu-Keitai service is widely
used as e-money, train ticket, point reward card, credit card, key
etc. of many compaies such as drag stores, convenience stores etc
which you can download to your mobile terminal by air.
I was in
charge of promoting Osaifu-Keitai service at NTTDoCoMo as the head of
i-mode Alliance at i-mode Strategy Department then.
Osaifu-Keitai
Credit service is one of applications of Osaifu-Keitai services and
it is Credit card service by NTTDoCoMo itself which you can use by
download to your mobile terminal and what I made its original idea
but many people were involved and help me to the nowadays success in
four years.
I subsequently went teaching at University,
and accepted several positions as an external director or advisor to
various companies. I'm currently Professor at BBT University
hosted by Ohmae Kennichi, worldwide famous ex-consultant and also
invited lecture at Harvard Business School, Okinawa Graduate School,
and am involved in a wide range of activities including giving
speeches and consulting. Also I’m President of strategic consulting
firm, NetStrategy,Inc. and Senior Advisor at Market Platform
Dynamics. The mass media outside of Japan have described me as the
mastermind of credit service by NTTDoCoMo using mobile terminal, and
introduced me as an internationally renowned figure.
But as
I’ve just stated, when I started out at DoCoMo I had virtually no
knowledge about information technology, let alone mobile phones.
Needless to say, I brushed up my basic knowledge upon joining DoCoMo,
but I can assure you that when I entered the company I was a complete
and utter novice. Since I managed to create the credit card services
by Telecommunication Carrier using mobile, that is, Osaifu-Keitai
credit service, perhaps you imagine that I happened to excel at
coming up with ideas.
No, neither was that the case. In fact,
imagining how nice it would be to be able to pay for everything with
just one mobile phone is the sort of idea that anybody could have
come up with.
So how come it was me that turned this idea into
a reality?
I think that in the final analysis it was because I
involved lots of other people in the idea or put them on my Platform
and got them to help me.
It
is the same thoughts that have helped me throughout my entire career.
The core philosophy that flows through the business alliance skills
that I want to explain in this book is:
if you don’t know, become the sort of person who those that do
know will help and for that, you be have your own Platform.
However,
I don’t believe that those around you will rally to your rescue if
you just sit there creating a fuss about what you’re going to do.
Becoming the sort of person that others will help requires a degree
of know-how and a shift in your thinking; it’s not just a simple
question of networking or improving your character. There’s no need
to slavishly network, no need to work flat out on your
self-development. All
you will have to do is change the way that you think, and carry out
the methods I will tell you about in this book.
If
you actually listen to the story of those who have achieved success,
you will often find that these people, far from being fountains of
ideas, are in fact quite ordinary. But without exception, one of the
major factors behind their success is always that they gained the
help of others.
Until now, perhaps you have feverishly sought
to sharpen skills that you don’t possess because you want to be a
capable worker, to realize your ambitions, or be successful. But I’d
like you to try to discard all these thoughts while you read this
book.
All
you have to do is become the sort of person who others help. If you
can do so, somebody who wants to help you will solve all the problems
that you cannot. Then
you’ll suddenly realize that all your ambitions have been
fulfilled. Wouldn’t that be marvelous? But that’s exactly what
happened to me, so it ought to possible for anybody. Now read on, and
let me tell you about this method in detail.
Carl Atsushi
HIRANO, Professor at Business Breakthrough University
Chapter 1 Make your own Platform and Alliances will dramatically change your work and your life
What exactly is an alliance?
An
alliance can also be described as a union or a federation; as it
suggests the joining of forces and mutual collaboration of people or
groups with differing positions, it is often used in the business
world in the sense of corporate tie-ups or merger and
acquisitions.
Now
I’d like you to think about what forming an alliance between
individuals means. Let’s say your company is disinterested in
environmental issues. If you can bring together, for example, senior
colleagues from other departments or people who have just joined the
company and who think that it should take environmental issues more
seriously, then you can create an “alliance relationship.”
Involving large numbers of people to tell the company’s management
that they should take environmental issues seriously and make a
company that is respected by society rather than just pursuing
profit, will have a far greater effect than just ranting about it on
your own.
Business
alliance skills are the art of cleverly controlling the relationships
of people—some who are business-like, some who are more
intimate—while taking into consideration all their ulterior
motives, and using this to get people to make the most of you for the
sake of your own self-realization and growth.
The alliance relationship will fluctuate and change according to the
degree of success you achieve in this.
For
example, perhaps your success in making your company more
environmentally aware will earn some words of praise from your boss,
and your subordinates set you up as a leadership figure. The size of
the alliance may grow as a result, and it is quite possible that it
will go on to attach itself to another alliance.
Let’s
say that the online shopping alliance proved to be a huge hit as a
business, and you end up launching a company. Naturally the alliance
relationship evolves into something else at this point. Business
alliance skills cultivate the success of all those involved while
developing an inherent win-win relationship.
This is why it is possible for somebody with just a modicum of talent
to become a huge success.
An alliance triggered the birth of the Osaifu-Keitai credit service
I
was able to achieve success with the Osaifu-Keitai
credit service because I used the power of the alliance to its
optimum.
