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, 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-Kei tai 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.
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/>Foreword
You try hard everyday, but your work doesn’t go well. Your sales figures are
stagnant. Relationships with those around you are strained. You’re wondering
whether you should change jobs. You’d like to launch collaborations with other
companies or other new projects, but things just don’t go as planned. Perhaps
you’re struggling with anxieties such as these.

After working at The Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ), the leading investment bank
at that time, for 13 years, these were the sort of worries that I had to face up to
when, 35-years-old and hopelessly out-of-touch with information technology, I
arrived at NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile operator in Japan.
But mastering one certain skill enabled me to realize the massive project of
launching the Osaifu-Keitai (“mobile wallet”) credit service, which was hitherto
unchartered territory. Moreover, during the four years of the venture investment
over 10 companies were able to gain a listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange,
and the company earn profits of over 10 billion yen. Now I’m Professor at BBT
University teaching Corporate Strategy, Platform Strategy and also most of my
six books were ranked in No1 in Amazon Japan bestselling ranking as
bestsellers. The method that enables these formidable achievements and the
subject of this case is what I call “Platform way of thinking and business alliance
skills.”
As I moved from financial institution, the idea hit me. What will happen if
DoCoMo as Carrier entered Credit Card (not card) business?
When we buy something at a convenience store, we take the money out of our
wallets and pay for it. If our wallets are empty we use our cash cards to take
some out of the ATM. We use a membership card when we rent a DVD, and
various store cards when we shop at a department store. The same goes for
restaurants, fast food joints, clothes shops, music stores and so on. If you think
about it, our wallets are crammed full with cards of every description.
Now these are all merged into a single mobile phone, enabling easy payment in
every store and on every train. Don’t you think that sounds rather handy?
It was the Osaifu-Keitai service that actually made this possible.
note: Osaifu-Keitai is trade mark by NTTDoCoMo
Osaifu-Keitai service is widely used as e-money, train ticket, point reward card,
credit card, key etc. of many compaies such as drag stores, convenience stores
etc which you can download to your mobile terminal by air.
I was in charge of promoting Osaifu-Keitai service at NTTDoCoMo as the head

of i-mode Alliance at i-mode Strategy Department then.
Osaifu-Keitai Credit service is one of applications of Osaifu-Keitai services and
it is Credit card service by NTTDoCoMo itself which you can use by download
to your mobile terminal and what I made its original idea but many people were
involved and help me to the nowadays success in four years.
I subsequently went teaching at University, and accepted several positions as
an external director or advisor to various companies. I'm currently Professor at
BBT University hosted by Ohmae Kennichi, worldwide famous ex-consultant
and also invited lecture at Harvard Business School, Okinawa Graduate School,
and am involved in a wide range of activities including giving speeches and
consulting. Also I’m President of strategic consulting firm, NetStrategy,Inc. and
Senior Advisor at Market Platform Dynamics. The mass media outside of Japan
have described me as the mastermind of credit service by NTTDoCoMo using
mobile terminal, and introduced me as an internationally renowned figure.
But as I’ve just stated, when I started out at DoCoMo I had virtually no
knowledge about information technology, let alone mobile phones. Needless to
say, I brushed up my basic knowledge upon joining DoCoMo, but I can assure
you that when I entered the company I was a complete and utter novice. Since I
managed to create the credit card services by Telecommunication Carrier using
mobile, that is, Osaifu-Keitai credit service, perhaps you imagine that I
happened to excel at coming up with ideas.
No, neither was that the case. In fact, imagining how nice it would be to be able
to pay for everything with just one mobile phone is the sort of idea that anybody
could have come up with.
So how come it was me that turned this idea into a reality?
I think that in the final analysis it was because I involved lots of other people
in the idea or put them on my Platform and got them to help me.
It is the same thoughts that have helped me throughout my entire career. The
core philosophy that flows through the business alliance skills that I want to
explain in this book is: if you don’t know, become the sort of person who

those that do know will help and for that, you be have your own Platform.
However, I don’t believe that those around you will rally to your rescue if you
just sit there creating a fuss about what you’re going to do. Becoming the sort of
person that others will help requires a degree of know-how and a shift in your
thinking; it’s not just a simple question of networking or improving your
character. There’s no need to slavishly network, no need to work flat out on your
self-development. All you will have to do is change the way that you think,
and carry out the methods I will tell you about in this book.
If you actually listen to the story of those who have achieved success, you will
often find that these people, far from being fountains of ideas, are in fact quite
ordinary. But without exception, one of the major factors behind their success is
always that they gained the help of others.
Until now, perhaps you have feverishly sought to sharpen skills that you don’t
possess because you want to be a capable worker, to realize your ambitions, or
be successful. But I’d like you to try to discard all these thoughts while you read
this book.
All you have to do is become the sort of person who others help. If you
can do so, somebody who wants to help you will solve all the problems
that you cannot. Then you’ll suddenly realize that all your ambitions have been
fulfilled. Wouldn’t that be marvelous? But that’s exactly what happened to me,
so it ought to possible for anybody. Now read on, and let me tell you about this
method in detail.
Carl Atsushi HIRANO, Professor at Business Breakthrough University
Chapter 1 Make your own Platform and Alliances will
dramatically change your work and your life
What exactly is an alliance?
An alliance can also be described as a union or a federation; as it suggests the joining of
forces and mutual collaboration of people or groups with differing positions, it is often
used in the business world in the sense of corporate tie-ups or merger and acquisitions.
Now I’d like you to think about what forming an alliance between individuals means.

