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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Foreword

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

After working at The Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ), the leading investment bank at that time, for 13 years, these were the sort of worries that I had to face up to when, 35-years-old and hopelessly out-of-touch with information technology, I arrived at NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile operator in Japan.

But mastering one certain skill enabled me to realize the massive project of launching the Osaifu-Keitai (“mobile wallet”) credit service, which was hitherto unchartered territory. Moreover, during the four years of the venture investment over 10 companies were able to gain a listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and the company earn profits of over 10 billion yen. Now I’m Professor at BBT University teaching Corporate Strategy, Platform Strategy and also most of my six books were ranked in No1 in Amazon Japan bestselling ranking as bestsellers. The method that enables these formidable achievements and the subject of this case is what I call “Platform way of thinking and business alliance skills.”


As I moved from financial institution, the idea hit me. What will happen if DoCoMo as Carrier entered Credit Card (not card) business?

When we buy something at a convenience store, we take the money out of our wallets and pay for it. If our wallets are empty we use our cash cards to take some out of the ATM. We use a membership card when we rent a DVD, and various store cards when we shop at a department store. The same goes for restaurants, fast food joints, clothes shops, music stores and so on. If you think about it, our wallets are crammed full with cards of every description.
Now these are all merged into a single mobile phone, enabling easy payment in every store and on every train. Don’t you think that sounds rather handy?
It was the Osaifu-Keitai service that actually made this possible. 

note: Osaifu-Keitai is trade mark by NTTDoCoMo

Osaifu-Keitai service is widely used as e-money, train ticket, point reward card, credit card, key etc. of many compaies such as drag stores, convenience stores etc which you can download to your mobile terminal by air.
I was in charge of promoting Osaifu-Keitai service at NTTDoCoMo as the head of i-mode Alliance at i-mode Strategy Department then.

Osaifu-Keitai Credit service is one of applications of Osaifu-Keitai services and it is Credit card service by NTTDoCoMo itself which you can use by download to your mobile terminal and what I made its original idea but many people were involved and help me to the nowadays success in four years.


I subsequently went teaching at University, and accepted several positions as an external director or advisor to various companies. I'm currently Professor  at BBT University hosted by Ohmae Kennichi, worldwide famous ex-consultant and also invited lecture at Harvard Business School, Okinawa Graduate School, and am involved in a wide range of activities including giving speeches and consulting. Also I’m President of strategic consulting firm, NetStrategy,Inc. and Senior Advisor at Market Platform Dynamics. The mass media outside of Japan have described me as the mastermind of credit service by NTTDoCoMo using mobile terminal, and introduced me as an internationally renowned figure.

But as I’ve just stated, when I started out at DoCoMo I had virtually no knowledge about information technology, let alone mobile phones. Needless to say, I brushed up my basic knowledge upon joining DoCoMo, but I can assure you that when I entered the company I was a complete and utter novice. Since I managed to create the credit card services by Telecommunication Carrier using mobile, that is, Osaifu-Keitai credit service, perhaps you imagine that I happened to excel at coming up with ideas.

No, neither was that the case. In fact, imagining how nice it would be to be able to pay for everything with just one mobile phone is the sort of idea that anybody could have come up with.

So how come it was me that turned this idea into a reality?

I think that in the final analysis it was because I involved lots of other people in the idea or put them on my Platform and got them to help me.

It is the same thoughts that have helped me throughout my entire career. The core philosophy that flows through the business alliance skills that I want to explain in this book is: if you don’t know, become the sort of person who those that do know will help and for that, you be have your own Platform.

However, I don’t believe that those around you will rally to your rescue if you just sit there creating a fuss about what you’re going to do. Becoming the sort of person that others will help requires a degree of know-how and a shift in your thinking; it’s not just a simple question of networking or improving your character. There’s no need to slavishly network, no need to work flat out on your self-development. All you will have to do is change the way that you think, and carry out the methods I will tell you about in this book.

If you actually listen to the story of those who have achieved success, you will often find that these people, far from being fountains of ideas, are in fact quite ordinary. But without exception, one of the major factors behind their success is always that they gained the help of others.

Until now, perhaps you have feverishly sought to sharpen skills that you don’t possess because you want to be a capable worker, to realize your ambitions, or be successful. But I’d like you to try to discard all these thoughts while you read this book.

All you have to do is become the sort of person who others help. If you can do so, somebody who wants to help you will solve all the problems that you cannot. Then you’ll suddenly realize that all your ambitions have been fulfilled. Wouldn’t that be marvelous? But that’s exactly what happened to me, so it ought to possible for anybody. Now read on, and let me tell you about this method in detail.

Carl Atsushi HIRANO, Professor at Business Breakthrough University


Chapter 1 Make your own Platform and Alliances will dramatically change your work and your life
What exactly is an alliance?
An alliance can also be described as a union or a federation; as it suggests the joining of forces and mutual collaboration of people or groups with differing positions, it is often used in the business world in the sense of corporate tie-ups or merger and acquisitions.

Now I’d like you to think about what forming an alliance between individuals means. Let’s say your company is disinterested in environmental issues. If you can bring together, for example, senior colleagues from other departments or people who have just joined the company and who think that it should take environmental issues more seriously, then you can create an “alliance relationship.” Involving large numbers of people to tell the company’s management that they should take environmental issues seriously and make a company that is respected by society rather than just pursuing profit, will have a far greater effect than just ranting about it on your own.


Business alliance skills are the art of cleverly controlling the relationships of people—some who are business-like, some who are more intimate—while taking into consideration all their ulterior motives, and using this to get people to make the most of you for the sake of your own self-realization and growth. The alliance relationship will fluctuate and change according to the degree of success you achieve in this.

For example, perhaps your success in making your company more environmentally aware will earn some words of praise from your boss, and your subordinates set you up as a leadership figure. The size of the alliance may grow as a result, and it is quite possible that it will go on to attach itself to another alliance.

Let’s say that the online shopping alliance proved to be a huge hit as a business, and you end up launching a company. Naturally the alliance relationship evolves into something else at this point. Business alliance skills cultivate the success of all those involved while developing an inherent win-win relationship. This is why it is possible for somebody with just a modicum of talent to become a huge success.

An alliance triggered the birth of the Osaifu-Keitai credit service
I was able to achieve success with the Osaifu-Keitai credit service because I used the power of the alliance to its optimum.

The Osaifu-Keitai credit service was something that I wanted to do for four years, right since I joined NTT DoCoMo. Our wallets are overflowing with point cards, and the stamp cards they hand out at restaurants et cetera, I thought. Digging them out everyday is a pain, and eventually you lose track of them….

This was the basis for my thoughts, but it would be rather dubious of me to claim that I was the very first person to make such a suggestion. Right from the start of the popularization of the Internet and mobile phone contents, there was talk of the “IT revolution” and the idea of this sort of mobile credit was being mentioned in every quarter. Even that Bill Gates apparently said that he wanted to make computers smaller and turn them into wallets. But I was working at DoCoMo—the very best place to actually make this happen.

I therefore made some suggestions within the company, but unfortunately, since it is a very large organization, I made little progress. Everyone dismissed the idea as being unfeasible, or said that credit wasn’t really the business of a telecoms company. I think the reason for these negative attitudes is that, since nearly all the company’s staff were from NTT, they weren’t really interested in things like credit services and finance. Perhaps another reason was the fact that the competitive environment was not as fierce then as it is now. And the i-mode, launched in 1999, was gaining a degree of success that drew attention from around the world.

What I used at this point was the alliance method. Of course I wasn’t thinking in terms of alliances at the time; the idea was “if this can’t be done within the company, I’ll try to discuss it with people outside.” Ever since i-mode was launched, we always talked over the formulation of strategies with The Boston Consulting Group, so I took my idea to some skillful consultants.

I was also invited to a great many study groups at the time, and sometimes spoke myself, so I decided to consult a certain analyst too. “It’s just my idea, but what do you think about a telecoms company offering a credit service?” I asked. “That sounds interesting! Let me think about it,” came the reply—the alliance was formed.

Amazingly, he immediately compiled a report on the theme of what would happen if a telecoms company entered the credit sector. I must say that this completely took me aback. However, what surprised me even more, was the result that this had. Once I had the advice of The Boston Consulting Group and the report of the external analyst, the mobile phone credit service concept suddenly started to move with a sense of realism. Of course, the process leading up to realization was long and demanding. Surmounting such difficulties required more than just bringing together a handful of people—I needed to involve more people, and build a large alliance.

DoCoMo, Sony and Mitsui Sumitomo—how the power of an individual moved mammoth companies
Before I joined NTT DoCoMo, I used to work for the Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ), which is now part of the Mizuho Financial Group.

Though IBJ is now defunct, it was once known as a “King among banks,” an elite company that promised an assured future. I’ll explain later the details of why it was that I came to leave such a company and join NTT DoCoMo. Anyway, I heard about the job from an acquaintance, went for an interview in response to the advertisement, and then joined DoCoMo. I was first assigned to the new investment project team that they were setting up. The team was later to merge with the i-mode project.

I suppose that when the start-up of i-mode is mentioned most people would imagine technicians, creators. But I didn’t really fit into any of those categories. I think that the reason why a humdrum individual such as myself was asked to take part was because I was one of the few people at DoCoMo who had experience of finance. The area where that experience is useful is business tie-ups—in other words, alliances. DoCoMo first assigned me to the team which had just been separated from the Business Planing Division, and dealt with managing investee companies and making investments.

The then general manager,  told me, “There’s nothing fixed about the job, think for yourself and do whatever you want.” I started work with the feeling that changing jobs might have been a disastrous mistake, and that while my annual pay had dropped by three million yen, I couldn’t very well go back to IBJ now. I was stuck.

I was just a manager with one subordinate, but luckily my boss was a very kind person, and introduced me to i-mode team persons.

At the time, i-mode had only been available for about three months. It was way off the target subscriber number of one million, and to be perfectly honest it was not considered to have been much of a success. But we were already mulling over next move. As the media continued to develop, what became necessary was know-how that DoCoMo didn’t possess. This meant the need for alliances tying in other businesses with DoCoMo.

This is how, after joining DoCoMo in May 1999, I became a member of the i-mode growth strategy project that sought to examine how to nurture the brand in the future. Every evening, over a round of hamburgers from McDonalds, a team composed of five or so of us  held meetings late into the night.

For example, we decided to run an advertizing campaign once the number of subscribers reached one million, something which would necessitate a fully-fledged collaboration with a company that understood advertisements. Examining the issue with person of Dentsu (a leading advertizing agency), led to the establishment of D2 Communications, a combined company owned by Dentsu and DoCoMo.

I subsequently had the chance to spearhead an array of alliances. These included projects with DoCoMo.Com, who specialize in contents advice and venture investments; a combined company established in conjunction with Lawson, a convenience store chain; with Coca-Cola Japan and Itochu Corporation, a trading house, in the C-mode project that enabled people to buy Coke with their mobile phones; a collaboration between the Fuji Television and NTV television networks; collaborations between all the domestic convenience store chains; a collaboration involving Sony, Rakuten and JR East; the buyout of Tower Records, and the huge investment in Mitsui SumitomoCredit Card.

Through the work of negotiating with other businesses, I came to the conclusion that alliances between companies are nothing more than alliances between people.

Which company should you build an alliance with? I realized that in actual fact, it’s rather a question of which people at that company should you work with that is the most vital factor in a successful project.

“I’m really glad we trusted you, Mr. Hirano.” I still clearly remember the words of  then general manager at Mitsui Sumitomo Bank, the partner bank when we made the huge investment of around 100 billion yen in Mitsui Sumitomo Card, and launched the new iD credit brand.

There were frequent stormy scenes during the seven-month negotiations. Being told several times by the despondent leader of negotiations at Mitsui Sumitomo Card that the collaboration would probably collapse, suddenly swept away all the exhaustion that had been building up inside me.

Now let’s return to the dawn of the mobile phone credit service. As I have mentioned, we had advice from outside, and forward-looking considerations were beginning to be held within DoCoMo. At the time, my title was Head of i-mode business alliance, and I had 10 or so people working under me. 
Osaifu-Keitai (without Credit service by DoCoMo at that time) sales were increasing nicely, but the number of places where they could be used was extremely limited. Our team was given the task of developing places where they could be used. We eagerly entered into alliances with companies running convenience stores—places where most people go at least once a week and payment amount is around 3~5 US$.

I also gave over 50 talks a year in Japan and overseas in an effort to raise awareness of the Osaifu-Keitai. Since Edy was the only form of e-money that could be used with the Osaifu-Keitai at the time, we cooperated with  Bit Wallet (the company that operates Edy) in steadily developing new partners, company by company. However, most retailers were extremely reluctant to invest in reader and writer devices that would enable use of the Osaifu-Keitai, or set aside space in their stores for its installation.

This is where I started to look at the credit card terminals located in most stores. “That’s it!” I thought—if we can configure the credit card terminals so they accept the Osaifu-Keitai, the phone will take off immediately. Full of high spirits, our team embarked on a campaign to create an alliance with a credit card company.

The totally new and promising business of mobile credit. I thought that if we went round all the credit card companies telling them about the plans of DoCoMo, whose share of the mobile phone market is over 50%, we would be sure to attract many sponsors.

But what actually happened was completely the opposite. I had totally miscalculated. What I had thought would be a mouth-watering idea for the credit card companies was met with point-blank refusals. Most of the companies responded along the lines of, “Well, that’s certainly an interesting idea, Mr. Hirano. Perhaps that day will come some time. But it’s still a little early…What do the other companies say?”

It was at this point that I turned to an alliance from my days at IBJ. Probably the most famous former employee of IBJ is Hiroshi Mikitani, the CEO and chairman of Rakuten Inc. By a stroke of luck, he also happened to be a former junior colleague of mine at IBJ, and we are a still close enough to occasionally have a chat on the phone. Mikitani did the accounts for the gymnastics club at his university, and always responded graciously to any request that I, his senior, made to him. He kindly participated twice as a panelist at a couple of large symposiums on mobile phone-related themes. Though he is often presented in certain quarters as being a charismatic type, having known him for many years since we worked at IBJ, I see him as a serious business leader who is always thinking of the growth of his company and his employees. 
Following on from this, the next person to whom I gained an introduction was Yoshifumi Nishikawa, then head of Mitsui Sumitomo Bank. The then Mitsui Sumitomo Bank had been somewhat late in formulating a card strategy, and the Mitsui Sumitomo Card had been left playing catch-up with JCB, the sector leader.

With the bank having finally finished disposing of the bad debts incurred during the bubble years, it was moving towards a more aggressive set-up. This timing paid off with the result of direct negotiations between DoCoMo’s executive and Mitsui Sumitomo’s  being the green light for the project.