The
Osaifu-Keitai
credit service was something that I wanted to do for four years,
right since I joined NTT DoCoMo. Our wallets are overflowing with
point cards, and the stamp cards they hand out at restaurants et
cetera, I thought. Digging them out everyday is a pain, and
eventually you lose track of them….
This
was the basis for my thoughts, but it would be rather dubious of me
to claim that I was the very first person to make such a suggestion.
Right from the start of the popularization of the Internet and mobile
phone contents, there was talk of the “IT revolution” and the
idea of this sort of mobile credit was being mentioned in every
quarter. Even that Bill Gates apparently said that he wanted to make
computers smaller and turn them into wallets. But I was working at
DoCoMo—the very best place to actually make this happen.
I
therefore made some suggestions within the company, but
unfortunately, since it is a very large organization, I made little
progress. Everyone dismissed the idea as being unfeasible, or said
that credit wasn’t really the business of a telecoms company. I
think the reason for these negative attitudes is that, since nearly
all the company’s staff were from NTT, they weren’t really
interested in things like credit services and finance. Perhaps
another reason was the fact that the competitive environment was not
as fierce then as it is now. And the i-mode, launched in 1999, was
gaining a degree of success that drew attention from around the
world.
What
I used at this point was the alliance method. Of course I wasn’t
thinking in terms of alliances at the time; the idea was “if this
can’t be done within the company, I’ll try to discuss it with
people outside.” Ever since i-mode was launched, we always talked
over the formulation of strategies with The Boston Consulting Group,
so I took my idea to some skillful consultants.
I
was also invited to a great many study groups at the time, and
sometimes spoke myself, so I decided to consult a certain analyst
too. “It’s just my idea, but what do you think about a telecoms
company offering a credit service?” I asked. “That sounds
interesting! Let me think about it,” came the reply—the alliance
was formed.
Amazingly,
he immediately compiled a report on the theme of what would happen if
a telecoms company entered the credit sector. I must say that this
completely took me aback. However, what surprised me even more, was
the result that this had. Once I had the advice of The Boston
Consulting Group and the report of the external analyst, the mobile
phone credit service concept suddenly started to move with a sense of
realism. Of course, the process leading up to realization was long
and demanding. Surmounting
such difficulties required more than just bringing together a handful
of people—I needed to involve more people, and build a large
alliance.
DoCoMo, Sony and Mitsui Sumitomo—how the power of an individual moved mammoth companies
Before
I joined NTT DoCoMo, I used to work for the Industrial Bank of Japan
(IBJ), which is now part of the Mizuho Financial Group.
Though
IBJ is now defunct, it was once known as a “King among banks,” an
elite company that promised an assured future. I’ll explain later
the details of why it was that I came to leave such a company and
join NTT DoCoMo. Anyway, I heard about the job from an acquaintance,
went for an interview in response to the advertisement, and then
joined DoCoMo. I was first assigned to the new investment project
team that they were setting up. The team was later to merge with the
i-mode project.
I
suppose that when the start-up of i-mode is mentioned most people
would imagine technicians, creators. But I didn’t really fit into
any of those categories. I think that the reason why a humdrum
individual such as myself was asked to take part was because I was
one of the few people at DoCoMo who had experience of finance. The
area where that experience is useful is business tie-ups—in other
words, alliances. DoCoMo first assigned me to the team which had just
been separated from the Business Planing Division, and dealt with
managing investee companies and making investments.
The
then general manager, told me, “There’s nothing fixed about
the job, think for yourself and do whatever you want.” I started
work with the feeling that changing jobs might have been a disastrous
mistake, and that while my annual pay had dropped by three million
yen, I couldn’t very well go back to IBJ now. I was stuck.
I
was just a manager with one subordinate, but luckily my boss was a
very kind person, and introduced me to i-mode team persons.
At
the time, i-mode had only been available for about three months. It
was way off the target subscriber number of one million, and to be
perfectly honest it was not considered to have been much of a
success. But we were already mulling over next move. As the media
continued to develop, what became necessary was know-how that DoCoMo
didn’t possess. This meant the need for alliances tying in other
businesses with DoCoMo.
This
is how, after joining DoCoMo in May 1999, I became a member of the
i-mode growth strategy project that sought to examine how to nurture
the brand in the future. Every evening, over a round of hamburgers
from McDonalds, a team composed of five or so of us held
meetings late into the night.
For
example, we decided to run an advertizing campaign once the number of
subscribers reached one million, something which would necessitate a
fully-fledged collaboration with a company that understood
advertisements. Examining the issue with person of Dentsu (a leading
advertizing agency), led to the establishment of D2 Communications, a
combined company owned by Dentsu and DoCoMo.
I
subsequently had the chance to spearhead an array of alliances. These
included projects with DoCoMo.Com, who specialize in contents advice
and venture investments; a combined company established in
conjunction with Lawson, a convenience store chain; with Coca-Cola
Japan and Itochu Corporation, a trading house, in the C-mode project
that enabled people to buy Coke with their mobile phones; a
collaboration between the Fuji Television and NTV television
networks; collaborations between all the domestic convenience store
chains; a collaboration involving Sony, Rakuten and JR East; the
buyout of Tower Records, and the huge investment in Mitsui
SumitomoCredit Card.