Let’s say your company is disinterested in environmental issues. If you can bring
together, for example, senior colleagues from other departments or people who have just
joined the company and who think that it should take environmental issues more
seriously, then you can create an “alliance relationship.” Involving large numbers of
people to tell the company’s management that they should take environmental issues
seriously and make a company that is respected by society rather than just pursuing
profit, will have a far greater effect than just ranting about it on your own.
Business alliance skills are the art of cleverly controlling the relationships of people
—some who are business-like, some who are more intimate—while taking into
consideration all their ulterior motives, and using this to get people to make the
most of you for the sake of your own self-realization and growth. The alliance
relationship will fluctuate and change according to the degree of success you achieve in
this.
For example, perhaps your success in making your company more environmentally
aware will earn some words of praise from your boss, and your subordinates set you up
as a leadership figure. The size of the alliance may grow as a result, and it is quite
possible that it will go on to attach itself to another alliance.
Let’s say that the online shopping alliance proved to be a huge hit as a business, and you
end up launching a company. Naturally the alliance relationship evolves into something
else at this point. Business alliance skills cultivate the success of all those involved
while developing an inherent win-win relationship. This is why it is possible for
somebody with just a modicum of talent to become a huge success.
An alliance triggered the birth of the Osaifu-Keitai credit service
I was able to achieve success with the Osaifu-Keitai credit service because I used the
power of the alliance to its optimum.
The Osaifu-Keitai credit service was something that I wanted to do for four years, right
since I joined NTT DoCoMo. Our wallets are overflowing with point cards, and the
stamp cards they hand out at restaurants et cetera, I thought. Digging them out everyday
is a pain, and eventually you lose track of them….
This was the basis for my thoughts, but it would be rather dubious of me to claim that I

was the very first person to make such a suggestion. Right from the start of the
popularization of the Internet and mobile phone contents, there was talk of the “IT
revolution” and the idea of this sort of mobile credit was being mentioned in every
quarter. Even that Bill Gates apparently said that he wanted to make computers smaller
and turn them into wallets. But I was working at DoCoMo—the very best place to
actually make this happen.
I therefore made some suggestions within the company, but unfortunately, since it is a
very large organization, I made little progress. Everyone dismissed the idea as being
unfeasible, or said that credit wasn’t really the business of a telecoms company. I think
the reason for these negative attitudes is that, since nearly all the company’s staff were
from NTT, they weren’t really interested in things like credit services and finance.
Perhaps another reason was the fact that the competitive environment was not as fierce
then as it is now. And the i-mode, launched in 1999, was gaining a degree of success
that drew attention from around the world.
What I used at this point was the alliance method. Of course I wasn’t thinking in terms
of alliances at the time; the idea was “if this can’t be done within the company, I’ll try to
discuss it with people outside.” Ever since i-mode was launched, we always talked over
the formulation of strategies with The Boston Consulting Group, so I took my idea to
some skillful consultants.
I was also invited to a great many study groups at the time, and sometimes spoke
myself, so I decided to consult a certain analyst too. “It’s just my idea, but what do you
think about a telecoms company offering a credit service?” I asked. “That sounds
interesting! Let me think about it,” came the reply—the alliance was formed.
Amazingly, he immediately compiled a report on the theme of what would happen if a
telecoms company entered the credit sector. I must say that this completely took me
aback. However, what surprised me even more, was the result that this had. Once I had
the advice of The Boston Consulting Group and the report of the external analyst, the
mobile phone credit service concept suddenly started to move with a sense of realism.
Of course, the process leading up to realization was long and demanding. Surmounting
such difficulties required more than just bringing together a handful of people—I

needed to involve more people, and build a large alliance.
DoCoMo, Sony and Mitsui Sumitomo—how the power of an individual moved
mammoth companies
Before I joined NTT DoCoMo, I used to work for the Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ),
which is now part of the Mizuho Financial Group.
Though IBJ is now defunct, it was once known as a “King among banks,” an elite
company that promised an assured future. I’ll explain later the details of why it was that
I came to leave such a company and join NTT DoCoMo. Anyway, I heard about the job
from an acquaintance, went for an interview in response to the advertisement, and then
joined DoCoMo. I was first assigned to the new investment project team that they were
setting up. The team was later to merge with the i-mode project.
I suppose that when the start-up of i-mode is mentioned most people would imagine
technicians, creators. But I didn’t really fit into any of those categories. I think that the
reason why a humdrum individual such as myself was asked to take part was because I
was one of the few people at DoCoMo who had experience of finance. The area where
that experience is useful is business tie-ups—in other words, alliances. DoCoMo first
assigned me to the team which had just been separated from the Business Planing
Division, and dealt with managing investee companies and making investments.
The then general manager, told me, “There’s nothing fixed about the job, think for
yourself and do whatever you want.” I started work with the feeling that changing jobs
might have been a disastrous mistake, and that while my annual pay had dropped by
three million yen, I couldn’t very well go back to IBJ now. I was stuck.
I was just a manager with one subordinate, but luckily my boss was a very kind person,
and introduced me to i-mode team persons.
At the time, i-mode had only been available for about three months. It was way off the
target subscriber number of one million, and to be perfectly honest it was not considered
to have been much of a success. But we were already mulling over next move. As the
media continued to develop, what became necessary was know-how that DoCoMo
didn’t possess. This meant the need for alliances tying in other businesses with
DoCoMo.

