DoCoMo - Japan’s Wireless tsunami – is written by John Beck and Mitchell Wade on the Company NTT- Docomo which is the only Asian firm in the WAI ( Wealth Added index) and how the company has made such a huge market in Japan itself and has become Japan’s most successful company in mobile telecom sector.
Japan's NTT DoCoMo is on the verge of attaining equal stature. DoCoMo is the world's second-largest mobile phone operator and, with its I-mode system, the first to roll out real, viable third-generation applications like Internet-ready mobile phones.
John Beck (co-author, The Attention Economy) and Accenture senior consultant Mitchell Wade examine the enormous risks that DoCoMo took in pursuing a "bleeding edge" technology which analysts thought was superfluous, and how their daring almost single-handedly brought an entire global market into existence. It is this extraordinary story and the simple, powerful management themes ingrained in it that will drive companies the world over to emulate DoCoMo as they did the previous giants of Japanese industry.
The author has started the book to find out the strategies, tactics, technologies, details of execution and leadership. DoCoMo in spite of being a Japanese company it is not mainly about the engineering or service wisely or staying close to customers. It is the “Passion”.
From this book we can easily understand that success is to explore the passions that DoCoMo has used to lead. These include personal feelings of the company’s: * Customers - their love for another, passion for freedom and their excitement at being in on a shared phenomenon * Senior Leaders – Whose passion defined their management style and who used those passions to inspire the company they led. * Key Creative Employees – the people who invented i-mode without whom DoCoMo could not have done. * Managers and Staff at every Level – the people who make up so much of any company’s corporate culture. * Next generation of Leaders – supplying DoCoMo with the one passion that can help the company surmount its two greatest challenges.
So, from this book authors wanted us to understand the different perspective of management i.e. how passion can build a worlds one of the top most business company along with some great stories, some new ideas and some insight into the emerging wireless economy so that we can understand and carry forward our journey with passion to achieve the success.
Summary
As the book is started by the author is by love story. Love story of a girl who is not so much keen to use technology, a girl who loves to use new gadgets fashion value and a guy who is techonocoholic. From the authors view Japan has started the computer very late as a developed country for an uncertain reason. Here also we have come to know that the girl was not keen to learn computer but for her work culture she had to inculcate herself with the most promising invention of human civilization. Then for her love and affection she has to take a mobile phone of a company but after that as her requirements increased as the internet facility along with the mobility of communication she had taken a DoCoMo i-mode phone which was recently launched by DoCoMo in February 1999 and she was quiet happy with the services of the phone. Another girl who is a school student had also taken a DoCoMo i-mode because she is very much attached with the new gadgets fashion value and the technocoholic guy did the same as above. The interesting common thing is that all of them was in love with the newly used gadget i.e. i-mode. Then in October 2001, NTT DoCoMo officially launched its 3G high speed wireless internet service in Tokyo and then the users become more passionate.
Here it is discussed about the five factors which make technology adoption a whole new game: * We are all overwhelmed by change. Here it is said that more is changing faster know about it sooner. * Users are more important. Mostly the products which now a days in the market if it can be analyzed most of the B2B products are consumer products where individual and unpredictable preferences matter a lot. * Information products are different. These products mainly mixing of device, service, and information so it is harder to know about the demand, fair price and all these add risk and inconvenience and losing customers. * Products are getting personal. * Innovation now means new product TYPES.
So, here we come to know that innovation is imperative, adaptation is a hard part, and key to adoption is people and for i-mode – how is it used love to make their own products runaway hit like i-mode? And here they began with four principles: * Promote personal passions. Specially watch for the ways that adopting your product can bring them to closer to each other, gain them status, or make them feel good socially. * Go beyond the mainstream. The main work here is to watch carefully whom your product appeals to, what they are using it for. Don’t depend on what customers say, especially in answering structured questions; watch what they are doing, and understand why. * Look for entry populations – and move fast when you find them. Cater to and watch the people who value the product – even if they don’t seem like a viable market by themselves. * Plan to change your product. So, experiment boldly – look closely and deeply at what the experiment is telling you about users – and move fast to reconfigure your market, products or business model into the hit can become.