Through
the work of negotiating with other businesses,
I came to the conclusion that alliances between companies are nothing
more than alliances between people.
Which
company should you build an alliance with? I realized that in actual
fact, it’s rather a
question of which people at that company should you work with
that is the most vital factor in a successful project.
“I’m
really glad we trusted you, Mr. Hirano.” I still clearly remember
the words of then general manager at Mitsui Sumitomo Bank, the
partner bank when we made the huge investment of around 100 billion
yen in Mitsui Sumitomo Card, and launched the new iD credit
brand.
There
were frequent stormy scenes during the seven-month negotiations.
Being told several times by the despondent leader of negotiations at
Mitsui Sumitomo Card that the collaboration would probably collapse,
suddenly swept away all the exhaustion that had been building up
inside me.
Now
let’s return to the dawn of the mobile phone credit service. As I
have mentioned, we had advice from outside, and forward-looking
considerations were beginning to be held within DoCoMo. At the time,
my title was Head of i-mode business alliance, and I had 10 or so
people working under me.
Osaifu-Keitai
(without Credit service by DoCoMo at that time) sales were increasing
nicely, but the number of places where they could be used was
extremely limited. Our team was given the task of developing places
where they could be used. We eagerly entered into alliances with
companies running convenience stores—places where most people go at
least once a week and payment amount is around 3~5 US$.
I
also gave over 50 talks a year in Japan and overseas in an effort to
raise awareness of the Osaifu-Keitai.
Since Edy was the only form of e-money that could be used with the
Osaifu-Keitai
at the time, we cooperated with Bit Wallet (the company that
operates Edy) in steadily developing new partners, company by
company. However, most retailers were extremely reluctant to invest
in reader and writer devices that would enable use of the
Osaifu-Keitai,
or set aside space in their stores for its installation.
This
is where I started to look at the credit card terminals located in
most stores. “That’s it!” I thought—if we can configure the
credit card terminals so they accept the Osaifu-Keitai,
the phone will take off immediately. Full of high spirits, our team
embarked on a campaign to create an alliance with a credit card
company.
The
totally new and promising business of mobile credit. I thought that
if we went round all the credit card companies telling them about the
plans of DoCoMo, whose share of the mobile phone market is over 50%,
we would be sure to attract many sponsors.
But
what actually happened was completely the opposite. I had totally
miscalculated. What I had thought would be a mouth-watering idea for
the credit card companies was met with point-blank refusals. Most of
the companies responded along the lines of, “Well, that’s
certainly an interesting idea, Mr. Hirano. Perhaps that day will come
some time. But it’s still a little early…What do the other
companies say?”
It
was at this point that I turned to an alliance from my days at IBJ.
Probably the most famous former employee of IBJ is Hiroshi Mikitani,
the CEO and chairman of Rakuten Inc. By a stroke of luck, he also
happened to be a former junior colleague of mine at IBJ, and we are a
still close enough to occasionally have a chat on the phone. Mikitani
did the accounts for the gymnastics club at his university, and
always responded graciously to any request that I, his senior, made
to him. He kindly participated twice as a panelist at a couple of
large symposiums on mobile phone-related themes. Though he is often
presented in certain quarters as being a charismatic type, having
known him for many years since we worked at IBJ, I see him as a
serious business leader who is always thinking of the growth of his
company and his employees.
Following
on from this, the next person to whom I gained an introduction was
Yoshifumi Nishikawa, then head of Mitsui Sumitomo Bank. The then
Mitsui Sumitomo Bank had been somewhat late in formulating a card
strategy, and the Mitsui Sumitomo Card had been left playing catch-up
with JCB, the sector leader.
With
the bank having finally finished disposing of the bad debts incurred
during the bubble years, it was moving towards a more aggressive
set-up. This timing paid off with the result of direct negotiations
between DoCoMo’s executive and Mitsui Sumitomo’s being the
green light for the project.
As
a former banker myself, I know that the lock-step mentality of
financial institutions is extraordinarily strong; once a highly
profitable top-ranking company like Mitsui Sumitomo makes a move it
has an immediate snowballing effect.
The
end result was that the collaborative tie-ups expanded, as one
alliance led to another, and the Osaifu-Keitai
credit service developed with a burst of acceleration.
Business alliance skills turn the “impossible” into the possible
“The
power to imagine and to do”—this is what I call the capacity for
imagination plus the ability to get things done.
As a matter of fact, I don’t really think that capacity for
imagination, with the exception of a few special people, varies
greatly from person to person. As I explain in the next chapter, most
people have thought about more or less the same thing at least once,
and the vast majority of the ideas in the world are rehashed or
modified versions of concepts already in existence. I think the
reason that hardly anyone makes a reality of the things that they
think or hope about is due, rather, to an insufficient ability to get
things done. But there’s not really such a difference in people’s
ability to get things done either, and there are limits to the size
of the achievements that a person can make on their own—however
hard they may try.
So
what constitutes this difference in people’s ability to get things
done? I think that it lies in
the difference between those who try to go it alone and eventually
giving up because something proves to be impossible, and those who
realize that while they may not have the individual strength to
obtain their goal, they can borrow the strength of many other people
to reach their goal.