This is how, after joining DoCoMo in May 1999, I became a member of the i-mode
growth strategy project that sought to examine how to nurture the brand in the future.
Every evening, over a round of hamburgers from McDonalds, a team composed of five
or so of us held meetings late into the night.
For example, we decided to run an advertizing campaign once the number of
subscribers reached one million, something which would necessitate a fully-fledged
collaboration with a company that understood advertisements. Examining the issue with
person of Dentsu (a leading advertizing agency), led to the establishment of D2
Communications, a combined company owned by Dentsu and DoCoMo.
I subsequently had the chance to spearhead an array of alliances. These included
projects with DoCoMo.Com, who specialize in contents advice and venture
investments; a combined company established in conjunction with Lawson, a
convenience store chain; with Coca-Cola Japan and Itochu Corporation, a trading house,
in the C-mode project that enabled people to buy Coke with their mobile phones; a
collaboration between the Fuji Television and NTV television networks; collaborations
between all the domestic convenience store chains; a collaboration involving Sony,
Rakuten and JR East; the buyout of Tower Records, and the huge investment in Mitsui
SumitomoCredit Card.
Through the work of negotiating with other businesses, I came to the conclusion that
alliances between companies are nothing more than alliances between people.
Which company should you build an alliance with? I realized that in actual fact, it’s
rather a question of which people at that company should you work with that is the
most vital factor in a successful project.
“I’m really glad we trusted you, Mr. Hirano.” I still clearly remember the words of then
general manager at Mitsui Sumitomo Bank, the partner bank when we made the huge
investment of around 100 billion yen in Mitsui Sumitomo Card, and launched the new
iD credit brand.
There were frequent stormy scenes during the seven-month negotiations. Being told
several times by the despondent leader of negotiations at Mitsui Sumitomo Card that the
collaboration would probably collapse, suddenly swept away all the exhaustion that had

been building up inside me.
Now let’s return to the dawn of the mobile phone credit service. As I have mentioned,
we had advice from outside, and forward-looking considerations were beginning to be
held within DoCoMo. At the time, my title was Head of i-mode business alliance, and I
had 10 or so people working under me.
Osaifu-Keitai (without Credit service by DoCoMo at that time) sales were increasing
nicely, but the number of places where they could be used was extremely limited. Our
team was given the task of developing places where they could be used. We eagerly
entered into alliances with companies running convenience stores—places where most
people go at least once a week and payment amount is around 3~5 US$.
I also gave over 50 talks a year in Japan and overseas in an effort to raise awareness of
the Osaifu-Keitai. Since Edy was the only form of e-money that could be used with the
Osaifu-Keitai at the time, we cooperated with Bit Wallet (the company that operates
Edy) in steadily developing new partners, company by company. However, most
retailers were extremely reluctant to invest in reader and writer devices that would
enable use of the Osaifu-Keitai, or set aside space in their stores for its installation.
This is where I started to look at the credit card terminals located in most stores. “That’s
it!” I thought—if we can configure the credit card terminals so they accept the Osaifu-
Keitai, the phone will take off immediately. Full of high spirits, our team embarked on a
campaign to create an alliance with a credit card company.
The totally new and promising business of mobile credit. I thought that if we went
round all the credit card companies telling them about the plans of DoCoMo, whose
share of the mobile phone market is over 50%, we would be sure to attract many
sponsors.
But what actually happened was completely the opposite. I had totally miscalculated.
What I had thought would be a mouth-watering idea for the credit card companies was
met with point-blank refusals. Most of the companies responded along the lines of,
“Well, that’s certainly an interesting idea, Mr. Hirano. Perhaps that day will come some
time. But it’s still a little early…What do the other companies say?”
It was at this point that I turned to an alliance from my days at IBJ. Probably the most

