Platform and Alliance thinking for your success lessons from the success story of mobile payment potx

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,

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/

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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

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

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

Alliances with other companies stand or fall in the first three months

What I have covered so far in this chapter concerns alliances within the company; the story is a little different when you are dealing with another company There is a

tendency for things to go badly when you are on a different wavelength or feel

uncomfortable with the person in charge at the other company

My intuitive feeling is that if a project doesn’t proceed after three months of

exploratory work on it, it is likely to run aground even if it is eventually launched An

alliance means going forward with a win-win attitude You must proceed after having

considered the merits to the other party The alliance will not hold water if all you do

is expound your own benefits Moreover, as any project proceeds it is bound to come up against problems at some stage—leading to the further problem of what should be done about the situation in each company You will need to go beyond the framework of the company and, for the sake of the project’s success, work on solutions with the person in charge at the other company You work on solutions within your company, he within his, and between you measures to respond are drawn up If you are not on the same

wavelength or don’t feel comfortable with each other at this stage, there is a great

danger that you will be unable to surmount any difficulties that you may encounter

So when no progress is made even after three months, either you have to change the person you are negotiating with or, possibly, there is simply no hope of you doing business with that company in the first place, so it’s probably best to move

on to an alliance with another company Before you do so, however, there is one

thing that you must remember to do You must explain to the company that, since there doesn’t appear to be any mutual benefit in the project, you wish to withdraw, and

convince them of your reasons before going on to find a new partner This is because we live in a small world, and one day in the future you may need to call upon that company again

Success stories are the biggest enemy

As your team of eager members assembles and the project proceeds, there is another bottleneck that may appear: preconceived notions There are preconceived notions such

as “this is not possible” and others, but I think the one that is the greatest threat to

the project is probably the person who has a success story They think that since

they achieved success with such-and-such a method in the past, everything will be alright if they continue to pursue that method They are reluctant to step outside their little world even when the times are changing

This is the often cited “boiling frog syndrome.” If the water in the pond suddenly gets hot, the frog jumps out But it is the water heats up gradually the frog doesn’t notice, and is boiled alive, or so the story goes

Companies are like boats trying to sail up a fast-flowing river; they drift back

downstream the moment they stop Doing things in the same way is the biggest risk,

but humans have a homeostasis that makes them want to stay as they are; we are

creatures who want to be left in peace

However, history is full of companies that have vanished because they wouldn’t change The companies making styluses for record players had been doing so for year after year apparently without ever imagining that vinyl would disappear They didn’t realize what was going on because they were too wrapped-up in their old successes, and never set foot outside their own world If they had been in alliance with any other business

sectors I am sure that they would have been told time after time that not so many people listen to records these days

The alliance thinking philosophy lives on in the sense of creating a wide open world around you

The self-imposed walls of a closed world, springing up before you realize it

An open world is of huge significance, not only for companies, but for people who come up with ideas as well While you may think you want to do this or that, or such-and-such an idea looks good, you are in fact often restricted by your own rigid set of preconceived notions

One often seen example is the company that bulldozes its technologies and products into the creation of new services “We’ve got some wonderful technology, so why don’t

we use it to do this?” a company asks itself, and the idea grows out of hand like a bull in

a china shop

When you’re thinking about an idea it is vital that you keep asking yourself “Who is

going to use it, when, where, for how much and in what way?” and consult with the people who are going to be the target users For example, I have heard of a person

working in the development department of a food company who makes a point of trying out new products on his family and friends—people outside of his workplace People at his company are used to eating new foods; they are “specialists” in the wrong sense, and apparently products that earn a consensus in his workplace are often quite unpalatable to members of the public

Managing Directori of DoCoMo told me that he always asks his wife and children for their opinions about new services released by the company There’s also a story that he told a board meeting where he received a barrage of negative opinions: “The service is aimed at people who, unlike you, are still young.”