However,
don’t start of by imagining the dream team of reliable, cooperative
and talented supporters you hope for, because you can’t create a
network like that overnight. That’s
why you have to show your goal, and get other people with a common
direction involved in one capacity or another. Bringing together, as
a matter of course, people who will help to make something a reality
is the idea of the alliance.
It
would in fact have been utterly impossible to achieve the
Osaifu-Keitai
without involving other people. This is not merely a question of
routine business matters such as DoCoMo’s lack of know-how or an
inability to do business without corporate tie-ups. In the first
place, our idea was no more than a vague notion that we wanted to
popularize the Osaifu-Keitai,
and that it would be handy if you could pay for things with your
mobile phone.
But
the more I got people involved the more the originally opaque idea
turned into a feasible shape.
One
example of this is the FeliCa noncontact technology developed by
Sony. The origins of FeliCa lie in a conversation about mobile phone
collaborations between DoCoMo and JR East. The fact is,
services using 2D barcodes and infrared ray technologies aimed at
enabling tie-ups between mobile phones and stores had been underway
for several years, long before the Osaifu-Keitai
using FeliCa.
Experiments
for the service were carried out at Lawson stores,the second largest
convenience store. The C-mode project conducted in conjunction with
Coca-Cola was finally realized as a result of their vice-president’s
persistent persuasion of the US head office.
But
things didn’t always go according to plan, with the technology’s
operability sometimes being poor, and awareness of it low. I didn’t
have any formula to solve these issues, but with the help of this
record of failures, the fact is that people became accustomed to
doing things with their mobile phones and the transfer to the current
FeliCa system was carried out smoothly.
People’s
behavior and lifestyles do not change easily.
But the larger an alliance becomes, with the participation of people
with a thorough knowledge of each sector all sorts of problems are
solved thanks to the knowledge of those involved.
People
often say that “this won’t get through the company,” or “it
may have got this far, but the boss of such-and-such department will
never approve.” This is precisely what happened with the
Osaifu-Keitai
credit service project.
There
is, without fail, somebody in the world who can enable the things
that you can’t do on your own. Conversely, there are also people
who are yearning for your skills. If people like these link up with
each other, in a quite miraculous manner things that have previously
been impossible become feasible. As these people have a mutual need,
surely it’s easy for them to enter into an alliance providing that
they find out about each other.
What
you have to do at this point is, first of all, to take
the initiative and eagerly make people aware of what you want to do
and what you can do.
Why are there so many people around who say they created i-mode?
I
have described the realization of things through alliances as a
“miracle.” In fact, by gaining the involvement of a large number
of people you can achieve results beyond your imagination.
It’s
possible that what began as a little idea can turn into a massive
project with a turnover of billions of yen.
The
greatest example of this is DoCoMo’s innovative i-mode project,
which laid the groundwork for the Osaifu-Keitai.
Even
more than the current diffusion level, what is really astonishing
about i-mode is the fact that there is a large number of people
around who say “Actually it was me that created it.” I think that
this is because there are so many people who became involved with the
plan, regarding the original suggestion as their own.
It
is probable that i-mode too, started as a little idea. The origins
were a simple instruction to my boss and the leader of the i-mode
team, by the then president of DoCoMo, to look at ways of making
money other than telephone charges.
The
leader then consulted the director of a friend’s company. He was
introduced to lady of the editor of the magazine, who in turn
suggested the participation of DoCoMo, who was still a student and
working for the magazine as a part-timer. With
experts in each field offering to “do something” about the new
idea, the idea grew larger and larger, and this sense of wanting to
help became more pronounced.
The end result was a smash hit product that virtually anybody now
enjoys the benefits of.
The person that makes the platform benefits the most eventually
There
has been a dramatic increase in recent years of companies and
individuals who have achieved great success through
alliances.
Toyota
Motors, one of Japan’s leading companies, is a good example. They
are the company at the forefront of the motor business, and the
impetus with which they have outstripped their rivals is famous. But
along with Aishin, an affiliate, they are in fact involved in tie-ups
with many of their competitors in the sector—companies including
BMW, Volkswagen and Peugeot. Rather than resulting in eating into
each other, these alliances are in fact helping to provide their fans
with high quality products.
Another
factor that has captured my attention in making
the most of alliances is the platform-style business model. I think
that the winners in the 21st century will probably be the businesses
that are able to achieve this model.
What
the Osaifu-Keitai
is aiming at too, is indeed such a platform-style business. A brief
look at the market suggests companies that have proved to be winners
in the Internet sector, like Google and Microsoft, or Facebook.
Elsewhere, companies outside of the virtual world, such as
Roppongi-hills, and Aeon and Seven and I can be said to have grown
after adopting this platform philosophy.
The
platform philosophy is really the provision of a place where
alliances can be formed.
In
the case of Rakuten, for example, the company made a large online
shop framework in which other smaller shops are free to conduct
business. Aeon, on the other hand, provides large shopping centers in
the suburbs, and then invites tenant companies to locate their shops
in them. Lawson, a convenience store, has become as convenient as the
name suggests by locating post boxes within its stores.
If
the rest is left to the companies that participate in the platform
provided, their ideas may change the platform into something that the
providing party never dreamed of. Google, for example, was provided
originally by companies—but it was surely the public users who made
the site evolve into what it is now.