famous former employee of IBJ is Hiroshi Mikitani, the CEO and chairman of Rakuten
Inc. By a stroke of luck, he also happened to be a former junior colleague of mine at
IBJ, and we are a still close enough to occasionally have a chat on the phone. Mikitani
did the accounts for the gymnastics club at his university, and always responded
graciously to any request that I, his senior, made to him. He kindly participated twice as
a panelist at a couple of large symposiums on mobile phone-related themes. Though he
is often presented in certain quarters as being a charismatic type, having known him for
many years since we worked at IBJ, I see him as a serious business leader who is
always thinking of the growth of his company and his employees.
Following on from this, the next person to whom I gained an introduction was
Yoshifumi Nishikawa, then head of Mitsui Sumitomo Bank. The then Mitsui Sumitomo
Bank had been somewhat late in formulating a card strategy, and the Mitsui Sumitomo
Card had been left playing catch-up with JCB, the sector leader.
With the bank having finally finished disposing of the bad debts incurred during the
bubble years, it was moving towards a more aggressive set-up. This timing paid off with
the result of direct negotiations between DoCoMo’s executive and Mitsui Sumitomo’s
being the green light for the project.
As a former banker myself, I know that the lock-step mentality of financial institutions
is extraordinarily strong; once a highly profitable top-ranking company like Mitsui
Sumitomo makes a move it has an immediate snowballing effect.
The end result was that the collaborative tie-ups expanded, as one alliance led to
another, and the Osaifu-Keitai credit service developed with a burst of acceleration.
Business alliance skills turn the “impossible” into the possible
“The power to imagine and to do”—this is what I call the capacity for imagination
plus the ability to get things done. As a matter of fact, I don’t really think that capacity
for imagination, with the exception of a few special people, varies greatly from person
to person. As I explain in the next chapter, most people have thought about more or less
the same thing at least once, and the vast majority of the ideas in the world are rehashed
or modified versions of concepts already in existence. I think the reason that hardly
anyone makes a reality of the things that they think or hope about is due, rather, to an

insufficient ability to get things done. But there’s not really such a difference in people’s
ability to get things done either, and there are limits to the size of the achievements that
a person can make on their own—however hard they may try.
So what constitutes this difference in people’s ability to get things done? I think that it
lies in the difference between those who try to go it alone and eventually giving up
because something proves to be impossible, and those who realize that while they
may not have the individual strength to obtain their goal, they can borrow the
strength of many other people to reach their goal.
However, don’t start of by imagining the dream team of reliable, cooperative and
talented supporters you hope for, because you can’t create a network like that overnight.
That’s why you have to show your goal, and get other people with a common
direction involved in one capacity or another. Bringing together, as a matter of
course, people who will help to make something a reality is the idea of the alliance.
It would in fact have been utterly impossible to achieve the Osaifu-Keitai without
involving other people. This is not merely a question of routine business matters such as
DoCoMo’s lack of know-how or an inability to do business without corporate tie-ups. In
the first place, our idea was no more than a vague notion that we wanted to popularize
the Osaifu-Keitai, and that it would be handy if you could pay for things with your
mobile phone.
But the more I got people involved the more the originally opaque idea turned into a
feasible shape.
One example of this is the FeliCa noncontact technology developed by Sony. The
origins of FeliCa lie in a conversation about mobile phone collaborations between
DoCoMo and JR East. The fact is, services using 2D barcodes and infrared ray
technologies aimed at enabling tie-ups between mobile phones and stores had been
underway for several years, long before the Osaifu-Keitai using FeliCa.
Experiments for the service were carried out at Lawson stores,the second largest
convenience store. The C-mode project conducted in conjunction with Coca-Cola was
finally realized as a result of their vice-president’s persistent persuasion of the US head
office.

But things didn’t always go according to plan, with the technology’s operability
sometimes being poor, and awareness of it low. I didn’t have any formula to solve these
issues, but with the help of this record of failures, the fact is that people became
accustomed to doing things with their mobile phones and the transfer to the current
FeliCa system was carried out smoothly.
People’s behavior and lifestyles do not change easily. But the larger an alliance
becomes, with the participation of people with a thorough knowledge of each
sector all sorts of problems are solved thanks to the knowledge of those involved.
People often say that “this won’t get through the company,” or “it may have got this far,
but the boss of such-and-such department will never approve.” This is precisely what
happened with the Osaifu-Keitai credit service project.
There is, without fail, somebody in the world who can enable the things that you can’t
do on your own. Conversely, there are also people who are yearning for your skills. If
people like these link up with each other, in a quite miraculous manner things that have
previously been impossible become feasible. As these people have a mutual need, surely
it’s easy for them to enter into an alliance providing that they find out about each other.
What you have to do at this point is, first of all, to take the initiative and eagerly
make people aware of what you want to do and what you can do.
Why are there so many people around who say they created i-mode?
I have described the realization of things through alliances as a “miracle.” In fact, by
gaining the involvement of a large number of people you can achieve results beyond
your imagination.
It’s possible that what began as a little idea can turn into a massive project with a
turnover of billions of yen.
The greatest example of this is DoCoMo’s innovative i-mode project, which laid the
groundwork for the Osaifu-Keitai.
Even more than the current diffusion level, what is really astonishing about i-mode is
the fact that there is a large number of people around who say “Actually it was me that
created it.” I think that this is because there are so many people who became involved
with the plan, regarding the original suggestion as their own.