The merit of alliances is that, by involving people with different sets of values, your

own preconceived notions start to collapse, and you become freed from your own thoughts Such people include those from other sectors, people who work with a

different perspective, sometimes foreigners, people from the other sex and other walks

of life et cetera The more that “different cultures” become mixed up in the alliance,

the more that you will realize that you have hitherto been hemmed in by the values

of a narrow little world Having worked for three companies so far, I have strongly felt

that “the company’s common sense is nonsense to society.” When there are

preconceived notions, it is vital that fresh blood is introduced to the project at its earliest stages

Blue ocean strategy created by alliances

“Blue ocean strategy” has recently become a buzzword in corporate strategy circles The strategy was put forward in the book of the same name by INSEAD professors W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne The “blue ocean” is a market where there are no

rivals, enabling you to freely swim The idea is that, instead of heading into familiar

markets and the accompanying bloodbath of price strategy versus differentiation strategy, you aim at pristine new areas Budget airlines and the first eco car that

Toyota put on the market would be good examples of this Incidentally, i-mode is

mentioned in the book as a successful example of a blue ocean strategy I think that the

Osaifu-Keitai credit service also deserves the blue ocean appellation too, because, in

addition to using a mobile phone like a credit card, the idea of being billed later for very small transactions was something that even the credit card sector itself had yet to

introduce Until then, nobody had ever thought of paying for a 120 yen can of Coke or a

160 yen train ticket with a credit card

The reason that the credit card companies had never offered such a service was the prohibitive costs involved And users would have been unlikely to accept the time spans involved in paying for this, that, and everything with a credit card Moreover, if you buy something for 10,000 yen with a credit card, the commission is only around 100 yen, but the credit card company has to pay for the costs of posting statements and running its system The figures just didn’t add up However, in the case of a telecoms company like DoCoMo, all that needs to be done is add an extra line for the expenses incurred on the user’s monthly phone bill

The background of this situation is the relatively low rate of credit card use in Japan, which is around 7% to 8% compared to 25% in Europe and America We thought that if

people become accustomed to buying small items by credit then perhaps some of the younger ones will go on to buy expensive items by credit, which would boost the size of the Japanese credit card companies’ market For their part, the credit companies were deeply interested in the question of how they could get young people to carry and use credit cards—our idea dovetailed perfectly with their needs And the results are still evolving before our very eyes.

Gathering information from people, and thinking for yourself causes a chemical reaction

I think that the best way of getting ideas and gathering information is to actually listen

to people I asked many people for their opinions when I was working on the

Osaifu-Keitai project.

Those days were a case of overcoming a hurdle only to find another one standing in our way; the path of a telecoms company like DoCoMo, as it sought to enter the credit sector, was littered with obstacles The biggest of these was the problem of know-how about credit While we were struggling with this issue, one day a sign outside a certain shop caught my attention: “Credit cards accepted.” Hoping that I might learn something useful, I had a chat with the person working in the shop, who told me that people rarely paid with credit cards

Learning that users were few and far between may have suggested that we were at the end of the road But reminded of the words of the person in the shop, I thought: “If there

aren’t many users, why don’t we make the Osaifu-Keitai compatible with credit cards.” The Osaifu-Keitai, which originated from the idea that carrying round a bundle of

plastic cards was a nuisance, actually represented a threat to the credit card companies But my new idea was a piece of lateral thinking—to merge the credit cards and the phone With this idea, a system could be developed in which the credit companies—which felt threatened by the entry into their sector of a telecoms company—would actually end up making money with us The idea eventually led to the concept mooted

by then director of Mitsui Sumitomo Card, who said, “It might just make some headway

in the small payment sector—let’s make a new brand.”

Elsewhere, by seeking the opinions of retail professionals like director of am/pm Japan and director of Family Mart, many potential bottlenecks became apparent Proceeding step-by-step by listening to people, enriching ideas, and making alliances—this was the

concept of the Osaifu-Keitai.

Matching the alliance with latent needs

If you know from the start that there is an untapped market, a “blue ocean” somewhere out there, and work towards that, anybody can be successful If you run a company, it is probably worth investing in such blue ocean areas, and individuals too can flourish by doing something nobody else had one and harnessing the attractions of their originality.But if these blue oceans were so easy to find then nobody would have any trouble It’s hardly likely that any one can both visualize and realize a blue ocean on their own

As I have already mentioned, there isn’t really such a thing as a completely new idea Virtually every “new” service and product and all the “new” ideas that appear are in fact modifications, combinations or the splitting up of something that already exists

However, I think that the reason that some of these become hits is not just that they

were in some way modified or combined, but that they discovered a way of

responding to some latent need in society.