As a former banker myself, I know that the lock-step mentality of financial institutions is extraordinarily strong; once a highly profitable top-ranking company like Mitsui Sumitomo makes a move it has an immediate snowballing effect.

The end result was that the collaborative tie-ups expanded, as one alliance led to another, and the Osaifu-Keitai credit service developed with a burst of acceleration.

Business alliance skills turn the “impossible” into the possible
“The power to imagine and to do”—this is what I call the capacity for imagination plus the ability to get things done. As a matter of fact, I don’t really think that capacity for imagination, with the exception of a few special people, varies greatly from person to person. As I explain in the next chapter, most people have thought about more or less the same thing at least once, and the vast majority of the ideas in the world are rehashed or modified versions of concepts already in existence. I think the reason that hardly anyone makes a reality of the things that they think or hope about is due, rather, to an insufficient ability to get things done. But there’s not really such a difference in people’s ability to get things done either, and there are limits to the size of the achievements that a person can make on their own—however hard they may try.

So what constitutes this difference in people’s ability to get things done? I think that it lies in the difference between those who try to go it alone and eventually giving up because something proves to be impossible, and those who realize that while they may not have the individual strength to obtain their goal, they can borrow the strength of many other people to reach their goal.

However, don’t start of by imagining the dream team of reliable, cooperative and talented supporters you hope for, because you can’t create a network like that overnight. That’s why you have to show your goal, and get other people with a common direction involved in one capacity or another. Bringing together, as a matter of course, people who will help to make something a reality is the idea of the alliance.

It would in fact have been utterly impossible to achieve the Osaifu-Keitai without involving other people. This is not merely a question of routine business matters such as DoCoMo’s lack of know-how or an inability to do business without corporate tie-ups. In the first place, our idea was no more than a vague notion that we wanted to popularize the Osaifu-Keitai, and that it would be handy if you could pay for things with your mobile phone.

But the more I got people involved the more the originally opaque idea turned into a feasible shape.

One example of this is the FeliCa noncontact technology developed by Sony. The origins of FeliCa lie in a conversation about mobile phone collaborations between DoCoMo and  JR East. The fact is, services using 2D barcodes and infrared ray technologies aimed at enabling tie-ups between mobile phones and stores had been underway for several years, long before the Osaifu-Keitai using FeliCa.

Experiments for the service were carried out at Lawson stores,the second largest convenience store. The C-mode project conducted in conjunction with Coca-Cola was finally realized as a result of their vice-president’s persistent persuasion of the US head office.

But things didn’t always go according to plan, with the technology’s operability sometimes being poor, and awareness of it low. I didn’t have any formula to solve these issues, but with the help of this record of failures, the fact is that people became accustomed to doing things with their mobile phones and the transfer to the current FeliCa system was carried out smoothly.

People’s behavior and lifestyles do not change easily. But the larger an alliance becomes, with the participation of people with a thorough knowledge of each sector all sorts of problems are solved thanks to the knowledge of those involved.

People often say that “this won’t get through the company,” or “it may have got this far, but the boss of such-and-such department will never approve.” This is precisely what happened with the Osaifu-Keitai credit service project.

There is, without fail, somebody in the world who can enable the things that you can’t do on your own. Conversely, there are also people who are yearning for your skills. If people like these link up with each other, in a quite miraculous manner things that have previously been impossible become feasible. As these people have a mutual need, surely it’s easy for them to enter into an alliance providing that they find out about each other.

What you have to do at this point is, first of all, to take the initiative and eagerly make people aware of what you want to do and what you can do.

Why are there so many people around who say they created i-mode?
I have described the realization of things through alliances as a “miracle.” In fact, by gaining the involvement of a large number of people you can achieve results beyond your imagination.

It’s possible that what began as a little idea can turn into a massive project with a turnover of billions of yen.

The greatest example of this is DoCoMo’s innovative i-mode project, which laid the groundwork for the Osaifu-Keitai.

Even more than the current diffusion level, what is really astonishing about i-mode is the fact that there is a large number of people around who say “Actually it was me that created it.” I think that this is because there are so many people who became involved with the plan, regarding the original suggestion as their own.

It is probable that i-mode too, started as a little idea. The origins were a simple instruction to my boss and the leader of the i-mode team, by the then president of DoCoMo, to look at ways of making money other than telephone charges.

The leader then consulted the director of a friend’s company. He was introduced to lady of the editor of the magazine, who in turn suggested the participation of DoCoMo, who was still a student and working for the magazine as a part-timer. With experts in each field offering to “do something” about the new idea, the idea grew larger and larger, and this sense of wanting to help became more pronounced. The end result was a smash hit product that virtually anybody now enjoys the benefits of.

The person that makes the platform benefits the most eventually
There has been a dramatic increase in recent years of companies and individuals who have achieved great success through alliances.

Toyota Motors, one of Japan’s leading companies, is a good example. They are the company at the forefront of the motor business, and the impetus with which they have outstripped their rivals is famous. But along with Aishin, an affiliate, they are in fact involved in tie-ups with many of their competitors in the sector—companies including BMW, Volkswagen and Peugeot. Rather than resulting in eating into each other, these alliances are in fact helping to provide their fans with high quality products.

Another factor that has captured my attention in making the most of alliances is the platform-style business model. I think that the winners in the 21st century will probably be the businesses that are able to achieve this model.

What the Osaifu-Keitai is aiming at too, is indeed such a platform-style business. A brief look at the market suggests companies that have proved to be winners in the Internet sector, like Google and Microsoft, or Facebook. Elsewhere, companies outside of the virtual world, such as Roppongi-hills, and Aeon and Seven and I can be said to have grown after adopting this platform philosophy.

The platform philosophy is really the provision of a place where alliances can be formed.

In the case of Rakuten, for example, the company made a large online shop framework in which other smaller shops are free to conduct business. Aeon, on the other hand, provides large shopping centers in the suburbs, and then invites tenant companies to locate their shops in them. Lawson, a convenience store, has become as convenient as the name suggests by locating post boxes within its stores.

If the rest is left to the companies that participate in the platform provided, their ideas may change the platform into something that the providing party never dreamed of. Google, for example, was provided originally by companies—but it was surely the public users who made the site evolve into what it is now.

It’s fine just to provide a “place” and basically leave ideas for the users and clients to develop themselves. Even then, the person that is going to benefit most at the end of the day is the original creator of the platform. And these people will, quite naturally, be the big winners of the 21st century.

How much of a “place” can you offer to people?
Now it’s not just the corporate business model—we have already entered a day and age in which even individuals and single projects have created a platform and reaped success. And in actual fact, a great many of these people who have achieved success have done so on an individual basis.

a successful author and friend of mine runs a website supporting women and has become a charismatic figure among many working women.

The company that is making the most of this format of success through alliances in terms of the way that each of its employees works is probably Google. The company has a rule that is known as the “20% to 80% rule,” which allows its staff to spend 20% of their time at work on themes that they find personally interesting. All the staff think about new projects, and when an idea that looks interesting appears, they are free to ask all their colleagues what they think about it. If their colleagues also think that the idea looks interesting, or offer to do what they can to help with it, it leads to the establishment of a project. If the company itself thinks it’s a good idea too, then it’s formally adopted as a part of Google’s worldwide business.

As the example of Google shows too, a simple idea turns into something that can be achieved by getting other people involved. This is exactly why the people who achieve success at Google are not just those who come up with ideas, but those who have “the power to imagine and to do.” I think it’s this result that underpins the huge progress made by the company.

Trust your feelings as you go forward
When you’re working within one organization or company, your set of values becomes stiff and fixed, and the chances you have for making new discoveries dwindle rapidly. But if people with various different ways of thinking join your alliance, your own fixed opinions will crumble and fall, and you will quickly start to have all sorts of new ideas.

Recently, there are a great many people who say things like “What I do is this,” or “This is my specialty,” people who seek to map out their futures armed just with some plan they have dreamed up in their head. But those who enter into alliances will surely soon realize just how petty and restricted such thoughts are.

Therefore levels of individual success expand to heights previously undreamed of through the use of business alliance skills. I hope that you, the reader, have this unknown potential.

My current work was created by and is still supported by alliances. I became an advisor to a company through the introduction of a former junior colleague.  My career progressed haphazardly, but when I thought about it I realized that my income had increased by more than ten times the salary I earned when I first joined the company—profit was part of the package too.

Of course, I hadn’t envisaged such a future when I joined DoCoMo. One of the reasons I left IBJ and joined DoCoMo in the first place was a growing feeling that you only live once and that I wanted to keep on testing myself. IBJ’s ranking at the time was plummeting, and I was acutely aware that the number of projects brought to me in the office were declining.

Even then, nobody actually entertained the thought that this bank might actually disappear (although I take pride in the fact that my intuitions often hit the target). Above all, I began to want to try a job outside finance, a job where you can actually see what you’re doing.

It was at that moment that I encountered the tool of the mobile phone. The catalyst for that encounter was the death of my mother.

My mother died of cancer in 1994, and a tense period of three months had preceded her passing away. Despite this I was working hard at IBJ each day, my father was lecturing at medical college and had little time, and my sister was occupied with her small children. We were all working and had no way to get in touch with each other in an emergency. I, my father and my sister were all beside ourselves with worry when we thought about my mother.

It was mobile phones that helped to solve this anxiety. Of course, DoCoMo didn’t exist in those days, and we had to go to NTT and hire a bulky phone at a cost of 70,000 yen. Even so, having the phone in my hand gave me a sense of security, a feeling that the family was linked together. I thought to myself that though the mobile phone had yet to be popularized, it was certain to change the world.

So when I heard that NTT DoCoMo was recruiting staff, I had an exciting feeling that maybe I would get the chance to become involved with mobile phones. However, those around me were dead against the idea. And naturally so, because while the company may now be one of the companies that people most want to work for, at the time it was regarded as no more than a somewhat nebulous venture spinoff of NTT.

Nonetheless, I was definitely suited to that direction. It wasn’t a case of the future potential, or planning for the years ahead. When I look back on those days now I think it was vital that I believed my instinct and listened to my feelings. You shouldn’t have to entice others with overblown phrases such as “follow me and you’ll get lucky” or “I’m going to be big one day.” What you have to show is a clear vision: this is what I want to do.

What you first need to do when you make your move is to change your own perceptions
I subsequently left DoCoMo, and after working as executive at a venture business I launched my own company in October 2007. The reason was, again, because a strong feeling of “I want to do this!” pulled me in that direction.

When I left DoCoMo, i-mode had become popularized as a perfectly everyday platform, and the Osaifu-Keitai credit service had already been launched. So I didn’t really think that there was anything left for me to do at DoCoMo even if I stayed. But I love DoCoMo and still working for them now.

I believe that the first step in business alliance skills is to establish your own thoughts, a single business unit that transcends the company. You take something that you want to do and launch it as a business project. In response to that project, and alliance will be formed that consists of both your bosses and your colleagues. As the alliance progresses, you always play the leading role. So if something else that you want to do turns up, the alliance will also shift in that direction.

Over the course of your life there will naturally be times when a whole new alliance relationship suddenly takes off—but this doesn’t mean that your “old” alliance relationships are something that you can afford to cast off. Even if its role changes, all you have to do is skillfully use the relationships in the alliance according to your own wishes. It doesn’t even really matter whether the alliance proves to be useful or not. All you should do is pursue your alliance with a bubbling sense of anticipation that something may be just around the corner.

Putting into practice business alliance skills is a question of trying to portray you yourself as a “company,” and perhaps the people who join the alliance will be your “staff” and your “clients.” Now the important question is how to nurture “you, the company.” I see this as an exciting game, not a daunting task based on competition principles.

During my IBJ days,  my boss and a director of the bank at the time, was always saying to me: “I think that work is a sort of game—don’t lose the forest for the trees.”

Think about it. The personal growth that you can obtain through alliances is unlimited. But you will be stimulated with every alliance, and become able to create ever more interesting ideas. The results will be the sort of progress that you never expected, a progress that will lead to your future success story.

You will find the sort of success that you cannot imagine now. What do you reckon? Sounds exciting, doesn’t it. In the following chapters I will explain the five points about business alliance skills that will enable you to make your own Platform and  this shift: alliance thinking; information collection and sorting; networking; learning methods; and career enhancement.
Information collection using alliances will bring you huge volumes of precious information that you could never have gained access to before. The networking skills covered in this book concentrate on how you should go about creating alliance relationships; through alliances you will become able to exchange opinions with experts in all sorts of fields—people who you’ve never had the chance to speak to.

With my learning methods, the alliance will expand vastly what you are able to find out and what you can learn. This will enable you to make your own platform and enhance your career and reach a position that is unimaginable to you now.

But the starting point for this future has to be “what should I do now?” What you have to do is change the way you think. And this means, first of all, acting with courage.






Chapter 2 Platform Way of Thinking 
Don’t become “prominent”—become somebody who others help

Turn your thoughts into everybody’s thoughts
Usually, when there is something that you want to do you decide upon a rough outline, draw up a plan or proposal, and submit it to your superior. But when we were trying to launch the Osaifu-Keitai credit service , I tried to get other people involved from the concept stage, before there were any concrete ideas.
In the first place, the idea of the Osaifu-Keitai credit service is the simple concept of using a mobile phone instead of a credit card. However, when it comes to the concrete plan there are technical questions, systematic problems of the finance sector and so on—in other words, a stream of negative factors. The idea of a telecoms company entering the credit sector was unheard of, and was in a way a world-first.
In general, the larger that a company becomes, the more reluctant it is to get involved in matters that it doesn’t understand. I thought that my idea would stand a better chance of being realized if I spread awareness about it to such an extent that everybody would understand and want to do it.
In concrete terms, what I did was to exhaustively seek the opinions of Managing Director of Morgan Stanley, who I had known since my IBJ days, external consultants and other acquaintances, all of whom I asked: “I’ve got an idea that nobody in the company take seriously, something that I’m wondering could be done—what do you think of this? Is it really out of the question?” Of course, I didn’t take any written plans or proposals.
These inquiries earned me all sorts of information about overseas strategies and case studies concerning card companies and telecoms companies. In those days I had acquaintances at Mitsui Sumitomo Card, so I tried bouncing my idea off to one of their directors. A professional among professionals, he courteously explained all the mechanisms and actual methods used in the credit card sector. I never imagined at the time that this conversation would prove to be the prototype of DoCoMo’s iD credit brand.
In the office, I thought that it would be rather difficult for our little i-mode team to move the vast organization that DoCoMo is. It’s the same at any company, but naturally enough, responses from other departments bubble to the surface—people pointed out the risks and listed reasons why such-and-such couldn’t be done, or just said they hadn’t heard anything about it. At this point, one of the directors of DoCoMo suggested that we wiped the slate clean and convene a study group on the Osaifu-Keitai credit service composed of the representatives of each department. I must confess that when I heard the phrase “wipe the slate clean” I thought that that was the end of the project, that it would never become a reality. The shock made me quite ill.
However, after examining the issue for seven months the conclusions of the study group were that the Osaifu-Keitai credit service should be supported. This meant that, with an ongoing exchange of opinions between all the departments, the project would go ahead as a cross-company project upon which the fate of DoCoMo was riding. Once the impetus for promoting the project was in place, we quickly gained the know-how of talented people from every part of DoCoMo, and the problems that our team had struggled with were solved in rapid succession.
If the project had been conducted by the i-mode team alone I don’t think it would have been possible for us to pull off such a massive task. The launch of the study group led in the end to the greatest effect.
As you can see, the methodology of the “Platform and alliance thinking” idea is to turn your own ideas into something that belongs to everybody.