It is probable that i-mode too, started as a little idea. The origins were a simple
instruction to my boss and the leader of the i-mode team, by the then president of
DoCoMo, to look at ways of making money other than telephone charges.
The leader then consulted the director of a friend’s company. He was introduced to lady
of the editor of the magazine, who in turn suggested the participation of DoCoMo, who
was still a student and working for the magazine as a part-timer. With experts in each
field offering to “do something” about the new idea, the idea grew larger and
larger, and this sense of wanting to help became more pronounced. The end result
was a smash hit product that virtually anybody now enjoys the benefits of.
The person that makes the platform benefits the most eventually
There has been a dramatic increase in recent years of companies and individuals who
have achieved great success through alliances.
Toyota Motors, one of Japan’s leading companies, is a good example. They are the
company at the forefront of the motor business, and the impetus with which they have
outstripped their rivals is famous. But along with Aishin, an affiliate, they are in fact
involved in tie-ups with many of their competitors in the sector—companies including
BMW, Volkswagen and Peugeot. Rather than resulting in eating into each other, these
alliances are in fact helping to provide their fans with high quality products.
Another factor that has captured my attention in making the most of alliances is the
platform-style business model. I think that the winners in the 21st century will
probably be the businesses that are able to achieve this model.
What the Osaifu-Keitai is aiming at too, is indeed such a platform-style business. A
brief look at the market suggests companies that have proved to be winners in the
Internet sector, like Google and Microsoft, or Facebook. Elsewhere, companies outside
of the virtual world, such as Roppongi-hills, and Aeon and Seven and I can be said to
have grown after adopting this platform philosophy.
The platform philosophy is really the provision of a place where alliances can be
formed.
In the case of Rakuten, for example, the company made a large online shop framework
in which other smaller shops are free to conduct business. Aeon, on the other hand,

provides large shopping centers in the suburbs, and then invites tenant companies to
locate their shops in them. Lawson, a convenience store, has become as convenient as
the name suggests by locating post boxes within its stores.
If the rest is left to the companies that participate in the platform provided, their ideas
may change the platform into something that the providing party never dreamed of.
Google, for example, was provided originally by companies—but it was surely the
public users who made the site evolve into what it is now.
It’s fine just to provide a “place” and basically leave ideas for the users and clients
to develop themselves. Even then, the person that is going to benefit most at the end of
the day is the original creator of the platform. And these people will, quite naturally, be
the big winners of the 21st century.
How much of a “place” can you offer to people?
Now it’s not just the corporate business model—we have already entered a day and
age in which even individuals and single projects have created a platform and
reaped success. And in actual fact, a great many of these people who have achieved
success have done so on an individual basis.
a successful author and friend of mine runs a website supporting women and has
become a charismatic figure among many working women.
The company that is making the most of this format of success through alliances in
terms of the way that each of its employees works is probably Google. The company
has a rule that is known as the “20% to 80% rule,” which allows its staff to spend 20%
of their time at work on themes that they find personally interesting. All the staff think
about new projects, and when an idea that looks interesting appears, they are free to ask
all their colleagues what they think about it. If their colleagues also think that the idea
looks interesting, or offer to do what they can to help with it, it leads to the
establishment of a project. If the company itself thinks it’s a good idea too, then it’s
formally adopted as a part of Google’s worldwide business.
As the example of Google shows too, a simple idea turns into something that can be
achieved by getting other people involved. This is exactly why the people who
achieve success at Google are not just those who come up with ideas, but those who

have “the power to imagine and to do.” I think it’s this result that underpins the huge
progress made by the company.
Trust your feelings as you go forward
When you’re working within one organization or company, your set of values becomes
stiff and fixed, and the chances you have for making new discoveries dwindle rapidly.
But if people with various different ways of thinking join your alliance, your own
fixed opinions will crumble and fall, and you will quickly start to have all sorts of
new ideas.
Recently, there are a great many people who say things like “What I do is this,” or “This
is my specialty,” people who seek to map out their futures armed just with some plan
they have dreamed up in their head. But those who enter into alliances will surely soon
realize just how petty and restricted such thoughts are.
Therefore levels of individual success expand to heights previously undreamed of
through the use of business alliance skills. I hope that you, the reader, have this
unknown potential.
My current work was created by and is still supported by alliances. I became an advisor
to a company through the introduction of a former junior colleague. My career
progressed haphazardly, but when I thought about it I realized that my income had
increased by more than ten times the salary I earned when I first joined the company—
profit was part of the package too.
Of course, I hadn’t envisaged such a future when I joined DoCoMo. One of the reasons
I left IBJ and joined DoCoMo in the first place was a growing feeling that you only live
once and that I wanted to keep on testing myself. IBJ’s ranking at the time was
plummeting, and I was acutely aware that the number of projects brought to me in the
office were declining.
Even then, nobody actually entertained the thought that this bank might actually
disappear (although I take pride in the fact that my intuitions often hit the target). Above
all, I began to want to try a job outside finance, a job where you can actually see what
you’re doing.
It was at that moment that I encountered the tool of the mobile phone. The catalyst for