It’s
fine just to provide a “place” and basically leave ideas for the
users and clients to develop themselves.
Even then, the person that is going to benefit most at the end of the
day is the original creator of the platform. And these people will,
quite naturally, be the big winners of the 21st century.
How much of a “place” can you offer to people?
Now
it’s not just the corporate business model—we
have already entered a day and age in which even individuals and
single projects have created a platform and reaped success.
And in actual fact, a great many of these people who have achieved
success have done so on an individual basis.
a
successful author and friend of mine runs a website supporting women
and has become a charismatic figure among many working women.
The
company that is making the most of this format of success through
alliances in terms of the way that each of its employees works is
probably Google. The company has a rule that is known as the “20%
to 80% rule,” which allows its staff to spend 20% of their time at
work on themes that they find personally interesting. All the staff
think about new projects, and when an idea that looks interesting
appears, they are free to ask all their colleagues what they think
about it. If their colleagues also think that the idea looks
interesting, or offer to do what they can to help with it, it leads
to the establishment of a project. If the company itself thinks it’s
a good idea too, then it’s formally adopted as a part of Google’s
worldwide business.
As
the example of Google shows too, a
simple idea turns into something that can be achieved by getting
other people involved.
This is exactly why the people who achieve success at Google are not
just those who come up with ideas, but those who have “the
power to imagine and to do.”
I think it’s this result that underpins the huge progress made by
the company.
Trust your feelings as you go forward
When
you’re working within one organization or company, your set of
values becomes stiff and fixed, and the chances you have for making
new discoveries dwindle rapidly. But if
people with various different ways of thinking join your alliance,
your own fixed opinions will crumble and fall, and you will quickly
start to have all sorts of new ideas.
Recently,
there are a great many people who say things like “What I do is
this,”
or “This
is my specialty,” people who seek to map out their futures armed
just with some plan they have dreamed up in their head. But those who
enter into alliances will surely soon realize just how petty and
restricted such thoughts are.
Therefore
levels of individual success expand to heights previously undreamed
of through the use of business alliance skills. I hope that you, the
reader, have this unknown potential.
My
current work was created by and is still supported by alliances. I
became an advisor to a company through the introduction of a former
junior colleague. My career progressed haphazardly, but when I
thought about it I realized that my income had increased by more than
ten times the salary I earned when I first joined the company—profit
was part of the package too.
Of
course, I hadn’t envisaged such a future when I joined DoCoMo. One
of the reasons I left IBJ and joined DoCoMo in the first place was a
growing feeling that you only live once and that I wanted to keep on
testing myself. IBJ’s ranking at the time was plummeting, and I was
acutely aware that the number of projects brought to me in the office
were declining.
Even
then, nobody actually entertained the thought that this bank might
actually disappear (although I take pride in the fact that my
intuitions often hit the target). Above all, I began to want to try a
job outside finance, a job where you can actually see what you’re
doing.
It
was at that moment that I encountered the tool of the mobile phone.
The catalyst for that encounter was the death of my mother.
My
mother died of cancer in 1994, and a tense period of three months had
preceded her passing away. Despite this I was working hard at IBJ
each day, my father was lecturing at medical college and had little
time, and my sister was occupied with her small children. We were all
working and had no way to get in touch with each other in an
emergency. I, my father and my sister were all beside ourselves with
worry when we thought about my mother.
It
was mobile phones that helped to solve this anxiety. Of course,
DoCoMo didn’t exist in those days, and we had to go to NTT and hire
a bulky phone at a cost of 70,000 yen. Even so, having the phone in
my hand gave me a sense of security, a feeling that the family was
linked together. I thought to myself that though the mobile phone had
yet to be popularized, it was certain to change the world.
So
when I heard that NTT DoCoMo was recruiting staff, I had an exciting
feeling that maybe I would get the chance to become involved with
mobile phones. However, those around me were dead against the idea.
And naturally so, because while the company may now be one of the
companies that people most want to work for, at the time it was
regarded as no more than a somewhat nebulous venture spinoff of
NTT.
Nonetheless,
I was definitely suited to that direction. It wasn’t a case of the
future potential, or planning for the years ahead. When I look back
on those days now I think it was vital that I believed my instinct
and listened to my feelings. You shouldn’t have to entice others
with overblown phrases such as “follow me and you’ll get lucky”
or “I’m going to be big one day.” What
you have to show is a clear vision: this is what I want to do.
What you first need to do when you make your move is to change your own perceptions
I
subsequently left DoCoMo, and after working as executive at a venture
business I launched my own company in October 2007. The reason was,
again, because a strong feeling of “I want to do this!” pulled me
in that direction.
When
I left DoCoMo, i-mode had become popularized as a perfectly everyday
platform, and the Osaifu-Keitai
credit service had already been launched. So I didn’t really think
that there was anything left for me to do at DoCoMo even if I stayed.
But I love DoCoMo and still working for them now.
I
believe that the
first step in business alliance skills is to establish your own
thoughts, a single business unit that transcends the company.
You take something that you want to do and launch it as a business
project. In response to that project, and alliance will be formed
that consists of both your bosses and your colleagues. As
the alliance progresses, you always play the leading role.