The chain reaction of ideas is the fine line between success and failure

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

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

Your real job is to turn the impossible into the possible
Now let’s turn our thoughts towards the significance of making an alliance for making your platform. The reason that ideas, proposals, wishes and dreams go unfulfilled is the existence of certain obstacles. There is always a bottleneck somewhere.
The factors behind such bottlenecks are varied—they may include questions of ability or time, personal relationships or money. Since all of these are beyond your control, ideas and wishes end up as “impossibilities.” But how about making a prerequisite of getting other people involved from the outset?
Taking an extreme example, even somebody who wanted to move to Mars would have a better than zero chance if they could get NASA or other space development agencies involved. My point is that a “bottleneck” is little more than a case of “I can’t do it,” and if you can just move the “I” from the equation then almost anything will change from impossible to possible.
The i-mode service was made a reality by successively turning the “impossible” parts into the “possible” through the use of alliances. For example, the ringtone service was a massive hit. It arose from conversations between DoCoMo and persons of  Fuetrek and Faith. DoCoMo, however, lacked the technology to realize the idea, and since they didn’t have the musical software in the first place, the absence of the technology meant of course that the ringtone idea was “impossible.” But if we got a company that had the technology and a company that had the sound source to join the alliance, the impossible would become the possible. What actually happened was that we solved the technical issue by getting the phone makers to fit a sound source chip called “MIDI” on the mobiles, while a karaoke company provided the music for the ringtones.
The idea was the same with the Osaifu-Keitai. If, for example, you want people to be able to buy things from a vending machine using their mobile phones, rather than racking your brains with for possible solutions the quickest route would be to talk to somebody who could make this happen.
The reason that we actually managed to make this idea a reality arose from a query about the possibility of tying up mobiles and vending machines, made by Coca-Cola and Itochu Corporation. This eventually turned into the C-mode service, a one million-member service that was the first in the world to connect mobile phones with vending machines; its roots were no more than a series of muddled trial and error experiments conducted by junior staff at the three companies. They started from scratch, and progressed after gradual experimentation and repeated success and failure. And over this process, the originally diverse ideas of what DoCoMo wanted to do and what Coca-Cola wanted to do somehow expanded into one big idea that both parties wanted to do.
This circle of people rapidly grew into a fearsome entity, but what always lay at the heart of it was Coca-Cola’s and my teams’ strong sense of wanting to do something, and to mutually move each other’s company. This sense gradually turned into a deep relationship of trust, which permeated through to every member of the teams. A burning wish to break the mold of the company and make a certain project succeed led, one by one, to the solving of all the bottlenecks caused by technical obstacles.

How to involve in the alliance the people you don’t get on with
I have covered how to overcome the technical obstructions, but possibly the biggest bottleneck when you try to do something at a company is not the physical question of technology but the obstacle of human relationships. But all you have to do is use “Platform and alliance thinking” to reverse your thoughts on this matter.
This is not a matter of “persuading” those who are against you, more a case of getting them into your platform by alliance, in other words, of making them your partners. And how do you that? Instead of telling your clients or subordinates that “This is the situation, so just get on with it!” and merely seeking to force through your own opinions, you have to appeal to them—”Do you think I could possibly ask you to think with me about such-and-such,” or “I’d really like to have your input, and want to think about this with you.” It is important that this should not be done in a way that suggests you are negotiating; these people should be made to feel that they are, in a small way, participating: “I’d be most grateful to discuss this with you,” “I’d like you to come and join us,” et cetera. This may well be the same principle as the concept that negotiations go better when the two parties are sitting next to or diagonally opposite each other rather than head-on.
Instead of saying something like: “I’m thinking of doing things this way from now on, I’m sure it will lead to better sales so please let me have a go,” an exchange with your manager such as this would be preferable: “I’m thinking of trying this way of doing things next time. I’m sure it will lead to better sales, but I was wondering what you thought…”
“Yes, I suppose that would be alright. But why don’t you just change this part?”
“Thank you very much. I’ll be sure to keep you posted about how things progress.”
“OK!”
Strange as it might seem, just this little effort makes the other person feel as though he or she is participating, and pulls them round to your side. I myself gained a great many precious opinions by building up alliances in exactly this way.

Winning over those you want to persuade through consultative alliances
I think that people want to help if they are consulted. Perhaps you have found that people can oppose you merely on the grounds that they were not consulted about something. When you keep hearing this excuse despite repeatedly trying to explain yourself, there is a temptation to say something like: “But I’m telling you about it now!”—but let’s not lose our heads. A reply like that will lead to the very worst outcome. Regardless of specious logic, any sort of opinion is likely encounter opposition somewhere.
But if you can bring such people into your alliance from the outset, then they will end up eagerly supporting you, and if all goes well they will doubtless provide your project with plenty of publicity by boasting about their input. And when a senior staff member involves his juniors in an alliance, you can be sure that the juniors will look as if they have been given a whole new lease of life.
This is not “wheel-greasing,” which in Japan consists of preparing for meetings by going round all the participants and asking them not to oppose this or that; it’s a question of getting people involved right from the stage of creating the framework.
What you must take care to do here is to set up a clear basic policy and way of thinking for yourself. You must make sure that the axle of the wheel is firmly in place. Otherwise all you will end up with is a copious stream of opinions that descend into chaos.

The big strategy—Devote yourself first and never give up
You may sometimes find that the other people in the alliance are not on the same wavelength as you, or that you don’t get on with them. You might also find that your boss is irritated at first, and expects you to get on with the thinking.
However hard you try to involve other people in the alliance, they all have their own considerations and are not usually going to devote a huge amount of thought to the project. In order to get these people into the alliance it is vital that you yourself first of all study and store the information, knowledge and know-how that they are likely to require. In my case, this was knowledge and know-who about finance. Above all, you need an enthusiasm to stay the course and turn the project into a reality at all costs.
There is a tendency to give up if things don’t go well the first or even the second time. I never once gave up over the four years of the Osaifu-Keitai credit service project, despite the fact that on several occasions it looked as if it may go off the rails.
On the subject of enthusiasm, now I am in a senior position, when a junior colleague wants to talk to me about something I always ask myself: “How seriously is this person thinking about doing this?” To phrase it rather extremely, what the boss takes most seriously is whether or not a person is so enthusiastic that they are willing to do pursue a project even if it means forgetting to eat and sleep.
Although business models are an important part of success, particularly in venture business investments, it is generally thought that everything hinges on the enthusiasm of the management. If you pursue your goals with determination and enthusiasm, your are likely to achieve them.
Even in situations in which you expect to encounter the utmost difficulties, you can be certain of winning people over to your side if you are enthusiastic and pay them gratitude and respect for the time that they give you.

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 information-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.
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 time-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.
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 questions you had thought up beforehand. By constantly maintaining an awareness of alliances, unexpected new ideas sometimes open up at the prompting of even the most innocent piece of conversation.
Of course, you will often have meetings that fail to lead to any direct benefits. But you just don’t know what sort of information and abilities you are going to need in a few months’ or a few years’ time. So instead of taking a short-term “is it useful?” attitude, surely it is better to listen to the views of as many people as possible and learn from them.
If you adopt this “one of these days” perspective, there is a much better chance of you encountering in the future a person who is unexpectedly helpful. Either way, things will change if you yourself transmit information and remain active. If you spend all your time making judgments about your actions you will not make any progress.
Not restricting your circle of acquaintances should also apply to contacts from previous days. I left NTT DoCoMo more than five years ago, but those of us who worked together there have formed a little club, which we call “The Chickling Club,” and still meet up regularly. (The naming of the club is not particularly profound—there is a really delicious fried food shop called “The Chickling” near DoCoMo’s head office in Tameike Sannou, and our club was formed with no greater motive than going there to eat.) The club consists of many people who you used to work under me and others who have now move on to different jobs.
Many people may who change jobs may not wish to continue to see the people who they used to work with, but I have a strong sense of gratitude to my former colleagues, and believe it is thanks to them that I have made it to where I am now. My former junior colleagues and associate are the comrades-in-arms who fought with me; their ongoing growth is a source of great joy to me, and their anxieties and struggles still cause me a great deal of concern. Now my former junior colleagues don’t have to address me as “Mr. Hirano,” their manager, they afford me with a valuable opportunity for hearing the real truth about what’s going on in all sorts of different businesses.
I would suggest that the amount of information reaching a person varies by several degrees depending on whether or not they are making the most of their former business connections, rather than merely seeking new connections and information. For one reason or another I often find myself being consulted by people who want to change jobs or are in a state of anxiety about their work. Obviously, I don’t regard these occasions as an opportunity to make an alliance or get something in return from that person. However, in the end it often leads to these people giving me a vital piece of information or introducing me to somebody a few years down the line.
I think that people who try too hard to network are overly obsessed with the question of “Is there any merit in getting to know this person?” This limits the range of people they can become acquaintances with, and makes relationships a dull affair.
You don’t know where you’re going to get your next piece of information from. So try to be useful to as large as possible a number of people, and make an effort to respond where possible to their needs. It is more important to try to make an impression on people, so that your identity will be stored away in some part of their memory.

The melting pot theory—buried treasure in the most unexpected places
Why does New York produce so many success stories? Some people say that it’s because the city is a cultural melting pot.
I think there is a similarity between information and the reason that New York produces so many successes. The interaction of different information arising from people with different outlooks makes it easy for new concepts to be born, which is why I call this idea the “melting pot theory.”
The other day, on the introduction of a friend, I went to hear the Liberal Democratic Party’s Taro Aso speak. The meeting was attended also  former IBJ colleague who has become an Senator of Japan, as well as several other friends from the finance world. The fact that politicians from both of these parties were discussing things together in the same room was interesting, and with the addition of perspectives from the finance sector, I learnt a great deal from the various opinions offered at the meeting.
What fascinated me even more, however, was the way that somebody like myself—a person with no interest in politics hitherto—suddenly felt an awareness of the problems being discussed. The views of the two parties expressed in words may differ, but their starting point is the same: a wish to improve the nation through politics. This may appear obvious, but it made me think. The experience is not going to immediately lead to useful answers, but it provided me with plenty of food for thought.
I would now like to turn to information that you catch directly with your own eyes and ears. If you want to find out for example what sorts of things are likely to catch on in the convenience store sector, you can obtain this information to a certain degree from magazines or searching on the Internet. But what you find will have been doctored by the interpretation of the specialist or journalist relaying the information, and you cannot really be sure about how accurate it is.
My point is that the affairs of the world are often strongly colored by various preconceived notions. In the case of the Osaifu-Keitai too, many of the articles about DoCoMo that were leaked to the press were along way from the truth.
But most people think that this sort of information is accurate coverage, and blindly rush ahead according to these criteria. What this experience suggested to me is that in order to come across accurate and fresh information, you have to encounter it first hand. Thinking for yourself is a vital part of the information-gathering process.
For example, let’s say that somebody makes an exhaustive search of the Internet for information about the distribution industry. He will, no doubt, have become a very well-informed person. Now let’s suppose that there is another person who meticulously walks around various department stores and shopping malls, eagerly listening to the people working there. Some people may regard this as an “inefficient” exercise, but in terms of looking, listening and thinking, that person will have been rewarded with a hands-on experience, a valuable awareness that clearly outweighs that of the Internet searcher. What decides the success or failure of work is not the question of how much information you can amass; what matters are the unique ideas that you are able to draw out of all the information you have obtained. Surely it is crystal clear which of the two examples above is the more effective display of information-gathering skills.
Perhaps knowing all sorts of information will turn you into a “walking library.” Unless you ask yourself what you feel about the information you have obtained and how you should make the most if it, it will not lead to the important results of creating new value. It is not what you know that is vital, it is what you think about based on that information, and how you execute what you have thought up.

Chapter 4 Alliance networking skills
Effectively building human relationships that you can always call on for help

Alliances work on a person-to-person basis
The existence of the word “alliance” aside, probably the first time I became aware of alliance behavior was with my immediate superior during my IBJ days. The first alliance relationship I developed was with this person.
He was well-known for being so severe that the people working under him didn’t want to show up at work because they didn’t want to come face to face with him. In fact, some of my senior colleagues would deliberately pile up a mountain of books on their desks so they wouldn’t have to meet his eyes while they were working.
At that time, my assignment was in the international business division, and we were involved in formulating international strategy. One of our jobs was to create briefing papers for the president and other top executives that summarized matters on a single A4-format page. Almost every time I would present one of these papers to my superior, however, he would just take it and turn it face down right before my eyes. Then would come an exchange that always went like this:
“Just what is it you’re trying to say?” he would ask.
“Well, you see…”
“It isn’t clear from this, so summarize it in five lines,” he would exclaim.
“Yes, sir. First is this…. Second is this….” And I would give him the main points.
“Then write it like that on a sheet of A4 paper.”
Ordinarily when we create information summaries, we think about including this and that, and identifying that risk, and so on. We want to fit in as much as we can, even if we have to put it in a tiny font. Not only that, but when a superior asks, “What about this problem?” then the person doing the work wants to be able to say, “Oh, that’s right here on the other side of the page,” or something of the kind.
The superior I am recalling here, however, was different. What he would say was, “Write the briefing information in five lines.”
“What kind of determination do you want the president and the managing director to make when they look at this information?” “Should this branch office be established, or should the idea be dropped?” “Does the matter require more study first?” These were the kinds of searching questions he would ask in order to find out what the briefing was supposed to accomplish. He would shoot the questions at me rapid fire to bring out all the risks and other perspectives that needed to be considered in order to make a business decision.
This approach to report-writing is very reasonable, and that is the basic approach I take even now when I am putting together information materials. At that time, however, I was just a new university graduate, wet behind the ears. I felt as though he was fussing at me, and to be honest, I found him unpleasant.
The change came one time when the strategic question of whether or not to open an office in a certain country was being discussed. In our work, we would work till late at night as a matter of course. We would have day after day of extremely demanding work. No matter how hard we pushed ourselves, we couldn’t get this project in shape.
Then my superior suggested that we work at his place on a day off. I grumbled to myself about having to look at his face even on my day off, but the fact was that our project didn’t seem likely to get anywhere otherwise. It was with great reluctance that I went to his home, but what I found there was a big surprise. When he was with his wife and children, my superior presented the appearance of a wonderful father. Not only that, but when he introduced me to his wife, he told her I was one of his very capable staff members. This completely blew away my image of him as a severe, unpleasant person.
Of course, if you think about it, even the most charismatic business leader is likely to come across as just an ordinary man when he’s shopping in a department store.
Since that time, the way I think about people has changed. No matter how powerfully individualistic a person may be, and no matter how many times more capable or experienced a person is than me, there is no reason that we can’t communicate with each other as one human being to another. In that case, I decided, I was going to go ahead and dive right in with people regardless of who they were or what their standing was. Since we are all human beings, we can be allies rather than enemies, and we can cast off our preconceptions and stereotypes, as long as we’re facing in the same direction.
This approach led to me to develop the idea of alliances. From that point on, even though my superior kept on scolding me the same as before, I was able to see that he was scolding me for my own good. Later, when I was reassigned, I felt great respect and gratitude for this person, and that was something that would have been inconceivable before.