that encounter was the death of my mother.
My mother died of cancer in 1994, and a tense period of three months had preceded her
passing away. Despite this I was working hard at IBJ each day, my father was lecturing
at medical college and had little time, and my sister was occupied with her small
children. We were all working and had no way to get in touch with each other in an
emergency. I, my father and my sister were all beside ourselves with worry when we
thought about my mother.
It was mobile phones that helped to solve this anxiety. Of course, DoCoMo didn’t exist
in those days, and we had to go to NTT and hire a bulky phone at a cost of 70,000 yen.
Even so, having the phone in my hand gave me a sense of security, a feeling that the
family was linked together. I thought to myself that though the mobile phone had yet to
be popularized, it was certain to change the world.
So when I heard that NTT DoCoMo was recruiting staff, I had an exciting feeling that
maybe I would get the chance to become involved with mobile phones. However, those
around me were dead against the idea. And naturally so, because while the company
may now be one of the companies that people most want to work for, at the time it was
regarded as no more than a somewhat nebulous venture spinoff of NTT.
Nonetheless, I was definitely suited to that direction. It wasn’t a case of the future
potential, or planning for the years ahead. When I look back on those days now I think it
was vital that I believed my instinct and listened to my feelings. You shouldn’t have to
entice others with overblown phrases such as “follow me and you’ll get lucky” or “I’m
going to be big one day.” What you have to show is a clear vision: this is what I want
to do.
What you first need to do when you make your move is to change your own
perceptions
I subsequently left DoCoMo, and after working as executive at a venture business I
launched my own company in October 2007. The reason was, again, because a strong
feeling of “I want to do this!” pulled me in that direction.
When I left DoCoMo, i-mode had become popularized as a perfectly everyday platform,
and the Osaifu-Keitai credit service had already been launched. So I didn’t really think

that there was anything left for me to do at DoCoMo even if I stayed. But I love
DoCoMo and still working for them now.
I believe that the first step in business alliance skills is to establish your own
thoughts, a single business unit that transcends the company. You take something
that you want to do and launch it as a business project. In response to that project, and
alliance will be formed that consists of both your bosses and your colleagues. As the
alliance progresses, you always play the leading role. So if something else that you
want to do turns up, the alliance will also shift in that direction.
Over the course of your life there will naturally be times when a whole new alliance
relationship suddenly takes off—but this doesn’t mean that your “old” alliance
relationships are something that you can afford to cast off. Even if its role changes, all
you have to do is skillfully use the relationships in the alliance according to your own
wishes. It doesn’t even really matter whether the alliance proves to be useful or not. All
you should do is pursue your alliance with a bubbling sense of anticipation that
something may be just around the corner.
Putting into practice business alliance skills is a question of trying to portray you
yourself as a “company,” and perhaps the people who join the alliance will be your
“staff” and your “clients.” Now the important question is how to nurture “you, the
company.” I see this as an exciting game, not a daunting task based on competition
principles.
During my IBJ days, my boss and a director of the bank at the time, was always saying
to me: “I think that work is a sort of game—don’t lose the forest for the trees.”
Think about it. The personal growth that you can obtain through alliances is unlimited.
But you will be stimulated with every alliance, and become able to create ever more
interesting ideas. The results will be the sort of progress that you never expected, a
progress that will lead to your future success story.
You will find the sort of success that you cannot imagine now. What do you reckon?
Sounds exciting, doesn’t it. In the following chapters I will explain the five points about
business alliance skills that will enable you to make your own Platform and this shift:
alliance thinking; information collection and sorting; networking; learning methods; and

career enhancement.
Information collection using alliances will bring you huge volumes of precious
information that you could never have gained access to before. The networking skills
covered in this book concentrate on how you should go about creating alliance
relationships; through alliances you will become able to exchange opinions with experts
in all sorts of fields—people who you’ve never had the chance to speak to.
With my learning methods, the alliance will expand vastly what you are able to find out
and what you can learn. This will enable you to make your own platform and enhance
your career and reach a position that is unimaginable to you now.
But the starting point for this future has to be “what should I do now?” What you have
to do is change the way you think. And this means, first of all, acting with courage.
Chapter 2 Platform Way of Thinking
Don’t become “prominent”—become somebody who
others help
Turn your thoughts into everybody’s thoughts
Usually, when there is something that you want to do you decide upon a rough outline,
draw up a plan or proposal, and submit it to your superior. But when we were trying to
launch the Osaifu-Keitai credit service , I tried to get other people involved from the
concept stage, before there were any concrete ideas.
In the first place, the idea of the Osaifu-Keitai credit service is the simple concept of
using a mobile phone instead of a credit card. However, when it comes to the concrete
plan there are technical questions, systematic problems of the finance sector and so on
—in other words, a stream of negative factors. The idea of a telecoms company entering
the credit sector was unheard of, and was in a way a world-first.
In general, the larger that a company becomes, the more reluctant it is to get involved in
matters that it doesn’t understand. I thought that my idea would stand a better chance
of being realized if I spread awareness about it to such an extent that everybody
would understand and want to do it.
In concrete terms, what I did was to exhaustively seek the opinions of Managing
Director of Morgan Stanley, who I had known since my IBJ days, external consultants