This latency is a vital point People’s dissatisfaction and sense of inconvenience offer

hints for finding these latent needs They are to be uncovered behind phrases such as:

“Why don’t they make something like this….” and “If only they made this…”

You cannot discover latent needs by, for example, conducting a questionnaire Because

at the time of the questionnaire, these needs have yet to materialize While you can evaluate an existing product with a questionnaire, you cannot really understand

anything about products or services whose users are not yet visible

The Osaifu-Keitai was a match of latent needs and an alliance You may be under the

impression that its development was achieved through massive negotiations like

corporate alliances, but I think that the major factor was the sharing of latent needs I suspect that around seven or eight people out of ten think that the profusion of cards in their wallets is a nuisance, and it is therefore likely that a great many of them have thought how useful it would be if they could all be combined into a single common card

However, once the latent needs for a common credit are discovered, even a company that is big enough to make that a reality is not going to find the implementation of such

a plan to be an easy task It’s like having to go around all the card, distribution, and railway companies and asking them to gather under your umbrella from square one However interesting the idea may seem, people at your own company and outside

companies may well ask whether it merits such an arduous task, and it is possible that nobody will take you seriously But if a group of people from telecoms, convenience stores and credit card companies pulls together and draws in more supporters with a shared vision of “wouldn’t this be good,” before you know it you will have a plan that can please everyone If you yourself lack the knowledge and skills to do this, then be humble enough to rope in some people or companies that do have the knowledge and

skills, and get them to think together with you By acting as the producer who draws

all these threads together, you will be able to realize the most successful things possible This is how to think about building things up through alliances.

Managing a company is in many ways like this The owner of a restaurant chain can achieve success without being able to cook Success will depend on his ability to blend excellent chefs, interior coordinators who can create a pleasant restaurant, and an

accounting staff that can rigorously calculate basic costs Skillful coordination and production is vital in both the management of companies and the realization of projects

In other words, there is a better chance of something being realized if you involve other

people and think together with them, rather than racking your brains on your own.

The difference between brainstorming and alliance: is there feedback?

Some readers may feel that since they both involve the exchanging of opinions,

alliances are like brainstorming sessions In the latter, people try to suggest various opinions (without rejecting those of others) in an attempt to come up with “some good ideas.” They tend to consist mainly of people from planning departments, and are conducted with an extraordinarily positive air of producing these wonderful ideas While I certainly agree that this is one good method of producing ideas, the basis of the alliance-style idea creation concept is quite different

The basis of alliance-style idea creation begins with this question: “How can I make this concept of mine go well?” It’s a question of assessing what you should do to get the other company interested, and to whom it would be beneficial to speak to

The alliance isn’t about gathering ideas from each and every direction; it’s a case of

repeatedly polishing a single idea It requires you to steadfastly maintain the concept

and sense of direction that form the axis of the alliance.

The fact is that while there are plenty of “proposals” at brainstorming sessions, there is rarely much room for “feelings.” Yet it is these “feelings” that are more important to the

process of idea creation Because, as I have explained with regard to “blue oceans,” it is not the positive ideas—the sense of wanting to do something—that leads to blue oceans; rather, it is the negative, dissatisfied idea of “why don’t they make this?”

Mobile phones were a response to people’s dissatisfaction at not being able to make calls unless they were near a public phone; convenience stores a response to their

dissatisfaction with everything being shut at night; the Osaifu-Keitai a response to their

dissatisfaction with the ridiculous amount of cards in their wallets However, despite all these being considered unsatisfying, there is absolutely no proof that “if we make this it’s going to sell.” When business projects are planned they usually involve market research, data analysis and forecasts et cetera They are formulated logically and then proposed

Platform and Alliance thinking begins with the arguments of “why don’t they make this? This would be useful,” not a sense of “I want to do this.” If you gain a consensus

at this point, the process will snowball and plans to make a reality of the idea will start

to take shape

New, unheard of businesses, are a question of predictions about the future, and since no prerequisites exist, a way of thinking that is born out of emotion will become necessary.

Platform and Alliance thinking needs somebody who can become “the leader”

If you use the platform and alliance thinking method when you are looking at things, ideas that may at first seem hackneyed or vague can rapidly become more feasible by getting other people involved But you must maintain a strong passion and impetus, a sense that you are going to carry through your project come what may You may be given some negative opinions about your idea, but you have to go out and find

comments that will help to point you in the right direction Steering the project is your

role, and leadership is essential for making your own platform and the alliance

Promoting the alliance is a little like being a bus driver, with everybody else as your passengers

So what should you do in order to reach your destination? First, commitment is vital In other words, you must pluck up the courage to decide that this is what you want to do, that it is good for the company, and then make sure that everybody knows about it Maybe this side of my personality helped, but I have always—without breaching

confidentiality—been open in telling people what I am thinking about, regardless of

whether they are within or outside the company, clients, bosses or junior staff This is why I have always found alliances growing up around me before I even realized.