The trick of a negotiating technique that attracts allies is not to attack
I have engaged in many tough negotiations, and I still have no hesitation about plunging into the midst of a conflict with other people. I do not, however, go in with the desire to beat them. My approach is more like the United Nations, approaching them gingerly as though with a white flag held up on a battlefield. I just throw myself right into their arms, declaring myself from the very start to be on their side.
This approach is probably a remnant from my childhood years in the United States and Canada, where it was very important for me to show that I was “on their side.” In the United States, it’s common practice to flash a big smile and say “Hi!” or something of that sort when encountering somebody, even if it’s a stranger. When I would open a door and go through, I would always hold it open a little while if there was someone coming through behind me. In those cases, the person behind me would always thank me. This is part of the culture.
This may be a matter of the national character, but unfortunately, we rarely see this kind of behavior in Japan. It’s not that Japanese people are unfriendly or unsociable. When it comes to conveying one’s own feelings to another person, however, Europeans and Americans are far more skilled at it.
The alliance negotiating technique follows the European and American approach more closely. It also starts before you have meet the other person. First of all, from the point when you make an appointment by e-mail, you make a point of using language at the maximum level of politeness. You provide the other people with information to help them know as much as possible about you as a person. For example, as I mentioned earlier, you put information about your blog or your company website in your signature block so that the other person doesn’t have to go to the trouble of looking it up. In your e-mail, you make a positive effort to use exclamation points and other elements to convey a sense of intimacy, so far as it does not infringe on the sense of courtesy. No matter what, written language does not convey feelings as well as spoken language, so I think it is actually better to err on the side of excess.
By the way, there was something that particularly impressed me out of all the e-mail exchanges I’ve carried on with a wide variety of people. This has to do with the e-mail from someone who has been a friend of mine since elementary school, and has since become an internationally known lawyer. His name is Masakazu Iwakura, and he is a sixth-generation descendant of Tomomi Iwakura, a leader in Japan’s modernization during the 19th century. His writing style is very polite and respectful to his correspondent, and it is humble without sounding at all sarcastic. On top of that, he responds very quickly.
When meeting for talks, you smile at the person and ask him, before anything else, about how he is doing and about his interests. I’m very fond of this saying: People don’t smile because they’re happy; happiness comes to them because they smile. Start out with a smile and talk to them in an animated way. Anybody will withdraw from you if you approach them with a dark expression on your face.
Next, it is good to use information you have looked up in advance to move the conversation toward subjects the other person is interested in. First ask the other person about himself, then get their comments or advice about the matter that is on your mind. This is the trick to developing a smooth conversation.

How to mediate, and one very different result of the alliance approach
Needless to say, no amount of preparation or activity can necessarily guarantee that a conversation will go well. This is particularly the case when a third party has spread bad information before the meeting takes place.
It often happens, for example, that party “A” of “A Corporation” is not acquainted with party “B” of “B Corporation” and party “C” of “C Corporation,” which do business with “A Corporation,” although they are going to be working with them. When “A” and “B” are having a conversation, “A” might let slip to “B,” without having intended any offense, “I heard from “C” that your way of doing business leaves something to be desired.” Now on hearing this, “B” is likely to think that “C” is a terrible person for having said this to “A.” Therefore “B” and “C” will be in a relationship of distrust even before they have spoken directly with each other. If you happen to be “B” in this situation, then what you should do is consider calmly, “Who is telling me this information and for what purpose?”
This case arises from the careless statement made by “A.” If “A” were to have this kind of conversation deliberately, then it might be because there is some circumstance that would make it difficult for him if “B” and “C” were to team up with each other. In order to keep that from happening, the first thing you should do, if you are “B,” is to speak directly with “C.”
In discussing information sorting techniques, I mentioned that most of the information in circulation has ended up there as the result of somebody’s interpretation of it. According to the alliance approach, I wrote, one must connect with that information directly oneself, sense it in one’s own way, think about it, and act. This is crucial if we are to have communication.
In fact, I have witnessed many scenes in which hearsay about some slight derogatory remark ended up causing unimaginable losses. In order to keep that from happening, I create opportunities for “B” and “C” to meet and speak directly with each other. I do this because this way I can, together with “B” and “C,” eliminate the impediments of misunderstanding and move forward with work for a common purpose.
In the alliance negotiation technique, it is important not only to mediate between oneself and one’s counterpart, but also to mediate skillfully among third parties that one knows.

The essence of the alliance negotiating technique is enjoyment and calm
The fact is that through IBJ and NTT DoCoMo, I came to be known as a real professional in negotiation. At IBJ I mainly handled overseas business, and at DoCoMo I established tie-ups with a number of companies. My negotiating technique, however, was nothing like the slashing and hitting approach taken by so-called tough negotiators. The way I worked was basically the same, no matter what kind of counterpart I was facing: it was to start out by establishing a cooperative relationship. On that basis, I would get my counterpart to persuade his superiors, and sometimes I would work on his superiors myself.
Of course, the fact was that I sometimes came up against counterparts in negotiation who would say they weren’t interested, or they would talk it over with their superiors, before I could get a cooperative relationship going. Nevertheless, my stance was not to press for a contract with the other people no matter what, but to form an alliance. In order to accomplish that, I pointed out what I would be able to offer, and tried to make them see that it might be interesting to work on something together.
In this chapter I will present techniques of communication and human relationship for building alliances. These techniques are fundamentally not about arguing with the other person, but about making friends with the other person.
In this case, there is no need to use psychological techniques even when you are working on a difficult deal. The psychological basis of this approach is an extremely relaxed experience such as enjoyment or calmness. You will find many business books that say you must negotiate using such and such a method, but it is crucial rather that you free yourself of fixed notions about negotiating technique.

Presenting oneself with unstudied charm to attract people without even trying
The question then is how to present oneself when engaging in communication to build an alliance. To put it quite simply, rather than making yourself a person of accomplishments, make yourself a person of openings and potential; and rather than being sharp, be a little bit slow. Rather than trying to look good, try to be likable.
In my case, for example, what I found convenient when putting my business alliance techniques to use was having a physique that was unmistakably fat no matter who was looking at me. This is not to excuse myself, but there was a time when I was slender. In those days, however, people tended to think I was off-putting or edgy-seeming, and people seemed to find me rather forbidding. When I went to work as a business person, I started putting on weight, and now people think I look like a panda or a doughboy. If asked their impression of my appearance, this is the kind of unwelcome responses people would give.
The thing is, however, that this visual impression makes people feel at ease, or even makes them feel superior. This might even act as a point of attraction that makes me more approachable to people. Considering the advantageous aspects of this, I feel like saying, “Wait a minute,” to business people who are dieting helplessly because of metabolic syndrome or whatever. Of course, this is assuming that such people are taking care of their health.
In any case, I am not, of course, telling everybody to get fat. Anybody who is trying to build a network of personal connections will be eager to make themselves more appealing. The alliance approach does not work by the charisma or attractiveness of someone who has promoted himself. Rather, people think about what is advantageous to them plus whether or not they want to work with this person (you), and decide to join you.
What this means is no matter how much people may think, “This guy can really get things done,” if they say to themselves, “He’ll probably take all the profits for himself in the end,” or “I feel like I’m going to be overpowered and cheated,” then they are unlikely to form an alliance. To explain by an example, say that a friend who is extremely handsome and a very smooth talker says to me, “There’s going to be a party, why don’t you come?” If I say to myself that all the girls will only be interested in him, then I won’t be so interested in taking up his invitation. An alliance is more likely to develop when the other person thinks he will have a good chance, too, or it seems that participating will raise some interesting possibilities for him.
Whether or not you can manage to make the other person sense the attraction of an alliance can really hinge on very little things. When you meet with this person, if you start off by saying you are sorry to make him take time out of his busy schedule, then that alone is likely to make him feel that you have some consideration for him. In the case of e-mail and telephone calls, where you can’t see the other person’s face, I think it’s good to be almost too polite in your language, so long as it’s someone you aren’t quite close to. When talking on the telephone, and especially when talking with a man, speaking in a low voice can tend to make you seem brusque. It’s good to raise your voice just about one octave when speaking.
When meeting your counterpart with his superior, remark that “Mr. xxx has taken extremely good care of me, and I am truly grateful.” Praising him in front of his superior like this will heighten his motivation greatly. Naturally, if you have to lie to say this, you are sure to be found out, so only say it when you truly mean it.
The point is not to draw attention to yourself, but always to shine the light on your counterpart. The alliance relationship is skillfully developed through this kind of communication.

Power games are a weakness in an alliance
I mentioned that we shine the light on our counterpart. In the case of an alliance, however, the most difficult problems occur when a third party who didn’t receive a share of the spotlight feels envious and becomes an enemy.
More often than not, you will form an alliance either with people whose human qualities make it a pleasure to associate with them, or with people it is advantageous to be involved with in terms of work. So long as a person belongs to either of these categories, then I don’t think there will be any particular reason to actively exclude him. It is unfortunately the case in any circle, however, that power games arising from those feelings of envy or egotism will be in play in some hidden area of the relationship.
When I encounter a person or company that causes this kind of problem, by the way, I try to see that this person must be very unhappy, or this company must be in real trouble. I make a point of thinking that this person is unhappy in himself, and that is why he behaves rudely or seems envious. I do this as a reminder to try not to become that way myself.
If we involve someone who is hurtful toward people in an alliance, it is likely that we will bring trouble not only to ourselves but to others around us. A person with a bad reputation will probably be seen that way by others, too. Then we have to calmly analyze the information available around us, absorb it, and depending on what we perceive in that person, it may be necessary to exclude him from your relationships with other people. This is because, if the relationship becomes hostile, it will end up as nothing but a disadvantage to you. The time you have to spend worrying over that kind of disadvantageous relationship is a great waste. This is why it is important to develop a good eye for judging people, because it will give you more time in the future, as well.
In order to prevent a relationship from turning hostile, you have to talk about the advantages the other person brings, and you have to start doing this as a regular thing. It is necessary to broadcast this kind of information and take other measures of this kind that place that person on your side. Notice things that will please your counterpart. If you are fully aware of the other person in this way, and build a relationship of trust accordingly, then it is less likely that your relationship will be affected by derogatory information from outside.
You must be sure, however, not to fawn on the other person or butter him up. An alliance is above all a human relationship that you develop in order to achieve some purpose of your own. It is not a matter of personal networking that you manage by simply saying, “He’s a nice guy,” or “He’s trustworthy.”
Therefore there is no need to try to force a friendly relationship. The important thing is to share the same orientation, and if you have that, then you can develop a cooperative relationship. Moreover, this is a work-related relationship, so it’s also important to maintain an appropriate distance. In this, too, please don’t lose sight of the basic premise, which is that, as long as you share a common purpose, you make everybody your friend and have no enemies.

Three conditions to turn you into someone people will want to meet again
I find it necessary to give my counterpart three motivations in order for the alliance to draw people in:
The first is the motivation of being able to expect something of it. The point here is to give the person the idea that, if we work together, they can expect to receive something positive from it. I want him to think that he has something to gain from it.
The second is the motivation of enjoyment. This is something similar, for example, to the kind of comical television personality who has become so popular recently for playing the fool. Someone who seems just a little bit slow can give the other people a sense of superiority. This makes them feel comfortable, so that they do not feel your presence as an unpleasant pressure.
The third is the motivation of comfort. Praising them and giving them positive feedback makes them feel comfortable. At the same time, this also makes them feel good about having done the work they did, which is a motivation related to enjoyment.
Another important element is to give the other person a sense of participation. This is also a major factor in giving enjoyment. By sharing your thinking about things with the other person, and showing deference to him, you place yourself on his side rather than on the opposing side.