So if something else that you want to do turns up, the alliance will
also shift in that direction.
Over
the course of your life there will naturally be times when a whole
new alliance relationship suddenly takes off—but this doesn’t
mean that your “old” alliance relationships are something that
you can afford to cast off. Even if its role changes, all you have to
do is skillfully use the relationships in the alliance according to
your own wishes. It doesn’t even really matter whether the alliance
proves to be useful or not. All
you should do is pursue your alliance with a bubbling sense of
anticipation that something may be just around the corner.
Putting
into practice business alliance skills is a question of trying to
portray you yourself as a “company,” and perhaps the people who
join the alliance will be your “staff” and your “clients.”
Now the important question is how to nurture “you, the company.”
I
see this as an exciting game, not a daunting task based on
competition principles.
During
my IBJ days, my boss and a director of the bank at the time,
was always saying to me: “I think that work is a sort of game—don’t
lose the forest for the trees.”
Think
about it. The personal growth that you can obtain through alliances
is unlimited. But you will be stimulated with every alliance, and
become able to create ever more interesting ideas. The results will
be the sort of progress that you never expected, a progress that will
lead to your future success story.
You
will find the sort of success that you cannot imagine now.
What do you reckon? Sounds exciting, doesn’t it. In the following
chapters I will explain the five points about business alliance
skills that will enable you to make your own Platform and this
shift: alliance thinking; information collection and sorting;
networking; learning methods; and career enhancement.
Information
collection using alliances will bring you huge volumes of precious
information that you could never have gained access to before. The
networking skills covered in this book concentrate on how you should
go about creating alliance relationships; through alliances you will
become able to exchange opinions with experts in all sorts of
fields—people who you’ve never had the chance to speak to.
With
my learning methods, the alliance will expand vastly what you are
able to find out and what you can learn. This will enable you to make
your own platform and enhance your career and reach a position that
is unimaginable to you now.
But
the starting point for this future has to be “what should I do
now?” What you have to do is change the way you think. And this
means, first of all, acting
with courage.
Chapter 2 Platform Way of Thinking
Don’t become “prominent”—become somebody who others help
Turn your thoughts into everybody’s thoughts
Usually,
when there is something that you want to do you decide upon a rough
outline, draw up a plan or proposal, and submit it to your superior.
But when we were trying to launch the Osaifu-Keitai
credit service ,
I
tried to get other people involved from the concept stage,
before there were any concrete ideas.
In
the first place, the idea of the Osaifu-Keitai
credit service is the simple concept of using a mobile phone instead
of a credit card. However, when it comes to the concrete plan there
are technical questions, systematic problems of the finance sector
and so on—in other words, a stream of negative factors. The idea of
a telecoms company entering the credit sector was unheard of, and was
in a way a world-first.
In
general, the larger that a company becomes, the more reluctant it is
to get involved in matters that it doesn’t understand. I thought
that
my idea would stand a better chance of being realized if I spread
awareness about it to such an extent that everybody would understand
and want to do it.
In
concrete terms, what I did was to exhaustively seek the opinions of
Managing Director of Morgan Stanley, who I had known since my IBJ
days, external consultants and other acquaintances, all of whom I
asked: “I’ve got an idea that nobody in the company take
seriously, something that I’m wondering could be done—what do you
think of this? Is it really out of the question?” Of course, I
didn’t take any written plans or proposals.
These
inquiries earned me all sorts of information about overseas
strategies and case studies concerning card companies and telecoms
companies. In those days I had acquaintances at Mitsui Sumitomo Card,
so I tried bouncing my idea off to one of their directors. A
professional among professionals, he courteously explained all the
mechanisms and actual methods used in the credit card sector. I never
imagined at the time that this conversation would prove to be the
prototype of DoCoMo’s iD credit brand.
In
the office, I thought that it would be rather difficult for our
little i-mode team to move the vast organization that DoCoMo is. It’s
the same at any company, but naturally enough, responses from other
departments bubble to the surface—people pointed out the risks and
listed reasons why such-and-such couldn’t be done, or just said
they hadn’t heard anything about it. At this point, one of the
directors of DoCoMo suggested that we wiped the slate clean and
convene a study group on the Osaifu-Keitai
credit service composed of the representatives of each department. I
must confess that when I heard the phrase “wipe the slate clean”
I thought that that was the end of the project, that it would never
become a reality. The shock made me quite ill.
However,
after examining the issue for seven months the conclusions of the
study group were that the Osaifu-Keitai
credit service should be supported. This meant that, with an ongoing
exchange of opinions between all the departments, the project would
go ahead as a cross-company project upon which the fate of DoCoMo was
riding. Once the impetus for promoting the project was in place, we
quickly gained the know-how of talented people from every part of
DoCoMo, and the problems that our team had struggled with were solved
in rapid succession.
If
the project had been conducted by the i-mode team alone I don’t
think it would have been possible for us to pull off such a massive
task. The launch of the study group led in the end to the greatest
effect.
As
you can see, the
methodology of the “Platform and alliance thinking” idea is to
turn your own ideas into something that belongs to everybody.