Of course, I am not trying to tell you that as long as you have commitment you’re dreams will come true But getting the right sort of people involved will greatly enhance the chances of an idea turning into a reality It’s good to provide plenty of information about yourself, even if it’s not directly linked to work—the fact that you are interested

in cars, or World Heritage, or trying out restaurants and so on It’s quite possible that this will lead to all sorts of common topics, which may in turn broaden the horizons of the alliance

By building up lots of alliances around you to formulate your own Platform and gaining the trust of other people by providing them with information, people will help you as a matter of course.

The concept of “give, give, give and take”

Though you might think that this is a contradiction of what I have just described, you are not going to find that a helpful alliance is created straight away just by distributing

information Because in order to gain people’s help, you will need to be considerate

enough to maintain, manage and improve that information.

An alliance is not just a group of friends No progress will be made if you limit its membership according to whether you like or dislike somebody But if it’s not based merely on amicable relationships then what else is there? The answer is probably a shared purpose and some sort of benefit or interest If you want to use an alliance, you must continuously provide the other people with merit What exactly do I mean by

“merit?” You don’t have to think about this too deeply Just imagine what the

anxieties and dreams of the other person or his company are, and create a

relationship where you can think about them together By patiently making other

people aware of what you have to offer in this way, you can earn their trust

This will require that you make them aware of the fact that you are moving

perseveringly towards that goal, and show them that your ideas are always under

progress If you allow yourself to be discouraged by others or suggest that perhaps your idea isn’t going to work after all, all the ideas, trust and expectation that have built up around you with expectation will be eroded in an instant

The other people in the alliance may still be dismissive of your idea, or not yet

convinced of your ability But if you show them that you are working towards realizing

a project, they will understand that you are “thinking with them” and are therefore more

likely to cooperate with you When I was working on the Osaifu-Keitai project, I always

tried to get across to those around me the message that the project would be of benefit to their company Though you will naturally have your own underlying hopes, you must

always adhere to the concept of bringing benefits to the other party The philosophy is

one of “give, give, give and take,” in other words, for every merit you gain for yourself try to give three more to your partners Quite naturally, the other party will

also start to seek their own benefits, and when these merge, the benefits for you will be considerable

Chapter 3 Alliance information sorting skills

Change yourself into a magnet for information

Become a magnet for information!

With the idea of the alliance, the meaning of collecting information and sorting

information makes a 180° shift

I would suggest that the reason why the work of collecting and sorting information causes you so much trouble is that finding “good information” is a somewhat difficult task The world is overflowing with information, but perhaps you can’t take out and use the information that ties in with your work or ideas whenever you want or in an

effective way

In this chapter on alliance information sorting skills, all these problems will be swept away Because once you’ve acquired the know-how, the meaning of the need to collect

or sort information will basically disappear

First, with alliance information sorting skills, information is something that collects around you, not something that you actively collect

Because you transmit information first, the people in your alliance will

automatically bring you information without you having to go out and look for it.

In my case, by transmitting information about the Osaifu-Keitai and mobile phones

people from the credit world brought me information about credit, and people from the convenience store world brought me information about convenience stores, quite

naturally Since this was live information from people who are the cream of their

profession, it was a great deal fresher and reliable than anything I could have found by browsing on the Internet or searching through bookstores

And rather than trying to sort or process this information on my own, I then modified and blended it, and transmitted it to other people

For example, when I was given some documents about a particular field, having glanced over and gained the gist of them, I might think, “Mr A would be interested in this issue,

so I’ll put him in charge; I’d like him to become an expert on the matter,” and pass the information on to Mr A, a junior colleague Of course, if there is a Mr B who is

desperately keen to the work, you give the documents to Mr B

In other words, once I have gained the information and briefly chewed it over, I

decide which part of the alliance should keep or store the information, rather than sorting it on my own.