Two essential factors in the success of making your Platform and by alliance
As I discussed above, there are certain structural elements that are crucial to the development of personal connections through an alliance. In terms of work, what this comes down to is the major premise that we have something to gain by joining with the other people participating in the alliance, which is why we do so.
In the case of the Osaifu-Keitai credit service, many of the people who cooperated with the project were interested in it in the first place because I was at NTT DoCoMo and therefore potentially in a position to realize this new service. If a total outsider had come up with a purely theoretical possibility, then that alone would not have been enough to draw people in.
The alliances I have now, since going independent, have also been formed because people felt they had something to gain by joining them. This is nothing so simple as, “If you talk with me I’ll give you 500 yen,” or anything of that sort. There are various factors involved, such as, “If I meet with this person, my network of personal contacts will expand,” or “It’s exciting because something interesting seems likely to happen.”
What is necessary for this to happen is something that both information sorting and networking have in common. That is, the ability to actively communicate to the other person, in easily understandable terms, what it is that you yourself want to do. “This is what I want to do.” “This is the kind of person I am.” You have to start out by conveying these things clearly in a form that meets the other person’s expectations.
Something I’ve found very helpful in this connection, as well, is my continuing effort to “explain it concisely in five lines.” This, as I related earlier, was how my former superior so strictly trained me to write briefing papers. Another expression similar to explaining concisely in five lines is the foreign phrase, “elevator pitch.” This refers to the way the presidents of venture firms and people in similar positions explain who they are and what their company does in a very short time. It comes from the practice of approaching extremely busy people by getting on the elevator with them and using that brief time to pitch an idea to them.
People who become your allies approach you closely because they are interested in the kind of person you are and the things you are trying to do. Most people don’t want to listen to a laborious explanation of these things. Therefore, we should take pains ahead of time to devise some method that can make people understand what you want to do in one shot.
Communicating what you are trying to do, however, does not mean just one-sidedly stating your vision. That is not enough. For example, you might simply say to a woman, “You changed your hair, didn’t you?” She will get the impression that you are someone who has truly been aware of her. The same applies to subordinates and people you do business with. If you praise what they have done, and give them recognition, they will get the impression that you value them properly for themselves.
It is said that the word for the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. It is important first of all to take an interest in the other person and make sure to communicate that interest to him.
This corresponds to what Abraham Maslow, who formulated the theory of the five-fold hierarchy of needs, called “the need for affection.” This comes at a deeper level than the ego need that seeks self-esteem, and that in turn is at a deeper level than the need for self-actualization, which is the need to be able to accomplish what one wants. All that we find at the levels below it are physiological needs, such as the need for food to eat, and safety needs, such as the need for a place to live.
You will be able to appreciate from this that the act of providing other people with benefits is therefore much more important than being able to do what you personally want to do. This is why the two essential factors in an alliance are always giving the other person a beneficial reason to take part, and using this as a platform to explain talk about your vision.

The magical method of negotiation that gives the advantage to both you and the other person
If we have, for instance, 10 conditions that we have to reach agreement on with the other party in a business deal, everything will go well, even in difficult business negotiations, if we allow them to take six of the conditions and we take four for our side. The advantages represented by the other side’s six conditions and our side’s four conditions may not differ very much. However, the other people will see that we are not just out for our own profit. We have their profit in mind, as well. Just with that, the subsequent relationship will grow very strong and firm. A project undertaken by people who distrust each other will probably bring a net result in the red just from the time and effort spent trying to reach an understanding. If a project turns out well because an alliance proves successful, the mutual advantages can actually end up being many times greater. That is why I have always conducted negotiations with the priority on maximizing each other’s long-term profit.
Negotiation, however, may involve some things that we cannot yield on out of concern for our own company’s profit. In sales and similar areas, too, it probably happens sometimes that we come across a customer who makes demands we can’t agree to. For those occasions, it is important to obtain the internal agreement in advance of our own company, including the top management, regarding how much we can yield to the other party.
Let us say, for example, that you are negotiating without having determined the scope of our possible concessions in advance. If you indicate to the other person during the negotiation that you agree to something, but then you later have to take it back, they are likely to decide that it’s pointless to negotiate with you. They will want to talk with your superiors, instead, or with another company. This will be understandable if you try taking the opposite position. It is because withdrawing from a point that has once been agreed upon in negotiations or in a contract is to undermine not only your own credibility, of course, but also the credibility of your company itself.
Therefore we must obtain advance in-house confirmation of how far we can yield. This is an absolute necessity not only for the success of the negotiations, but also for the other person’s approval of the alliance with us.
Another key factor in negotiation is that it is effective to decide in advance who is to wear the black hat. When we are conducting a negotiation, we may run into some contested point that we simply cannot yield, for the good of our own company. At that point, we have the black hat step in. This can be a person or another department in our company. It might even be good to say it is our company president. However, we must be sure that the black hat is a person or department that actually exists, so that our stratagem won’t be revealed later. For example, it might go like this: “Our Legal Department refuses to play ball. There’s nothing we can say to them. They are stubborn, and they insist that they can’t go along with it.”
Even more than whether this excuse is true or not, the alliance members who are negotiating with each other are always focused on the success of their project. The point here is to create a common enemy so that they can avoid getting into a fight or an emotional conflict with each other. During the course of the negotiation, of course, there may be moments when neither of the two parties can yield to the other, and they may pound on the table and grow angry out of sheer earnestness. Through the work of the negotiation as a whole, however, one has to behave so as not to lose the trust of the other people.
By setting up a black hat, we hope to get the other person to think that, “even under these challenging circumstances, that person is doing everything he can for us,” or that “at least he understands us.” With reactions like these, the alliance will make significant progress. What we must note well is that it is not just a matter of explaining that one happens to be facing very challenging circumstances at the moment. The point is to communicate one’s stance of thinking about things from the other person’s point of view.
Before, I discussed the concept of give, give, give and take. This is certainly applicable to networking, as well. Before receiving anything, prepare something to give to the other person. This does not refer only to money. It also includes the simpler feelings that “this person is going to help me gain something,” or “he’s seriously doing his best on this.”
In business the way it has been conventionally thought of up to now, we sell something and what we receive in compensation for it is money. What we’re looking at here is somewhat different. When we bring together our resources to make one plus one into three, or four, or even ten, that is the alliance networking technique.

Offering the best things you have to other people
The i-mode was in a very leading-edge sector even in the IT industry of the time, so there were many people who wanted me to give them some information that would be useful in their business. In fact, a wide range of people, from venture capitalists to members of major corporations, wanted to talk with DoCoMo and me. As the context to this, it is also a fact that I was in a very advantageous position in terms of providing information because of my place in DoCoMo and IBJ. It’s often the case, however, though we may surprisingly tend not to realize it about ourselves, that everybody possesses information that can be of use to the other person—and quite a lot of it.
Let’s take somebody working in the automobile industry as an example. He will know much more about cars than I do. Even somebody who works part-time as a cashier in a convenience store will naturally have more raw information than I do about what products are selling best at the moment. A university student will definitely know more about what is popular among young people right now than a man in his forties, which is what I am. Anybody who takes a thorough self-inventory is bound to find they possess some kind of information that could be sold. I suspect that the reason people don’t realize this is that they always tend to be thinking most about what they can get, and they don’t give much serious thought to what they can give. I recommend that you try sometime actually writing out what you have that you could tell to another person.
When you do this, don’t try to think up something earthshaking right from the start. Instead, just look straightforwardly at where you are now, and where you have been up to now. If you have been doing the same work for a long time, then something you are taking for granted may actually be precious information that is completely unknown in some other industry. People who change jobs will often find this to be the case.
To put this another way, and without holding back from fear of possibly being misunderstood, it is precisely those people who are doing work they don’t want to do who actually tend to possess valuable information and know-how. This is something I picked up during my IBJ days, when I was in charge of dealing with non-performing loans in China. Those were all very backward-oriented, difficult cases, and that job was very hard for me. I felt jealous of the people who had more positively-oriented work in sales.
We were almost at the point of concluding a contract with a firm in China. Then the responsible official from that firm looked at the signatures on the contract and said to me, “This is the signature of my predecessor, so it has nothing to do with me.” At that point, I felt like crying. Looking back now, however, I can see that the knowledge of civil law, bankruptcy law, and cash flow I acquired from my studies at that time are still proving useful to me today. These have become my strengths. Above all, that experience gave me the strength of will to never give up.
Most of my colleagues from IBJ at that time who have since gone on to work at foreign-owned investment banks and funds were involved in handling non-performing loans. Acquiring the sort of work experience that most people would prefer not to go through may be an ordeal at the time, but it leads later to valuable information and know-how.

Pursuit of immediate profit does not make an alliance succeed
If it is just a matter of building networks of personal contacts, then you could do your best to gain the favor of highly-placed people, for example, or get the approval of somebody who has a lot of personal contacts. Through efforts of this kind, you could create a network that at least lets you brag that you know some very important people. Another thing you could do is to attend study groups that have a large attendance and exchange name cards with a lot of people. Then you could claim that you have a lot of personal contacts.
In an alliance, however, what is important is what kind of people are willing to participate in the things you want to do, and how those people change “what I want to do” into “what we want to do,” and work on promoting that. Our aim, therefore, is not on powerful people or superior people. It is people who are highly motivated, and people who can share your thoughts.
In the case of the Osaifu-Keitai, it was not the number-one corporations in the industry that helped me get the project going. Rather, it was the corporations ranked in second place and lower. As far as credit cards are concerned, it was the cooperation of then second-ranked Mitsui Sumitomo Card that got us through. (I understand that the Mitsui Sumitomo Card has now risen to first place in the industry, which makes me very happy.)
In the convenience store industry, the companies that showed the greatest motivation to take on the risk of our project, and that joined with DoCoMo to take action, were Lawson,am/pm , Family Mart. Of course the cooperation was not all from outside. The Osaifu-Keitai was made a reality through the cooperation of my capable subordinates at DoCoMo, the young members of the various companies involved, and the many other people who were overflowing with motivation.
No matter how large a project may be, it will inevitably achieve results if you gather people who have the spirit of challenge and the motivation, and together create the power of a large collectivity. In that sense, it is not immediate profit that will make a project grow so much as it is the kind of people who will respond when you call out to them. The alliances of the future will develop out of the care you show for the people who are present before you at this moment.

People who can give you time command alliances and businesses
As far as giving is concerned, it is a fact that there are limits to what can be given, depending on the position, the environment, and other such factors. For example, even though we may want to give the other person some profitable information, whether we can get our hands on useful information will vary according to the person’s location, the people around him, and the timing.
There is something, however, that everybody has equally, but that can give the other person a totally different impression depending on how it is used. That is time.
In the current business scene, many people have become habituated to talking about how busy they are from day to day. There are more and more instances in which time as something a person can give has come to have greater value than money or information. In sales, for example, visiting customers and spending time doing one’s utmost for them has greater power than any number of telephone calls made or e-mail messages sent.
Spending time on another person signifies saving that person’s time and increasing the amount of time available to that person. With precisely tailored consideration shown by our side, any amount of time can be given in that way. When I had an alliance with a beverage manufacturer, I did a number of different things to increase the amount of time available to the other people by finding out the locations of vending machines, looking up the locations of new convenience store branches, and so on. As a result, they went ahead with a project that had been stalled, and this had the effect, conversely, of increasing the amount of time available to me. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, we can also use mobile phones and other such devices to send prompt responses, thus saving the other people time.
When I get on an “I’ll e-mail you next week” schedule, I make a point of bring it forward and sending the e-mail on Friday of that week, instead. That way the other person doesn’t have to wait impatiently to see when next week I will write, because the e-mail from me will be there waiting for him first thing on Monday morning. This also relates to not taking up the other person’s time lost to anxiety and uncertainty.
When sending next week’s e-mail messages early, on Friday, became an established practice, I gained another free benefit. My Monday mornings used to be blue because I had to rush around to send my e-mail messages, but now I am in the position of waiting for replies from other people instead. Mondays have become a pleasure as a result.
Just as time is precious to you, it is similarly precious to the other people. The busier people become, the more they hesitate over spending time for somebody else’s benefit. Someone who can graciously use his time anyway will gain credibility with others.

Assign importance to your own likes and dislikes for the very reason that this is your work
Everybody certainly has an equal amount of time, but the time available is limited to 24 hours per day. Under these circumstances, it is natural that we can’t manage to see everyone we would like to meet with. What it comes down to is that we have to figure out how much time we are going to allot to people depending on who they are.
In doing this, I do not pay attention only to business benefits, but also to the person’s wavelength. More specifically, this is my likes and dislikes. Even if the work-related benefits are significant, if I feel that the other person is on a different wavelength that doesn’t match mine, then I will very easily back out. In fact I have done this many times.
The conceptual image of an alliance is that all of us are riding on the same bus. The people allowed on the bus are basically those people who want to work with us. The driver of the bus is you, of course, the leader of the alliance. The engine that keeps driving the bus forward requires feelings of “let’s do something new,” “let’s press ahead toward our objective,” and other such shared agreements, ideas, and relationships of trust.
There are occasions when we sense this intuitively rather than confirming it through language. This is much in the way that insights are said to be crystallizations of experience. The question of whether our sensibilities that are heading in the same direction will be well matched or not is something that will become readily apparent to everyone riding together on your own bus of the alliance, and it becomes more apparent the farther you drive it.

Associate with people with humility and a sense of gratitude
Ultimately, the key to building a network of personal contacts through an alliance is a simple matter: It is humility, straightforwardness, and a sense of gratitude to the other person.
That is to say that an alliance is not a matter of aggressively forcing your own views on the people around you. It develops when you listen receptively to differing opinions with a sense of humility, and evolve those thoughts and ideas in bursts of forward movement. Even if you understand this intellectually, however, it can be surprisingly difficult to put into practice. It might be, for example, that the person who expressed a valuable opinion is a junior colleague or a rival of yours. In that case, most people would reject the opinion, saying that it’s impudent or assuming that nothing that person might say is to be accepted, or something of that sort. It is not uncommon to find the progress of an alliance blocked by such feelings of jealousy, prejudice, and pride.
Where humility is concerned, we also find cases of things not working as we had anticipated, even though we have our own expectations regarding those things. In connection with something we want to accomplish, for example, let us say we invite someone who we are already friendly with, and who is knowledgeable in the field concerned, to join us. As it turns out, however, where we had hoped that person would apply himself more to some particular aspect, he seems to be interested in something else so that he rarely gives his time to the thing we had in mind.
When something like that happens, we would probably feel like complaining to that person or being angry with him. The alliance, however, is not an organization created by force. It is more like a vortex where people who are attracted by what you say gather together of their own volition. The more you try to impose force on that situation, or issue orders, or enforce discipline, the more the vortex of that alliance will grow murky and clogged. Eventually, it will dwindle down to nothing.
This is exactly why things that occur in an alliance should all be left up to the people concerned. That is the proper stance to take. This is so that the way the alliance is developed and the various relationships within the alliance are all left to the volition of the people involved, and within that context you can freely choose how to make your own decisions.
To that end, too, please be grateful above all to all of those people who have agreed to join the alliance. Whatever feelings the other people bring to their involvement, and whatever they think of us, is irrelevant. It is enough that you maintain a sense of gratitude for the fact of the other people’s involvement in our alliance.
You will be able to communicate your feelings of gratitude, whatever form they may take, if you are of a mind to do so. For example, you could invite the other person to some gathering that you intend to hold. If you notice some information that seems likely to be useful to that person, or if you think of somebody who it might be interesting to introduce that person to, then let him know about it right away. Alternatively, even if there is no object or information to mediate your feeling, you might give that person a telephone call when you think of him, or send him an e-mail, or write him a letter, or meet with him. At that point, you can express your feeling of gratitude in whatever way you are able to convey.
The important thing is always to maintain the feeling within yourself of being grateful to the other person.
When you do feel this gratitude, then you will naturally feel like saying thank you when you see the other person, and you will be smiling as though you are truly happy to see him. You will naturally tend to come up with ideas for things to do that would be useful to the other person, and you will become able to realize when some idea might be of benefit to him. A perspective that is not centered on yourself but is rather focused on the other person is actually going to become a power that expands the vortex centered on yourself.
For that purpose, we should make it a regular practice not to use negative expressions and always to choose positive expressions. You will then find that you have transformed, without even noticing it, into someone who receives help from other people and who is visited by opportunity after opportunity.
Chapter 5 Alliance learning methods
An order of magnitude more effective and more fun

Calculate your own value, to see what you need to learn
In Platform and alliance thinking, the goal of studying is an ongoing enhancement of your personal value. To do that, naturally enough, you need indicators for measuring your value.
Those indicators could be either quantitative or anecdotal. Of them, anecdotal indicators rate you simply in terms of actual achievements. That means that it is vital to uncover in detail what you yourself have achieved, no matter how small. For example, one example of an achievement might be, “While working in project finance, I read 10 English dictionaries’ worth of contracts in English in order to draw up an English-language contract.” Another might be, “I blogged for 100 consecutive days,” or “I was praised for cleaning neatly.” Anything can count as an achievement; here major or minor is not an issue.
The question is, rather, whether you can clearly appreciate what your self evaluation means: “What am I able to do?” “What do I want to do?” and “Where am I lacking?”