and other acquaintances, all of whom I asked: “I’ve got an idea that nobody in the
company take seriously, something that I’m wondering could be done—what do you
think of this? Is it really out of the question?” Of course, I didn’t take any written plans
or proposals.
These inquiries earned me all sorts of information about overseas strategies and case
studies concerning card companies and telecoms companies. In those days I had
acquaintances at Mitsui Sumitomo Card, so I tried bouncing my idea off to one of their
directors. A professional among professionals, he courteously explained all the
mechanisms and actual methods used in the credit card sector. I never imagined at the
time that this conversation would prove to be the prototype of DoCoMo’s iD credit
brand.
In the office, I thought that it would be rather difficult for our little i-mode team to move
the vast organization that DoCoMo is. It’s the same at any company, but naturally
enough, responses from other departments bubble to the surface—people pointed out
the risks and listed reasons why such-and-such couldn’t be done, or just said they hadn’t
heard anything about it. At this point, one of the directors of DoCoMo suggested that we
wiped the slate clean and convene a study group on the Osaifu-Keitai credit service
composed of the representatives of each department. I must confess that when I heard
the phrase “wipe the slate clean” I thought that that was the end of the project, that it
would never become a reality. The shock made me quite ill.
However, after examining the issue for seven months the conclusions of the study group
were that the Osaifu-Keitai credit service should be supported. This meant that, with an
ongoing exchange of opinions between all the departments, the project would go ahead
as a cross-company project upon which the fate of DoCoMo was riding. Once the
impetus for promoting the project was in place, we quickly gained the know-how of
talented people from every part of DoCoMo, and the problems that our team had
struggled with were solved in rapid succession.
If the project had been conducted by the i-mode team alone I don’t think it would have
been possible for us to pull off such a massive task. The launch of the study group led in
the end to the greatest effect.

As you can see, the methodology of the “Platform and alliance thinking” idea is to
turn your own ideas into something that belongs to everybody.
The chain reaction of ideas is the fine line between success and failure
If it’s your idea, why on earth do you have to change it into something that belongs to
everybody? Perhaps some readers will think that this could do nothing but harm. You
often hear things like “This is patented,” or “I can’t tell you because we don’t want any
know-how leaks,” particularly in sectors such as venture businesses.
But if you stick to this “my idea” attitude, will your proposal actually lead to significant
results? If you keep all the profits of a project that will yield one million yen to
yourself, all you will get is one million yen. But what if that project can be turned
into one that creates 10 billion yen in profits? Even if you gained just 1% of that
sum, it would represent 100 million yen—100 times your one million yen profit. I
think that this way of thinking is the difference between the success or the failure of a
large enterprise.
Whether it’s a new product, a sales plan, or a proposal for improving business, in the
final analysis no progress will be made unless the participation of a large number of
people is obtained. Moreover, the participants are not working for the sake of the person
who has made the proposal—they are working for the good of the company, and above
all, for their own sakes.
Which is why it is clearly more of a motivation for people to work towards
something they feel they have played a part in thinking up, rather than something
that is somebody else’s idea. Still more in my case, this was true at the stage before the
idea was realized. If I had kept it as “my idea” then very few people would have helped
me try to turn it into a reality. But when an idea becomes “everybody’s idea” then all
those involved become linked together by a fervor to make a reality of this
common idea, which in turn creates a huge power. This fervor is an utterly essential
part of successful business alliance skills.
What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine
If the wonderful idea that you thought up all by yourself becomes “everybody’s idea,”
perhaps you won’t gain the recognition you deserve within the company; or perhaps

your achievements will be usurped by somebody else—I suppose some people may
harbor such thoughts. In the previous chapter I mentioned the large number of people
around who claim to have “created” i-mode. Apparently there is a similar situation
surrounding Nintendo’s Pokemon (Pocket Monsters) characters, and I believe that such
problems are now called the “Pokemon Phenomenon.” In the case of the Osaifu-Keitai
too, there are indeed a great many people who claim to have created it. But surely this
just proves how successful the product was.
Apparently at some companies the success of the Osaifu-Keitai led to some people
receiving special two-stage promotion or bonuses, but nothing of the sort happened at
DoCoMo. Of course, we didn’t even expect such treatment. What really pleased me
were the words of DoCoMo’s president then: “I’m very grateful,” and : “Your name will
go down in history, Mr. Hirano.”
Somebody is always watching properly.
Some readers are perhaps worried that discussing things with their colleagues may
lead to their ideas being stolen. However, regardless of how good an idea is, 99% of
people are unable to put it into practice. An idea that can be stolen so easily is not
much of an idea.
Aside from the question of praise, the fact that I was able to realize such a large project
was, in the first place, because I was working for the huge “platform” of DoCoMo. And
what was much more important to me than praise, was that I learnt through the project
how to move an organization and acquired business alliance skills to move other people
—an invaluable experience that I would not exchange for anything else.
Manipulating people from both inside and outside the organization enabled me to
realize a project that it would have been quite impossible complete on my own.
The project was realized by forcing a chemical reaction between the ideas of various
individuals, and achieving a shift in perspectives—from the perspective of my own
job to the perspective of soliciting like-minded people, and finally to the
perspective of the “organization,” in other words, the company. This sort of
“managerial aesthetic” of looking at things from the company’s perspective is a vital
part of “Platform and alliance thinking.”