In this way the stream of new information ends up going through the Mr As and the Mr

Bs of the world, and is stored up field-by-field, client-by-client What you have to do is play a role like a hub airport And if you don’t have any subordinates yourself, it’s worth trying to form an alliance with colleagues in departments outside of your own

The value of information increases dramatically when it is sent to people who need

it rather than just collected

This may not have come to the surface yet, but at most companies sales opportunities are being lost and trouble is frequently occurring because information is not being shared by people in different departments and sections

They are all sitting on their information I often hear phrases like, “The matter has ground to a halt at that manager’s place.” It’s not just that the information has stopped; the problem is that the manager himself has turned into a bottleneck

At first glance alliance information skills may look like a somewhat irresponsible

process of fobbing off work onto other people, but this is not all the case By relaying information as swiftly as possible, the location of the information is clarified into

human units In doing so, if for example you obtain some information about

convenience stores and there is an awareness that such information should be passed on

to Mr B, then everyone else is sure to pass on information of that nature to Mr B Mr B accumulates a vast amount of the latest information on convenience stores and becomes

a professional in that field If that happens, then everybody turns to him for advice on

convenience store matters, and he in turn passes on information about convenience

stores to other members of the alliance One piece of information is thus sorted and

processed, its value increased several times, and then brought back to you This is

the effect of alliance information sorting skills

Incidentally, if you take a look at actual hub airports such as Amsterdam’s Schiphol and Singapore’ s Changi, you will see that they become jam-packed with airplanes, cargo and people Likewise, when you become the information hub of your alliance, there is a chance that you may become overcrowded with information In order to deal smoothly

with this you have to play a role similar to the airport’s control tower It is therefore

vital that you learn how to transmit the information you gain as quickly as

possible One more point The art of information “traffic control” is to carefully

classify it, pass it on to the alliance and get rid of it Any information that you are

in two minds about should be chucked out.

In factory and store operations, the process of gaining information and immediately passing it on is managed to the extent that the task is expected to be completed within five seconds But relaying information at these speeds is something that isn’t even on the agenda in the white collar sector

Lunchtime is the optimal information-gathering skill

Of course it is “people” who are the bedrock of alliance information sorting skills In

my own case, it is lunchtime that is the most effective core aspect of my gathering skills using other people Why is lunchtime the most effective tool? First of all, I want the reader to understand that however many meetings with people in other sectors or seminars you attend, information isn’t going to fall into your lap That’s not enough to make your alliance expand Presumably your friends do not constantly phone you with exclusive pieces of hot news Because even if they had that hot news, the likelihood is that they would keep it under their hat

information-So in order to gain the information you need from the people around you, you

must first make it clear to them what sort of person you are, what you can do, and what information you need.

If you continue to make others aware of these facts, eventually they will start to think,

“Ah, so-and-so knows all about this, I’ll introduce him to you,” or, conversely, “I’ve got the same problem as you,” thus naturally leading you to the information you want

And you will often find that the information that is useful to your idea actually lies

in the emotions or true feelings hidden behind that information Creating a chance

for an informal chat is a much more effective way of gathering information than

ceremoniously asking questions in the company meeting room

So where is the easiest place to create a chance for this informal chat? Inviting someone out for a drink is one answer, but this ends up using two or three hours of that other person’s time, and while alcohol may be effective in loosening tongues, it also tends to put any talk of work on the back burner You might be able to ask your friends out for an

“idle chat,” but this is hardly a proposal that you can out to a client, particularly if they are of a higher station and age than yourself

But an invitation to lunch is often surprisingly effective While there are many ways in which people spend their dinnertime and afterwards, and some people go home to eat with their families, virtually everybody goes for lunch

Unlike dinnertime, lunch is taken during working hours, time is limited, and the other person feels that you are not placing too much of a demand on their time This also makes it easier for you to ask out women or your senior colleagues The other person is unlikely to feel badly if you make a rule of paying for their lunch While they are

expensive in the evening, high class restaurants usually offer a reasonably priced lunch menu Moreover, since time is at a premium during lunch it is easier to get straight to the point If you allow around one hour for lunch, and limit your conversation to what you really want to know about instead of showering the other person with questions, you will find you are able to obtain valuable information

I make a point of asking things like: “What sort of person is so-and-so?” “What interests you lately?” and “What are your views on the way I think about this?” If I can ask these things, the fine details of the work and the concrete matters can be dealt with later by e-mail or further meetings

Even when you don’t have any burning questions or matters that you are anxious

to discuss, I thoroughly recommend taking lunch in order to find out what the other person has been up to recently and what they are interested in As long as you are prepared to do the questioning, all sorts of information can be gleaned from even the most rambling chatter This information is infinitely more useful than the answers to questionnaires or what you find out from business interviews.