“I read 10 English dictionaries’ worth of contracts in English in order to draw up an English-language contract.”
Plus: English-language ability
Query: Ability to negotiate a contract?

“I blogged for 100 consecutive days.”
Plus: A minimum level of persistence
Query: Could I turn my ideas into a book?

“I was praised for cleaning neatly.”
Plus: Ability to focus energies properly on the fundamentals
Query: What could I do to improve quality and boost speed?

These questions will, at the least, determine several of your directions. And in the process of examining your own value qualitatively, you are probably beginning to see what sort of alliances you might want to build.

Now, what about that quantitative evaluation? To carry it out, I recommend drawing up your own profit and loss statement.
At first glance, that phrase might suggest some complicated way of looking at the numbers, as in a company’s financial statements. But what I’m suggesting is to try to give numerical values to something pretty simple: “How much am I making for my present company?” and, “How much is the company paying me?” You might also think about the rent on the space that you occupy at your office—just knowing how much real estate you are occupying might well change your attitude towards your work. Are you doing enough work to justify the space you take up? (This is the same way of thinking as calculating yield per hectare for crops.)

Coming up with a figure for how much your are making for your company might not be too hard if you are achieving a certain level of sales on your own. But people who are part of a project team or who are in the accounting or general affairs department of the company may not clearly know what price tag to put on their contributions. In that case, why not try writing your resume—in fact, two resumes, one covering what you have achieved thus far and the other what you plan to achieve from now on. You don’t need to be thinking of changing jobs to benefit from this exercise: taking a look at your past can bring a surprising number of things into focus. Perhaps you have been trying too desperately hard, perhaps you have been too focused on what is right in front of your eyes. One of the new career guidance sites, which offer a free service in which they calculate your market value, might be another way to get a handle on the problem. If you are interested, those sites may give you some useful pointers for drawing up those resumes, too.
What can you put in your resume? What would you like to be able to write about yourself, but can’t? By helping you to see what you have mastered and what you lack, this exercise helps you discover what you yourself need to be studying.

Think out of the box to expand your mental capacity
I myself have learned a great deal from my bosses at work. It is, I suppose, perfectly reasonable to learn from those in positions above us at a company. But many people may say that that their own bosses are not all that wonderful. Aren’t there even better mentors, such as people who write books or give lectures, out there?
Why overlook what your bosses can teach? One reason may be a tendency to define the people around you at work, narrowly and quite arbitrarily, merely as managers and colleagues and fellow employees. Perhaps you cannot quite shed your fixed view of a potential mentor as “That guy who’s always ordering me to do the unpleasant jobs.” You’re wearing blinkers, blinkers that keep you from seeing and making the most of the models at hand that you could actually utilize in your work.

Platform and Alliance thinking means removing your blinkers, giving up seeing the people around you in rigidly defined ways, and taking an objective look at them. When you’re operating from that perspective, there’s so much to learn. You could, for example, learn how to make copies cleanly and quickly from someone working part-time at your company—and you might have a great deal to learn from that manager in another section whom you’d always found intimidating and tended to avoid. If you’ve been avoiding him, he probably senses that you dislike him—your reaction is getting across at an emotional level.
That fellow who’s your boss: there’s a reason for that. He has lots of knowledge and practice in the work you are doing now, simply heaps of experience. I find myself wondering how much you could really learn by listening to someone you don’t know, someone who’s been labeled a “success,” if you can’t learn anything from the mentor standing right beside you.
I’m not saying be pals with your boss. What I am saying is forget about the categories superior and subordinate, step back, and see him in terms of an alliance: you need to acquire expertise, and he has it. You don’t have to be that close to him to learn a great deal from him. In fact, you can learn something from almost anyone. How? Instead of picking up on the disagreeable aspects of another person, look for what she is really great at and learn from that.

How, then, can you learn from those around you? The most effective technique is simply asking for advice. Your boss will, ordinarily, find being asked for advice quite gratifying. Consult with her about things that are going well, of course, but be especially sure to ask her advice quickly when something may be going wrong.
Don’t restrict your requests for advice to your immediate superior, either. Managers in other sections, even the company president can be good to sound out, too. In fact, younger colleagues, part-timers, customers, clients, people you met at some training programs—ask their advice, and they will tell you what they think.
What you hear may not be what you wanted to hear, but that is not a problem. The more people you listen to, the greater variety of views you will hear, and that is in itself quite educational.
For me, asking advice is the root of all my efforts to educate myself. It is, thus, my starting point in building alliances. Asking, “I’m thinking this way, but how does that sound to you?” is the way to expand alliances. If, instead, you make up your mind that “There’s no point in asking his opinion” or instantly reject the answer you receive without even trying to understand it, your thinking will progress no further.
First, try to take on board the other person’s ideas and understand them. When you have done that, define your own ideas and put them into action. That receptivity will vastly expand your mental capacity—and become the key to making great strides yourself.

To enhance your personal brand, first become someone who can do the obvious
Asking advice is a highly effective way to learn. But a precondition for its success is that you yourself must become someone others will turn to for advice. Anyone can give advice, you might think. Think again. If, for example, you don’t finished your assigned task on schedule, if you are always late to work, if you blame your failures on others, then who, with a straight face, would ask you how succeed at work?

At the root of the relationship I am calling an alliance is trust. Think about it: won’t your reaction to the same suggestion vary widely, depending on who made it? If A said it, then it must be true. If that information came from B, better double check it. And if others think of you as unlikely to put your ideas into effect, then, no matter how clever the ideas you come up with, no one is going to want to cooperate with you. Your only option is to demonstrate, day in and day out, through your attitude, that you are trustworthy.

In terms of the standards applied at work, your trustworthiness is, not surprisingly, being gauged in the course of your regular work. That does not mean that you have to pull off spectacular achievements to be regarded positively. For a new employee, even greeting people crisply and correctly can help. Why worry about something as superficial as conventional greetings, you might think, but if someone cannot even get out a proper “Good morning” or “Thank you,” then no matter how much she might have learned about complicated negotiations, negotiations she is conducting will not go well in practice.
Some companies may assign tasks that have nothing to do with the work you were hired for. “New employees have to do the cleaning” is a classic example. Tackling even cleaning by thinking about how to do an efficient, high quality job of it, you will learn something in the process. Even more important, others will get the message: if you worked for all you are worth at cleaning, you’ll probably do other things properly, too. That feeds into a growing awareness that you can be trusted.
Your boss and all the others around you are indeed watching, more carefully than you might think. That’s why no task you undertake is a waste of time.

Through each of those ordinary, basic actions, you build up your own reputation, your evaluation as person. Demonstrating again and again your determination and commitment, even in small ways, will naturally build up others’ recognition of you as “Someone I’d like to work with”—and, little by little, you will be moving closer to the work you really want to do or the department that really interests you.
Alliances can make a dream that seemed out of reach into a reality, but not over night. It takes your own attitudes and efforts, day by day, to attract alliances.

Confidence multiplies the effects of study and builds up people, too
The best shortcut to enhancing your own value is to develop at least one area in which you are the expert bar none.
When I was at DoCoMo, I had my subordinates study so that they could build their own areas of unchallengeable expertise. “You’re the engineer, so study up on the technology in the FeliCa non-contact IC card,” or “With your background in economics, I’d like you to learn about e-commerce.” Making sure that each was willing and eager to tackle the assigned subject matter, I allocated a specific area of study to each.
In doing so, I made a point of never handing my subordinates the usual “Give it your best” send off. Instead, I framed it as, “Let’s all do our best.” Why? Because we were all trying to master new subject matter—and that is what made this alliance-through-learning technique so effective.
The upshot was that when someone wanted to know more about FeliCa, I could say, “Ask him,” and our new FeliCa expert would give a lecture.
Sometimes it would even be a fairly new employee in my department who would unveil the results of his studies in front of a client’s senior executives, watching them as they listened carefully, nodded, and took it all in. That was a tremendous source of confidence for the person sharing his knowledge. And the effects did not stop there. After all, we learn most by teaching others. Such achievements spur our people on to acting on their own to reach the next level, actively deciding what they would study next.

I’d like to share another story having to do with self confidence. When I was at the Industrial Bank of Japan, I hoped for a position where I could use my English. But the first department I was assigned to after I was hired was not one that fitted my hopes.
What I did, along with constantly reminding the human resources department that I do speak English, was to do the work set before me as well as I possibly could. The result, in my third year at the bank, was the assignment that I wanted, at last.
My English-language skills have been an asset for me, but acquiring them has not been a piece of cake. As my first name, Carl, suggests, I was born in America. As a small child going back and forth between Japan and America, I could not speak either Japanese or English properly for a time.
Back then, there was no school for Japanese nationals; in fact, there were almost no other Japanese. I thus went to the local public school, where I encountered prejudice against Japanese. I was also teased: “Your name’s Carl, so how come you can’t speak English?” Young as I was, I found it extremely upsetting to be only halfway competent in both Japanese and English.
What saved me was the piano. My elder sister was studying the piano, and I started having piano lessons with her. Then I entered a competition and by some stroke of luck finished second. That gave me the confidence to believe that if I really tried hard, I could overcome the language barrier and make something of myself. It helped that my friends took note of my success at the piano, too. So from then on I got up every morning at six and studied both English and Japanese for all I was worth.
It’s said that if you can excel at one subject at school—Japanese, physical education, art, whatever - you’ll be able to handle all the others, too. It’s the same in the business world. If you can do one thing—no matter how small—well, then you’ll have confidence in yourself, and the way others see you will change completely, too. Start by deciding on the point you want to build up, something you like doing and are good at, focus on it, and learn more. If you can’t see what your forte should be yet, just do the work set before you for all you are worth. It really matters.

Focus on basic concepts, set a time and place, for study that’s much more fun
Once I’ve decided to study something, I tend to throw myself into it, heart and soul. For example, back when I was at the Industrial Bank of Japan, I came up with the idea of learning about nonperforming loans, a subject that I needed to know about in my work anyway. That meant that I needed legal knowledge, but, even taking a correspondence course, I wasn’t really getting what the laws really meant and was just becoming more confused. I even tried memorizing laws, but I’d forget them immediately, and the whole thing was so boring, I’d nod off.
After thrashing about quite a bit, I decided to start over and study law from the very basics. Luckily, my brother-in-law is a lawyer and was able to give me some advice. Also, a bar examination fame had just opened his bar exam prep school, and cassette tapes for studying for the bar exam had gone on sale. I spend almost my entire bonus on a set of those tapes.
The material to be mastered for the bar exam covers a wide range—civil law, criminal law, constitutional law, litigation. For the purposes of my work, I probably did not need to master constitutional law, for example, but studying the basic rules for drawing up laws, the concepts behind them, what the purport of legislation is, why each of those provisions is included, studying the basic concepts made the law extremely interesting.
If you understand the reason why a law exists, the background, and the basic rules, then you can come up with a far more effective solution without tediously memorizing detailed provisions, even though the circumstances may be complicated. That’s true of corporate management, too: if you have a solid grasp of the basic concepts, you can make decisions about all sorts of issues swiftly. It’s the same principle.
With the right starting point—the basic concepts—and an overview of the whole, a subject that had made no sense to me became fascinating, and even fun.

In addition to starting from the basic concepts, it’s important to think about place. If you can find a place where it is easy for you to study, and to concentrate on studying, you will make more progress and also squeeze out more study time.
What about the time you spend commuting, for example? They say we each spend about five years of our lives riding on commuter trains or lined up waiting for them. You can’t cut your commuting time. Whether you use that time effectively or waste it, though, is up to you; and how you use it can make a big difference in your life.
It was my brother-in-law, who is now a lawyer, who had the idea of turning his commuting time into something useful. Back when he was working at a bank, he decided to study for the bar exam by riding the Yamanote Line around Tokyo early in the morning.
His job at the bank meant long hours, from early morning to late at night. But he decided to get up early to catch an earlier train than he needed to and spend about hour each morning studying on the then-empty Yamanote Line train while the train made a full circuits around the city. Then he would go to work.
Actually, back in my busy days at the bank, I used not only my commuting time but also my sleep for studying. Studying while sleeping is not at all complicated. I just put on my law cassette and listened to it while falling asleep.
If asked for the scientific basis for the effectiveness of learning while sleeping, I might not be able to come up with a reasoned argument, but the upshot was that in my relative brief sleeping time I managed to learn as much law as you’d learn at a university’s law department, so that I could have a conversation on an equal footing with a lawyer. I have since put that experience to good use in tense business negotiations and many other ways.

When studying something, I always set an objective that means something to me personally and a time frame for achieving that objective, even if it’s an artificial one. It’s good to have a specific objective and an opportunity to check your progress towards a goal you can reach in six months - if we are talking English, aiming for a certain score on the TOEFL or being ready for a trip overseas, for example.
Setting a vague objective with no specific deadline for its achievement—It would be nice to have foreigners as friends someday”—encourages slacking off from study. Another counterproductive step is to avoid taking the exam by telling yourself, “Well, I haven’t studied much yet, so I’ll wait until I’ve got more under my belt.” Procrastination means you’ll never gain that mastery.
A situation where you must put what you have learned into practice, output it, whether an exam or a trip overseas, makes clear what you need to input. And regularly outputting the results of your study enables you to check your progress. That also helps you increase your motivation, to move on to the next milestone. And that is the secret of sustaining study in the long run.