Your real job is to turn the impossible into the possible
Now let’s turn our thoughts towards the significance of making an alliance for making
your platform. The reason that ideas, proposals, wishes and dreams go unfulfilled is the
existence of certain obstacles. There is always a bottleneck somewhere.
The factors behind such bottlenecks are varied—they may include questions of ability
or time, personal relationships or money. Since all of these are beyond your control,
ideas and wishes end up as “impossibilities.” But how about making a prerequisite of
getting other people involved from the outset?
Taking an extreme example, even somebody who wanted to move to Mars would have a
better than zero chance if they could get NASA or other space development agencies
involved. My point is that a “bottleneck” is little more than a case of “I can’t do it,” and
if you can just move the “I” from the equation then almost anything will change
from impossible to possible.
The i-mode service was made a reality by successively turning the “impossible” parts
into the “possible” through the use of alliances. For example, the ringtone service was a
massive hit. It arose from conversations between DoCoMo and persons of Fuetrek and
Faith. DoCoMo, however, lacked the technology to realize the idea, and since they
didn’t have the musical software in the first place, the absence of the technology meant
of course that the ringtone idea was “impossible.” But if we got a company that had
the technology and a company that had the sound source to join the alliance, the
impossible would become the possible. What actually happened was that we solved
the technical issue by getting the phone makers to fit a sound source chip called “MIDI”
on the mobiles, while a karaoke company provided the music for the ringtones.
The idea was the same with the Osaifu-Keitai. If, for example, you want people to be
able to buy things from a vending machine using their mobile phones, rather than
racking your brains with for possible solutions the quickest route would be to talk
to somebody who could make this happen.
The reason that we actually managed to make this idea a reality arose from a query
about the possibility of tying up mobiles and vending machines, made by Coca-Cola
and Itochu Corporation. This eventually turned into the C-mode service, a one million-

member service that was the first in the world to connect mobile phones with vending
machines; its roots were no more than a series of muddled trial and error experiments
conducted by junior staff at the three companies. They started from scratch, and
progressed after gradual experimentation and repeated success and failure. And over
this process, the originally diverse ideas of what DoCoMo wanted to do and what Coca-
Cola wanted to do somehow expanded into one big idea that both parties wanted to do.
This circle of people rapidly grew into a fearsome entity, but what always lay at the
heart of it was Coca-Cola’s and my teams’ strong sense of wanting to do something, and
to mutually move each other’s company. This sense gradually turned into a deep
relationship of trust, which permeated through to every member of the teams. A
burning wish to break the mold of the company and make a certain project
succeed led, one by one, to the solving of all the bottlenecks caused by technical
obstacles.
How to involve in the alliance the people you don’t get on with
I have covered how to overcome the technical obstructions, but possibly the biggest
bottleneck when you try to do something at a company is not the physical question of
technology but the obstacle of human relationships. But all you have to do is use
“Platform and alliance thinking” to reverse your thoughts on this matter.
This is not a matter of “persuading” those who are against you, more a case of
getting them into your platform by alliance, in other words, of making them your
partners. And how do you that? Instead of telling your clients or subordinates that
“This is the situation, so just get on with it!” and merely seeking to force through your
own opinions, you have to appeal to them—”Do you think I could possibly ask you to
think with me about such-and-such,” or “I’d really like to have your input, and want to
think about this with you.” It is important that this should not be done in a way that
suggests you are negotiating; these people should be made to feel that they are, in a
small way, participating: “I’d be most grateful to discuss this with you,” “I’d like
you to come and join us,” et cetera. This may well be the same principle as the
concept that negotiations go better when the two parties are sitting next to or diagonally
opposite each other rather than head-on.

Instead of saying something like: “I’m thinking of doing things this way from now on,
I’m sure it will lead to better sales so please let me have a go,” an exchange with your
manager such as this would be preferable: “I’m thinking of trying this way of doing
things next time. I’m sure it will lead to better sales, but I was wondering what you
thought…”
“Yes, I suppose that would be alright. But why don’t you just change this part?”
“Thank you very much. I’ll be sure to keep you posted about how things progress.”
“OK!”
Strange as it might seem, just this little effort makes the other person feel as though he
or she is participating, and pulls them round to your side. I myself gained a great many
precious opinions by building up alliances in exactly this way.
Winning over those you want to persuade through consultative alliances
I think that people want to help if they are consulted. Perhaps you have found that
people can oppose you merely on the grounds that they were not consulted about
something. When you keep hearing this excuse despite repeatedly trying to explain
yourself, there is a temptation to say something like: “But I’m telling you about it
now!”—but let’s not lose our heads. A reply like that will lead to the very worst
outcome. Regardless of specious logic, any sort of opinion is likely encounter
opposition somewhere.
But if you can bring such people into your alliance from the outset, then they will end
up eagerly supporting you, and if all goes well they will doubtless provide your project
with plenty of publicity by boasting about their input. And when a senior staff member
involves his juniors in an alliance, you can be sure that the juniors will look as if they
have been given a whole new lease of life.
This is not “wheel-greasing,” which in Japan consists of preparing for meetings by
going round all the participants and asking them not to oppose this or that; it’s a
question of getting people involved right from the stage of creating the framework.
What you must take care to do here is to set up a clear basic policy and way of
thinking for yourself. You must make sure that the axle of the wheel is firmly in place.
Otherwise all you will end up with is a copious stream of opinions that descend into

chaos.