In addition to the gathering of information, what is really important about lunch is

that it gives you an opportunity to assess at first hand whether or not the other person is reliable and whether or not there appears to be any chance of doing some fun work with them in the future.

I gather that the question of “Do you think that you would like to work with this

person?” is the most carefully examined part of the entrance examination at Google; likewise it is the lunchtime alliance that deepens the bonds between trustworthy people.People’s self-defense mechanism leads them to instinctively pull away when suddenly approached Studying that person as much as you can at first and then building up an intricate relationship will lead to a more successful and long-lasting friendship Of course, you can sometimes hit it off and make friends straight away, but in terms of business alliances it is more effective to spend some time getting the person to know you, getting to know them, and giving them some breathing space.

Though lunch is going to cost you some money, look at it as though you were buying a few books—just having lunch several times a week will bring you much precious information I myself have often found that an apparently directionless lunch

appointment has led to conversations such as, “So-and-so knows all about that, why don’t the three of us have lunch together some time?” which have tied in with business and helped to expand the alliance much more than mere information gathering

The alliance lunch is a place for natural business communication

While the idea of meeting people for lunch is fine, when the question of where to eat and the fact that people may be working at the time are considered, you may well think that there are restrictions on the sort of people who can be invited out at that time of day But this is just another stereotyped view of lunch Whether they are in the office or outside, the timing with which it occurs to people to have lunch usually coincides, and the meal is probably taken as a natural matter of course

However, I regard lunchtime as a clear opportunity for gathering information, and

look forward to it First of all I configure a schedule that includes lunch, so I

sometimes have “lunch in Ginza” marked in my diary up to two months beforehand I also make an effort to ensure that lunchtime is never left blank This enables me to conscientiously plan the schedule for my alliances through lunch For example, if I know that I have an appointment in Shibuya in a couple of weeks time, I start to ask myself who I know in the vicinity Reminded of somebody who I haven’t met lately, I might send an e-mail telling them I shall be near their office and suggesting lunch If you fill up your lunchtimes in this manner, your connections with other people will continue to grow

The most important feature of alliance-forming lunches is to remember to be grateful to the other person for sparing their valuable time This is why I make a

point of going to restaurants near that person’s place of work where possible If you get the chance to see where the person works, go and take a look Understanding the

atmosphere in his or her company is surprisingly useful to the alliance

Rather than merely obtaining information, one of the great pleasures of these lunchtimes is letting the power of successful people rub off on me, and coming in to touch with his aesthetics When I make an appointment for lunch, I do so with a sense

that it is worth more than ten or twenty business books, that it is a chance to get close to

“living” business, even if it may be no more than an incidental meal for the other

person I am flexible about the time and place, and try to fit in with my acquaintances’ plans regardless of whether they are a junior colleague or a student Lunching with young people is stimulating, and is something I value greatly

I think my lunchtime methods are somewhat similar to the European and American idea

of the “Power breakfast.” The Japanese, however, are not accustomed to meeting each other early in the morning, and most people would be reluctant to force someone to get

up early for the sake of a meeting So let’s make the most of our lunchtimes Please do not eat lunch alone anymore

Don’t shy away from “inefficiency” when making an alliance with people

I have just mentioned the gathering of information at lunchtimes, but it seems that, having met a great many people, there is a tendency for “efficiency” to be emphasized

in order to obtain information However, with alliance information sorting skills, the

idea of meeting people even if it comes to nothing is very important In doing so, the

volume of information that ends at your door is often considerable The idea is rather like preparing a cabinet full of drawers for future use, rather than just concentrating on the information in front of you

When you’ve gained a piece of information from somebody, probably the most efficient ways of relaying it are e-mail, followed by phone calls, and finally, actually telling somebody face-to-face There is no doubt that if you relay the information by an e-mail or phone you will be able to do so in a concrete and pinpoint manner, which improves efficiency

time-When I try to get somebody involved in an alliance, I think that the best way is to meet them in person, in small numbers—ideally just myself and one other This is because when you meet and speak with somebody, you will often find that what they want to talk about at that time contains information that you wouldn’t have obtained from the