Alliances—a series of opportunities to study
“Study”: to many people, that means going to school or reading books, deliberately trying to pack your head with information. Formal classes and reading books can be effective methods of study, to some extent, but I am keenly aware that for learning related to work, nothing beats learning by doing for both efficiency and effectiveness.

Starting with a specific goal, working hard to achieve it, and going to school in friendly rivalry with friends or colleagues who have shared targets is in itself meaningful. But the pattern of study for the sake of study to which we are so prone is meaningless in the working world.
Of course, books on business do contain lots of useful information, and reading them can increase your motivation. But by far the most important thing is, after you’ve read the book, how you find your own way to put it into practice. You cannot just put knowledge into your head; you have to digest it yourself and put it to use in order to call it your own.
That is why the most efficient and effective way to study is through an encounter with another human being, for that increases your opportunities to learn by doing.
Here, too, working in terms of alliances will increase your opportunities for contact with other people and thus your opportunities for learning by doing.

I think of each meeting with a new person as, in a sense, fated. But that destined connection is not something that someone will serve up for you on his own. You grasp that connection yourself only because you yourself lift up your antennae and transmit information, your determination, to the other.
For example, imagine two ways of looking at the same scene. In one, you are thinking about how many houses with red roofs are in it as you look at it. In the other case, you are vaguely looking at the scene, not particularly aware of anything, and there happen to be some red roofs. Please imagine both experiences.
In each case, visually speaking, you are looking at houses with red roofs, but how they appear will change radically depending on your own mindset. If you are, as in the first case, thinking about how many red roofs there are, you may discover not just red but blue and yellow roofs. The latter case may be just fine if you are simply spacing out to relax, but if you were trying to retain something from what you saw, you’d probably find that you did not even have a recollection of whether there were any red roofs.
The same applies when meeting other people. If your antennae are not on the alert when you are meeting others, you will fail to notice the opportunity for a valuable alliance and just pass on by.

My meeting with Dr. Andrei Hagiu of the Harvard Business School, with whom I jointly created the consulting company I now manage, was one such fateful encounter.
Dr. Hagiu came to Japan to conduct interviews about the Osaifu-Keitai to use as course materials at the Harvard Business School. I was one of many people whom he asked to interview. At the time, I was wildly busy, with a dozen or so conferences and interviews a month, but I managed to make 30 minutes in the afternoon available for Dr. Hagiu.
And then, with the interview with Dr. Hagiu, I made a host of new discoveries. One was that, at merely 26, he was the youngest assistant professor at Harvard Business School and now Associate Professor. Another was that he was thrilled by the idea of the Osaifu-Keitai and passionately explained to me why the idea had so much international significance.
His keenly honed questions gave me an opportunity to reflect objectively upon the work that I was doing. In the process, I found myself understanding at last what Managing Director at the Industrial Bank of Japan, had meant by not getting so you “Can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Dr. Hagiu was passionately enthusiastic about making the Osaifu-Keitai into a case study to be used at Harvard. I couldn’t resist his excitement and, not having time that day, worked by email with him to develop the case study and his papers.
Meeting Dr. Hagiu might seem like a happy accident, but if I myself had not been giving lectures about the Osaifu-Keitai all over the place, he would not have wanted to interview me. And if I had not been interested in the theoretical framework behind such Internet-related business as Google or the Rakuten online retailing site, I would have treated the interview as a trivial chore.
Several years later, I joined Market Platform Dynamics in Boston as Senior Advisor and he and I  founded NetStrategy, Inc., a Strategic consulting firm in Japn together. It was because I myself was aware of my interests and transmitted that fact to him that this fateful encounter came about.

The ultimate objective of study is to master “people power”
A human being is a creature who grows and develops upon finding his own area of special ability, gaining confidence, and being recognized by others. To grow, we master one thing and then move on to another. When we master that, we move on to the next, making constant progress. That is the true goal of the alliance approach to learning.
The knowledge that matters in our work is never an isolated skill or piece of information; mastering it is nothing like studying for exams, where we can say, “Here is the answer to this problem.” Moreover, we now live in an environment in which the world, and technologies, are changing second by second, and so is the knowledge required of us. At the end of the day, what we need to master is an output-oriented methodology that makes us grow, no matter what sort of situation we face. Studying is only one of our options, to be chosen as the occasion dictates.

In Japan, indicators such as total sales or total market capitalization are widely used to rank corporations. In Europe and America, the ranking that matters is that of “the most respected company.” That goes for people, too. The person who has acquired all sorts of knowledge and ends up being useful to the company is the most highly respected.
What we should learn, when it comes down to it, is not knowledge or skills but “human power,” the ability to attract others. That is why learning from others is the cornerstone of the alliance approach to learning.

Total user orientation gives rise to services that customers truly want
I myself have met and had the opportunity to learn from so many stellar people. I’ve been very fortunate in the people I have met. But I think it was my boss at the Industrial Bank of Japan, whom I have already mentioned, DoCoMo, with whom I worked side by side for seven and a half years, and Keiichi Enoki, who was then the director in charge of i-mode as a whole at DoCoMo, who taught me the essence of work.

One statement that taught me the essence of management
What I learned from Keiichi Enoki was, above all, a way of people-oriented thinking and a way of questioning what management is. The idea of alliances that I am introducing in this book is itself, come to think about it, something that I largely learned from Enoki.
Enoki was recruited from the Tochigi branch of NTT DoCoMo for what became the i-mode project when the company president, Koji Ohboshi, said, “Let’s do something new.” Enoki then assembled his own team of eccentric geniuses through his own network of friends and acquaintances. The bedrock of his leadership was his steadfast way of thinking about other people. I had a particularly good chance to learn that from him in a joint project with a foreign firm.

The joint project was originally a proposal that had been recommended by the international business section at NTT DoCoMo, but because the service would be provided in connection with i-mode, the management of the project was moved to the i-mode team. Unfortunately, as we realized, the project had little hope of further development.
Finally, the i-mode team  reached the conclusion that the project should be disbanded. At that point, I was assigned to negotiate with the foreign firm. At the Industrial Bank of Japan, I had had many years of experience in tough negotiations with companies overseas, but these negotiations took a direction that was quite unexpected, even given all my experience.
As the result of our discussions, I managed to get the other party to agree, somehow or other, to disbanding the project itself, but they refused to include a clause exempting the president of the project from legal liability in the final contract. In similar joint projects with overseas projects, particularly when a project was disbanded or dissolved, we would draw up contracts detailing each of the various agreements, and they always included what is known as an “escape clause,” stating that the parties involved would not be held liable and taken to court afterwards.
But in this case, the other company utterly refused to include an escape clause. They wanted to leave open the possibility of suing the president as an individual over his responsibilities as president.
The company president in question was an extremely capable person who had been recruited from outside for the position, and there was no question that the project’s failure was solely his fault. But the foreign company apparently wanted to make it clear where to assign blame.

As we were negotiating, news of the project’s dissolution was leaked to one of the newspapers. That put me in a real pickle. Nothing had been settled, and having a story like that in the paper put me at an extremely disadvantageous position with the other company. At DoCoMo, people kept telling me to wind up the negotiations quickly. The PR department was reminding me, every day, that from an investor relations point of view, they needed to release a clear statement soon. “When is the contract signing?” they kept asking.
It was in that context that the date for the signing was set before both parties had reached agreement on what would actually be in the contract. The contract was to be signed at 8:30 a.m. on a certain day in December, just before Christmas. The situation was tense: time was very short, but we could not agree to the contract unless the escape clause was in it.
I spent almost every hour of the week before the signing, almost without sleep, negotiating with the other company. But at 2 a.m. on the morning of the signing ceremony, I was at my wit’s end, unable to make any progress. It was then that I telephoned Enoki at home.
“There might be some chance that they will sue the president, but we have reached a compromise on every other point in dispute. The story’s been leaked to the newspapers, and the signing ceremony is just six hours away. Could we compromise on the escape clause?”
“Absolutely not!” Enoki replied.
Acutely aware of the time pressure I was under, at those words, I felt a bit faint. But then Enoki went on to say, “Even if the negotiations are broken off and they sue DoCoMo, we’ll just have to cope. It is absolutely out of the question to let the president as an individual be dragged into this. That could destroy his life. No matter how much a suit might hurt DoCoMo’s reputation, we have to protect that individual’s life. I will take full responsibility; you tell the other side that this is our position.”
“I see, I’ll tell them that.”

I immediately wrote an email message to the other party saying that we could not accept their demand and that DoCoMo was breaking off the negotiations. Totally exhausted physically and mentally, I fell asleep. At 7 a.m. that morning, still passed out in front of my computer, I heard the notice announcing the arrival of an e-mail message.

It said, “Agreed.” They had accepted our conditions. With tears in my eyes, I telephoned Enoki to report. And at 8:30 a.m., the contract signing to dissolve the project went off on schedule.

That was a week in hell for me, but it was also an extremely important experience: it taught me that the value of an individual human life is more important than anything else.
When Enoki laid down the law, he freed me from all the negative emotions I had been trapped in. I felt that I would do anything, no matter how difficult, for him. I was not alone in my respect for him. When Enoki left the i-mode division, hundreds of people rushed to attend his farewell party.
What Enoki taught me was that any organization is made up of people. That critically important lesson taught me the essence of management. I learned, above all, what it means to live on the principle of valuing individual human beings.
To me, study means not acquiring mere knowledge or qualifications but, through working with magnificent human beings like Enoki, learning their ways of thinking, their values, and their ways of life.

Targets to expand your own potential don’t need limits or back calculations
My late father was a professor at a medical school, and my older sister also teaches at a university. Because of my family environment, I was taught from early childhood that nothing was better than being a university professor. Thus, when I graduated and found a job at the bank, my father was extremely disappointed. To him, going on to graduate school was the only possible choice. As I then moved to NTT DoCoMo and then set up my own company, I expect that up in heaven he has gone past anger to totally giving up on me.
But, after quite a few twists and turns, I have ended up teaching as Professor at Business Breakthrough University hosted by Kennichi Ohmae, world famous guru in Japan and the United States. No one would have predicted that back when I was at the bank or at DoCoMo, but, what it comes down to is: that I made this happen because I made up my mind to.
Many people study to reach a certain objective or build a personal network they need to achieve certain goals. But the bedrock of the alliances I am talking about is not a world of a scope that can be imagined by calculating back from a restricted set of objectives. The very act of studying and of building a personal network causes the objectives themselves to change, to broaden, to evolve, in a world of great promise. The times demand people who can execute right-brain ideas in a left-brain manner.
If you continue to study, your objectives, your dreams will gradually change. If you set limits on yourself, then your growth stops there.

After grasping the platform and alliance method, I was influenced by many people and stimulated by a variety of value systems. As a result, what has happened to me has far exceeded my expectations, and I live each day in happy anticipation of what is to come. Who knows, tomorrow I might find myself cut adrift, but it’s the unexpectedness that makes living so exciting.
Everything about yourself as a human being, your existence, your life, what you do, is the sum total of the decisions that you yourself have made, day by day, since you were born. Have the confidence and the courage to continue to follow your chosen path.

Chapter 6 Platform and Alliance career enhancement skills
How to have a career that exceeds your wildest expectations

There are reasons for repeated failure
The platform and alliance approach means freeing yourself from fixed opinions and asking for help. When I realized that, I became able to face problems by relaxing and adopting a more natural stance, a perspective from which I could say, “We only live once; I need to challenge my own beliefs.”
When I stopped trying to handle everything myself and began to believe in other possibilities, work became more enjoyable. As a result, not just my career and income but my whole life became better than I had ever imagined.

Before that happened, however, the old me had experienced a series of defeats and disappointments.
First, I was often teased because, even though I was born in America and given the name Carl, I couldn’t speak English. After joining the Industrial Bank of Japan, I thought they would never assign me to the sections I wanted. At DoCoMo, I was promoted to section chief—with only one subordinate. Somehow, though, we managed to start up a new business from zero. But all the credit card companies initially showed us to the door when we tried to enlist their participation in our Osaifu-Keitai (“mobile wallet”) credit service.
Things never went exactly as I’d hoped; feeling down, I couldn’t stop pouring pressure on myself. I think I have got to where I am now by desperately forging ahead when given second chances.

My message to you, however, is not “Work yourself to death, trying hard is all important.” What I learned from my repeated failures was that in each and every case, the reason for failure was my clinging to my own fixed ideas.
What lay behind the failures was my being too attached to my own fixed ideas. Thus, I was always gripped by anxieties: “I won’t be able to do this,” “This seems too risky,” “Nobody has ever done this before,” “What will happen if I fail?”
When I was in that state, what would I have seen if I’d tried to take a step back to see myself as others saw me? Is there anyone who wants to work with somebody who says, “No matter what I do, it’s a waste of time” or “I’m trying so hard; why is it that things never go right?”
When you worry and struggle and take too much on all the time, you lose your freedom of movement. And not only your own freedom of movement: you build walls around you that make you unapproachable to the people around you.
That is when you need to know that, “Two heads, three heads, the more the merrier, many people thinking about a project is better than one.” If, instead of constantly pushing yourself to struggle on alone, you proactively seek help from others, both you and those around you will be happier.
Work for your own sake, no matter how hard, and the result will please only you. In business and all of life, those who share both the burdens and the rewards are much, much happier.

When you make yourself the platform, your world expands
Look around: too many of us think only of ourselves. I was no exception. For example, I often meet people who want to found high-tech startup companies or launch their own new businesses. The fiercely ambitious people with that goal include many outstanding individuals with specialized knowledge or skills.
When you talk with them, however, you discover that the ones who have a hard time are almost always those who want all the profits for themselves and thus are unable to recruit allies well.

When you have thought up something new, it is only natural to want to use it to make money for yourself. Everyone works for himself and expects to benefit from his own efforts; anything else would be meaningless. It doesn’t matter, however, how outstanding the idea or technology is if nobody else in the world needs it. Pursuing it then amounts to nothing more indulging in pointless self-satisfaction.

With an alliance perspective, though, what you say instead is, “We have this technology or this idea and would like to do this with it. Won’t you join with us in thinking about what to do?” As you talk with as many people as possible, your world expands. The more the number of people who identify with your goals increases, the greater the demand for what you want to do grows.
What you mustn’t forget, however, is this: What the people who identify with the technology or idea, the people who are drawn to it, want is what lies behind the idea or technology, a sense of direction that answers the question, “How will this improve people’s lives?”