The chain reaction of ideas is the fine line between success and failure
If
it’s your idea, why on earth do you have to change it into
something that belongs to everybody? Perhaps some readers will think
that this could do nothing but harm. You often hear things like “This
is patented,” or “I can’t tell you because we don’t want any
know-how leaks,” particularly in sectors such as venture
businesses.
But
if you stick to this “my idea” attitude, will your proposal
actually lead to significant results? If
you keep all the profits of a project that will yield one million yen
to yourself, all you will get is one million yen. But what if that
project can be turned into one that creates 10 billion yen in
profits? Even if you gained just 1% of that sum, it would represent
100 million yen—100 times your one million yen profit.
I think that this way of thinking is the difference between the
success or the failure of a large enterprise.
Whether
it’s a new product, a sales plan, or a proposal for improving
business, in the final analysis no progress will be made unless the
participation of a large number of people is obtained. Moreover, the
participants are not working for the sake of the person who has made
the proposal—they are working for the good of the company, and
above all, for
their own sakes.
Which
is why it is clearly more of a motivation for people to work towards
something they feel they have played a part in thinking up, rather
than something that is somebody else’s idea. Still
more in my case, this was true at the stage before the idea was
realized. If I had kept it as “my idea” then very few people
would have helped me try to turn it into a reality. But when an idea
becomes “everybody’s idea” then
all those involved become linked together by a fervor to make a
reality of this common idea, which in turn creates a huge power.
This fervor is an utterly essential part of successful business
alliance skills.
What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine
If
the wonderful idea that you thought up all by yourself becomes
“everybody’s idea,” perhaps you won’t gain the recognition
you deserve within the company; or perhaps your achievements will be
usurped by somebody else—I suppose some people may harbor such
thoughts. In the previous chapter I mentioned the large number of
people around who claim to have “created” i-mode. Apparently
there is a similar situation surrounding Nintendo’s Pokemon
(Pocket Monsters) characters, and I believe that such problems are
now called the “Pokemon
Phenomenon.” In the case of the Osaifu-Keitai
too,
there are indeed a great many people who claim to have created it.
But surely this
just proves how successful the product was.
Apparently
at some companies the success of the Osaifu-Keitai
led to some people receiving special two-stage promotion or bonuses,
but nothing of the sort happened at DoCoMo. Of course, we didn’t
even expect such treatment. What really pleased me were the words of
DoCoMo’s president then: “I’m very grateful,” and : “Your
name will go down in history, Mr. Hirano.”
Somebody
is always watching properly.
Some
readers are perhaps worried that discussing things with their
colleagues may lead to their ideas being stolen. However, regardless
of how good an idea is, 99% of people are unable to put it into
practice. An idea that can be stolen so easily is not much of an
idea.
Aside
from the question of praise, the fact that I was able to realize such
a large project was, in the first place, because I was working for
the huge “platform” of DoCoMo. And what was much more important
to me than praise, was that I learnt through the project how to move
an organization and acquired business alliance skills to move other
people—an
invaluable experience that I would not exchange for anything else.
Manipulating people from both inside and outside the organization
enabled me to realize a project that it would have been quite
impossible complete on my own.
The
project was realized by forcing a chemical reaction between the ideas
of various individuals, and achieving
a shift in perspectives—from the perspective of my own job to the
perspective of soliciting like-minded people, and finally to the
perspective of the “organization,” in other words, the company.
This sort of “managerial aesthetic” of looking at things from the
company’s perspective is a vital part of “Platform and alliance
thinking.”
Your real job is to turn the impossible into the possible
Now
let’s turn our thoughts towards the significance of making an
alliance for making your platform. The reason that ideas, proposals,
wishes and dreams go unfulfilled is the
existence of certain obstacles.
There is always a bottleneck somewhere.
The
factors behind such bottlenecks are varied—they may include
questions of ability or time, personal relationships or money. Since
all of these are beyond your control, ideas and wishes end up as
“impossibilities.” But how about making a prerequisite of getting
other people involved from the outset?
Taking
an extreme example, even somebody who wanted to move to Mars would
have a better than zero chance if they could get NASA or other space
development agencies involved. My point is that a “bottleneck” is
little more than a case of “I can’t do it,” and
if you can just move the “I” from the equation then almost
anything will change from impossible to possible.
The
i-mode service was made a reality by successively turning the
“impossible” parts into the “possible” through the use of
alliances. For example, the ringtone service was a massive hit. It
arose from conversations between DoCoMo and persons of Fuetrek
and Faith. DoCoMo, however, lacked the technology to realize the
idea, and since they didn’t have the musical software in the first
place, the absence of the technology meant of course that the
ringtone idea was “impossible.” But
if we got a company that had the technology and a company that had
the sound source to join the alliance, the impossible would become
the possible.
What actually happened was that we solved the technical issue by
getting the phone makers to fit a sound source chip called “MIDI”
on the mobiles, while a karaoke company provided the music for the
ringtones.
The
idea was the same with the Osaifu-Keitai.
If, for example, you want people to be able to buy things from a
vending machine using their mobile phones, rather
than racking your brains with for possible solutions the quickest
route would be to talk to somebody who could make this happen.