Here authors has shown another different passion of a person called Keiji Tachikawa about his feelings of inequality and how made that into passion to make DoCoMo such a successful company. He has seen the inequality between the Japanese and the US in every aspects of his life of post IInd world war period. He felt inequality in each and everywhere is it democratic is it economic and the authors have written five principles of inequality: * Inequality makes trade possible. For DoCoMo i-mode there are different values on the same commodity can be created. But DoCoMo’s i-mode services those people who need subway maps, and other people who had them to sell. * Inequality increases demand * Inequality drives competition. * Inequality enables innovation * Inequality of information creates windfalls
So, according to Tachikawa “you have to look the future and forget about the glories of the past.” His goal for DoCoMo is to maintain the top market capitalization in Japan and also achieve comparable levels with Europe and USA in financial results. He noted that today’s technology though it is called multimedia. Tends to rely primarily on one sense and that’s why he wanted future version of i-mode to supply three of the five human senses through communication device. In an away his visions are highly memorable. So, he showed us different lessons of managing inequality: * If you are not in first place, no matter how great the distance seems, you can make it up. * Leapfrogging is not just for kids. * Being second can be fantastic motivation. * When leapfrogging, use the infrastructure that does exist.
Find the emotion that is best at moving you forward, as Tachikawa did. Don’t simply use it, but feed it. If you are fortunate enough to share key values with your team, see how far that internal motivation will take you.
After that the author has shown another beautiful character of great men named Kouji Ohboshi, Chairman of DoCoMo. He was a man who has the passion to get into each and every place of the organization and then realised the process of work and he is thus called as “Cockroach president”. He was the man who told the employees when the organization was in its bad situation and he had five year plan to make the fledging, floundering DoCoMo a company they could all be proud of. “Trust me to do this,” he told them, “I guarantee I can”. Impatience is more than a feeling for him. He said that he believes the key to management is speed. He first realized the customer complaints centred on the following three topics; 1. Network issues 2. Handset issues 3. Price issues
He revised the price strategy which was more than the US markets. He focused his impatient demand on right goal: a fast solution that still preserved DoCoMo’s most important customer base. In trying to get head start on his vision foe DoCoMo’s future, the chairman had gone around the system completely. He announced strategy in the press to force the internal consensus and the idea of meeting with middle level managers in partner firms before asking cooperation from the top first downright un-Japanese.
The lessons from cockroach president are classic, even basic. Working with that principle, anybody may also emulate Ohboshi by remembering that: * Leadership is hands on – even at the very top * Speed really can kill. * But speed also creates bigger and more often. * Know when, and how, to bend the rules – or even break them. * In the end, focus on customers.
As DoCoMo has gained this much success in the way and within a very short period of time many of the business people think that it’s the luck which support. The author has put into a different manner that we can say it luck but the main thing is that at that point of time each and every decision of the company was right and the condition and situation all favour of the DoCoMo.
We can say from the book is Enoki’s entrance in DoCoMo and the support and the trust of the management to him which gave DoCoMo few more professionals outside of DoCoMo which was a fabulous decision to make network as well as the minds of different areas of people which helped the company a lot.
We can say that and believe that finding right people is crucial, and DoCoMo had some luck there. But key people also made some very smart deliberate decisions – starting at least as far back as hiring Enoki – which created a kind of chain reaction. Good decisions, Good people, and resulting luck have compounded, with Enoki to Hashimoto, who recommended Matsunaga, who brought in Sasakawa and Natsuno. We can see the energy boumcing around among these people created not just a new product, but a radical new creative culture. DoCoMo successfully transformed itself into the kind of organization that makes its own luck.
The lucky points which helped DoCoMo: * DoCoMo was lucky that the internet hadn’t taken off yet in Japan. * DoCoMo was lucky that the banks were in trouble * DoCoMo was lucky that standards hadn’t solified * DoCoMo was lucky that Bandai came along. * DoCoMo was lucky to have competitors with egos
Here the authors feels very strongly indeed : No matter how much luck DoCoMo has had, no matter how foreign i-mode seems to your market, it would be a mistake discount DoCoMo’s success so far, or its prospects in the rest of the world.
DoCoMo’s experience, seen from the inside, suggests that you build on five principles: 1. Luck is not just a random event. 2. But you do need lucky external events. 3. You can’t fight culture. 4. No matter how lucky you are, you still need leadership 5. Luck comes from people.
Here the authors has explained about the fun the people use to have in their jobs in DoCoMo and how these kind of fun helped the company to become a grand success. So, what at last our authors suggest are: * Make sure your teams’ environment supports innovation and high performance by adding some fun elements. * Expect innovation from the organization, not just from “creatives.” * Think fun in your – including the hidden reasons people might buy. * Put your heart into it.
So, after reading this book “DoCoMo JAPAN’S WIRELESS TSUNAMI” I can say that the business not always make by the theories it’s something extra which you need to have to build a business and run smoothly. I would request everybody should once go through the book and find out how a simple company become a successful company of the mobile industry.