The
reason that we actually managed to make this idea a reality arose
from a query about the possibility of tying up mobiles and vending
machines, made by Coca-Cola and Itochu Corporation. This eventually
turned into the C-mode service, a one million-member service that was
the first in the world to connect mobile phones with vending
machines; its roots were no more than a series of muddled trial and
error experiments conducted by junior staff at the three companies.
They started from scratch, and progressed after gradual
experimentation and repeated success and failure. And over this
process, the originally diverse ideas of what DoCoMo wanted to do and
what Coca-Cola wanted to do somehow expanded into one big idea that
both parties wanted to do.
This
circle of people rapidly grew into a fearsome entity, but what always
lay at the heart of it was Coca-Cola’s and my teams’ strong sense
of wanting to do something, and to mutually move each other’s
company. This sense gradually turned into a deep relationship of
trust, which permeated through to every member of the teams. A
burning wish to break the mold of the company and make a certain
project succeed led, one by one, to the solving of all the
bottlenecks caused by technical obstacles.
How to involve in the alliance the people you don’t get on with
I
have covered how to overcome the technical obstructions, but possibly
the biggest bottleneck when you try to do something at a company is
not the physical question of technology but the obstacle of human
relationships. But all you have to do is use “Platform and alliance
thinking” to reverse your thoughts on this matter.
This
is not a matter of “persuading” those who are against you, more a
case of getting them into your platform by alliance, in other words,
of making them your partners.
And how do you that? Instead of telling your clients or subordinates
that “This is the situation, so just get on with it!” and merely
seeking to force through your own opinions, you have to appeal to
them—”Do you think I could possibly ask you to think with me
about such-and-such,” or “I’d really like to have your input,
and want to think about this with you.” It is important that this
should not be done in a way that suggests you are negotiating; these
people should be made to feel that they are, in a small way,
participating: “I’d be most grateful to discuss this with you,”
“I’d like you to come and join us,” et cetera. This
may well be the same principle as the concept that negotiations go
better when the two parties are sitting next to or diagonally
opposite each other rather than head-on.
Instead
of saying something like: “I’m thinking of doing things this way
from now on, I’m sure it will lead to better sales so please let me
have a go,” an exchange with your manager such as this would be
preferable: “I’m thinking of trying this way of doing things next
time. I’m sure it will lead to better sales, but I was wondering
what you thought…”
“Yes,
I suppose that would be alright. But why don’t you just change this
part?”
“Thank
you very much. I’ll be sure to keep you posted about how things
progress.”
“OK!”
Strange
as it might seem, just this little effort makes the other person feel
as though he or she is participating, and pulls them round to your
side. I myself gained a great many precious opinions by building up
alliances in exactly this way.
Winning over those you want to persuade through consultative alliances
I
think that people want to help if they are consulted. Perhaps you
have found that people can oppose you merely on the grounds that they
were not consulted about something. When you keep hearing this excuse
despite repeatedly trying to explain yourself, there is a temptation
to say something like: “But I’m telling you about it now!”—but
let’s not lose our heads. A reply like that will lead to the very
worst outcome. Regardless of specious logic, any sort of opinion is
likely encounter opposition somewhere.
But
if you can bring such people into your alliance from the outset, then
they will end up eagerly supporting you, and if all goes well they
will doubtless provide your project with plenty of publicity by
boasting about their input. And when a senior staff member involves
his juniors in an alliance, you can be sure that the juniors will
look as if they have been given a whole new lease of life.
This
is not “wheel-greasing,” which in Japan consists of preparing for
meetings by going round all the participants and asking them not to
oppose this or that; it’s a question of getting
people involved right from the stage of creating the framework.
What
you must take care to do here is to
set up a clear basic policy and way of thinking for yourself. You
must make sure that the axle of the wheel is firmly in place.
Otherwise all you will end up with is a copious stream of opinions
that descend into chaos.
The big strategy—Devote yourself first and never give up
You
may sometimes find that the other people in the alliance are not on
the same wavelength as you, or that you don’t get on with them. You
might also find that your boss is irritated at first, and expects you
to get on with the thinking.
However
hard you try to involve other people in the alliance, they all have
their own considerations and are not usually going to devote a huge
amount of thought to the project. In
order to get these people into the alliance it is vital that you
yourself first of all study and store the information, knowledge and
know-how that they are likely to require.
In my case, this was knowledge and know-who about finance. Above all,
you need an enthusiasm to stay the course and turn the project into a
reality at all costs.
There
is a tendency to give up if things don’t go well the first or even
the second time. I never once gave up over the four years of the
Osaifu-Keitai
credit service project, despite the fact that on several occasions it
looked as if it may go off the rails.
On
the subject of enthusiasm, now I am in a senior position, when a
junior colleague wants to talk to me about something I always ask
myself: “How
seriously is this person thinking about doing this?”
To phrase it rather extremely, what the boss takes most seriously is
whether or not a person is so enthusiastic that they are willing to
do pursue a project even if it means forgetting to eat and
sleep.
Although
business models are an important part of success, particularly in
venture business investments, it is generally thought that everything
hinges on the enthusiasm of the management.
If you pursue your goals with determination and enthusiasm, your are
likely to achieve them.
Even
in situations in which you expect to encounter the utmost
difficulties, you can be certain of winning people over to your side
if you are enthusiastic and pay them gratitude and respect for the
time that they give you.
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