Whenever a new business starts up, it is always possible that rivals will turn up with the same kind of business or that the start-up company’s idea will be stolen by a big corporation.
There are, however, no companies that flourish perpetually just by keeping on doing the same thing. The important thing is not to be stuck in one’s own box, to have a sense of urgency, and, however big the business becomes, to keep moving ahead, always.
How, then, can you learn to think outside your box? When you ally yourself with other people, your small world grows larger. You must always be thinking, “Who can I band together with to take this new idea of mine and make it bigger?” To advance your own career, you need to make yourself a launch pad, a platform where new ideas are shared and nourished. That is the shortcut to success.

Don’t be trapped in someone else’s framework, and make decisions based on your own criteria
What kind of career can you envision if you approach your work with this mind set? Because of my career, with my involvement in i-mode and the Osaifu-Keitai, recently people tend to think of me as a physical science type working in the IT field. My university degree, however, was iUniversity of Tokyo in economics. And, as I said at the start of this book, when I joined DoCoMo, I was totally ignorant about technology. I was a complete novice. But, ignorant as I was, I found myself involved in all sorts of projects, and that taught me something.
What I learned was that the issue wasn’t whether I understood all the technical details, but rather whether I understood what the technology made possible and whether the services that utilized it really fit people’s needs.

Imagine that you majored in one of the physical sciences at university. That means that, by and large, you have had two years of specialized study in your field. Someone else could study for 30 minutes or an hour a day after finding a corporate job and, before you know it, catch up with you. Technology is always advancing. If you graduated from a faculty of engineering 20 years ago, that in itself means nothing today. That is why obsessing about whether someone is a scientist or a humanist is nothing more than acting in terms of fixed ideas.
When I was working at the bank, one of the senior executives, who was about 50, was fascinated by China. He began to study Chinese on his own, starting from scratch, and after two or three years, he was fluent. Of course, he had worked terribly hard to do that. But what his achievement teaches is that, remarkably hard as it is to perceive it in the face of our “Oh, no, that’s impossible” thinking, we are all full of potential, bursting with the ability to do things.

How many of the people who have thought, for example, “I’d like to become a mystery novel writer, but it’s just not possible” have managed to write just one novel and taken it to a publisher or released it on a blog?
Want to become a composer? Yes, you can. But, of course, I am not irresponsibly promising you that you can, no matter what. I am talking, instead, about your talking to other people about what you would like to do or what you have. That is where building alliances begins.
By transforming wishes into actions, I can say with confidence, something new will start stirring in your life.
At the end of the day, the biggest reason why we think, “That’s impossible” is because we’ve never tried. So long as we are constantly coming up with new options, the possibilities are endless.

As long as you proceed knowing your own values, you can be a winner
When we were small, the values imposed on us dictated that we had to get into a good school. As we went on to high school and college the message changed to, “You have to get into a good company,” to which we then added another, “You have be a winner, even if that means pushing other people aside.”

According to magazines reporting data on business people, almost no one is satisfied with his or her current salary. We look at the people beside us and worry about whether our salaries are higher or lower than theirs. And that means we tell ourselves that we have to become one of those earning even more. Higher sales, better jobs, greater results...these define the direction in which our lives are pointed.

Many of my friends are multimillionaires. They have plenty of money to do whatever they like, but they still want more. They see someone who has a second home ten times bigger than theirs and, always comparing themselves to others, they are driven to aim even higher. They likely wouldn’t be satisfied until they surpass Warren Buffet, the world’s richest man (even though Warren Buffet gives 99% of his assets to charity).
From a macro perspective, too, the quest to improve short-term profitability is increasingly driving people, with top tier listed companies announcing their quarterly results.
This is not the cooperation and co-existence that alliances require, but rather a set of values that views the business world and all of human life as constant competition. These people are totally infected by what you might call U.S.-style capitalism. Is that, however, a happy way to spend the human life we only live once? When I left the bank to join DoCoMo, my salary dropped by three million yen.
Lots of people said to me, “Wouldn’t you have been wiser not to quit?” But I never doubted my choice. What I was aiming at was something other than the money and position that public opinion calls being a winner.
More money and a promotion are not, of course, bad things in themselves. If, however, you sell all your time to the company, money and moving up in that company are all that you will ever receive in return.
The fact is that there are too many people who believe that, “If I leave this company, there is nothing else I can do.” On the other hand, I also hear that many, would-be job changers earn the interviewer’s laughter by asserting, “I can be a department head.”

Of course, our values, our concepts of happiness differ from one person to another. Some want to be rich; some want to achieve a dream; some want to contribute to society. Values come in many forms.
The critical question is whether the values that have been formed inside you truly reflect what you yourself want. Take a good look at yourself: what is the direction in which you truly want to go?
On reflection, what I found in my own case was that more than salary, what I wanted from my career was to make a reality of something that I had imagined, work that was meaningful to me, work through which society would be enriched. That is why, instead of staying with the bank, I chose to become involved with cell phones, to which I owed so much for being able to stay in contact with my mother while she was hospitalized.

With regular maintenance of your own orientation, money and career will follow
How about thinking about your own personal values from a global perspective? To stay forever on the same set of tracks is, no question about it, safe and secure. That’s no problem if they always point in the direction you want to go, but there’s no guarantee of that. Your environment may be pulling you in another direction.
That is why I take time for regular maintenance, reviewing and reassessing the environment that surrounds me, what I am thinking, and what I want to accomplish. I ask myself, “Am I achieving what I’ve hoped for?” And when I can’t see the answer, it’s time to act on the alliance concept and talk over what is bothering me with others.

When I was thinking about going out on my own, many opposed the idea. But two agreed with me and gave me the green light. One of them was Takayuki Kamikura, CEO of Imagineer Co., Ltd. Formerly at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, he now heads a company that is listed on the stock exchange and is continuing to make even greater leaps forward. The other was a lawyer, Kenji Kuroda, Japan’s top authority on Chinese law. Kuroda, setting out on his own, has founded and grown his own large law firm.
I got to know them in the course of business while I was at IBJ and later at DoCoMo. Now our relationship includes much more than business: they have had a great influence on my life as a whole. To me these are two of my most important alliances. If I’d chosen whom to associate on business grounds or because I could or could not make money through the connection, though, I doubt I would ever have happened to meet them.
At any rate, my discussions with these two allies stimulated my thinking. What occurred to me was that in today’s world, we never know when a company will go bankrupt, be acquired by another firm, or undergo a merger. That is a risk that would be hard to avoid with nothing but my own powers as a single individual to rely on. With so many imponderables that can affect our careers, I realized that I had to think outside the boxes of company and job to form alliances with all sorts of people, to increase my own value.

In my case, the result of becoming independent is not a income equal to that I earned at the bank or DoCoMo, but instead one several times greater. But that’s not important.
I realized that, while working at the bank and at DoCoMo, I had long been interested in creating a new company. I realized, too, that I shared the goal passed onto me by my father, a university professor, of teaching at a university. Another part of me wanted to write a book.
I was afraid of losing both emotional and financial stability if I veered off the track I was on. As, however, I looked more closely at myself, I realized that the things I imagined were attainable if I accepted the twists and turns and the amount of time they would require. And then I would truly enjoy the work I would be doing, the greatest reward of all.
We live in the now, in the present. Shouldn’t you, too, be taking up the challenge of doing something that makes you happy, something in which you truly believe, something that only you can do, in these hours of your life? After all, it is your life. Only you can decide how to live it.

Techniques for changing jobs, enhancing your career, building new paths, and increasing your value many times over
Now that yesterday’s lifetime employment system has collapsed, many people, including my readers, are considering changing jobs.
Please don’t misunderstand what I have said so far. I am not saying that the alliance concept entails urging you to change jobs or start your own business. If, however, in addition to your desire to quit your current company, there is no one you can respect in the people senior to you or the management team and if personal growth is impossible there, you might want to consider changing jobs, not matter how good your current salary is.
Conversely, even if your salary is low, if you sincerely believe that there are people or a management team that you respect or that the situation offers you the possibility of personal growth, then I’d think there is no need for you to search actively for a new job. Why? Because if these two conditions are in place, my experience tells me that a higher income will surely come your way.

That said, if what is moving you to consider a job change are negative factors—you find your work uninteresting, you hate your boss, you don’t get along with your co-workers - then don’t expect improvement. You’ll only encounter negative opportunities. In fact, in most cases, you will encounter the same problems at the next company you join.
If you find your work uninteresting, ask yourself why. Does that have something to do with your own behavior, attitudes or thinking? Take a good look at yourself. Have you acted or spoken in a way or delivered the kind of results that make people appreciate you or want to work with you?
What, then, should you do? First, try forming alliances that you yourself find interesting. If you hate your boss or co-workers, you don’t have to do the impossible and try to make yourself like them. Instead, try forming alliances with people you do like in your company. You may find yourself forming a network and environment unlike any that you have experienced before. To me, that is the first move to take, rather than starting to look for a new job.

For people who do want to quit their current companies, the most futile thing to do is to waste precious time moaning and groaning all by themselves. They need to be talking with people outside the company, people senior to them that they can trust, people who are their friends. You need to recognize that working on while consumed by gloom and despair poses a great risk both to your company and to you yourself.

By talking things over with people, you can expand your alliances. The wider your human network, the more likely you are to attract work. That could be a side business that starts when someone asks you to do something for them, or it could be your being headhunted—”Wouldn’t you like to join us?”—for a position at another company. Whether or not you accept is a separate issue. What is certain is that opportunities will increase.
Most of my current work comes from people who have been introduced to me or have heard me give a talk. Introductions have led to my serving as an advisor to various companies, to opening my own office, and, in fact, to writing this book. It all came through introductions that resulted from alliances.
But perhaps you are a young person, new to your company, and you have no one who could help you find work. As you broaden your alliances, however, you will connect with that key person, and everyone in your network of alliances, including yourself, will grow.
The more than you strengthen your alliances, the more your career will advance and your opportunities increase. The networks cultivated through alliances become clearly more powerful resources than any formal qualifications or achievements you might boast. Your allies in enhancing your career are those who have earned to trust you through the alliances that you have formed, not your company as such.

When you change, your environment and the people around you naturally change as well
To advance our careers, we are always thinking about being recognized and appreciated by those around us, whether in our own or other companies. That is why we always aim to increase our own value and improve our skills. That recognition is, indeed, important, but we must not forget, in forming alliances to further our careers, that we need to think more about, “How can I make others feel appreciated?” instead of, “Will they appreciate me?”
People who are motivated only by how well they themselves are regarded will feel extremely dissatisfied if others do not appreciate them. But it works both ways. If you do not recognize others’ strengths, they will not appreciate yours. Unless you correct that in yourself, you’ll have a hard time becoming the kind of person that lots of others appreciate.
Those who have trouble getting ahead are often those who think only about getting what they want. They lack the ability to think of others.
That is why I often share work with others. Say a job has come to me. If I judge that someone else could do it, I’ll suggest, “How about doing this together?” and split the profit fifty-fifty.

When a big project comes in, I assemble a group of people I trust and do the work together as much as possible. By recognizing others’ abilities and sharing what we earn, I create new opportunities to form alliances.
In doing so, I can go beyond just working for my own benefit to making myself useful to many other people. Conversely, if I tried to monopolize the work for myself, I would break these ties. These people would be unlikely to want to work with me again.

People who help others are people that others help. That is why it is better, instead of always thinking, “What’s in this for me?” to be thinking, “What will this accomplish for those around me?” The reality is that thinking of others is the quickest way to success for yourself.
As alliances proliferate, so do opportunities. Then, since you are able to tap into other people’s alliances, the opportunities expand exponentially.
Isn’t that, when you stop to think about it, a truly extraordinary thing?
Extraordinary, yes, but everyone has plenty of potential to experience its effects.
Being helped by others who have the abilities and skills you may lack to achieve a common goal is the bedrock of business alliance skills.
All you need is to make a slight change in how you look at things. Instead of trying to change those around you, focus instead on changing your own mind set. Through that process, you can discover what you truly want to do. And, I think, the person who can make what they want to do a reality is the happiest person on earth.

If you broaden your alliances, you may find one day that I have joined them. We have an alliance now through this book, but I hope that we can actually meet one day and exchange ideas.
The more of us who put alliance thinking into practice, the more our dreams will be realized. With the people of Japan and people all over the world helping each other, we can achieve our own happiness.
It is with this stupendous hope for a better future that I bring this book to a close. Thank you for reading it.



In Conclusion
First, let me thank you again for reading this book all the way to the end.

Platform and Alliance thinking requires (1) knowing yourself, (2) communicating your thoughts and feelings, (3) knowing the other, and (4) empathizing with the other’s feelings. Through these four steps we can, I believe, find a new self.
Through our encounters with many different kinds of people, things sometimes may not go as we had thought they would. But that process can lead to self discovery—discovery of a self that transcends our own imaginings.

I was asked if I wouldn’t write a book while I was still at DoCoMo. Because, however, I wanted to write about true inside story in DoCoMo and my own experiences in my own way, I decided to wait until I was independent to write it.

What made me want to write a book was the publication of Path of a Mother of Returnee Children (Kindaibungeisha), by Rieko Hirano, my mother. She had completed the manuscript before her death, and my late father edited it and had it published. Although it came out over thirteen years ago, it seems to continue to sell. I have heard that, thanks to word of mouth, it can be found in Japanese schools overseas and in libraries.
It seemed to me at the time that if I wrote a book, even after I was gone from this world, some people might read and be encouraged it. That would be a wonderful thing.
My mother’s book is a documentary, and, as a member of her family, I am a bit hesitant to talk about it; it is a bit embarrassing. It begins in 1955, when she and her children boarded a propeller-driven airplane to follow our father, who had gone to the United States to teach at a university. Still, back then the number of Japanese who traveled to the United States was, in fact, very small.
The cultural differences, linguistic barriers and other obstacles Japanese living overseas faced then are hardly imaginable today. My mother wrote about the everyday life of our family as, drawing on our family ties, we joyfully overcame all those difficulties.
People who read her book have posted their responses on book-related websites. My hope is that my book will also contribute, as my mother’s has, to a richer and more enjoyable life for those who read it. If, decades from now, someone reads it and finds him or herself energized, I can’t imagine how I could be happier.

Last but not least, I would like to list my personal credo for achieving Platform and Alliance thinking which I hope will benefit for you all.

1 set your goal and writes it at wall
2.acquire the business manners 
3.make networks in various industries. 
4.become network type man. 
5.polish "Power to tell". 
6.your have to be rolled before others roll you 
7. provide needed information from you first rather than taking information from others
8. admit, and satisfy others's demand at first
9.believe the person. 
10 don’t hesitate to reveal your weakness to others
11.Let's go directly to meet with person a few minutes instead of just sending 100 emails
12.consider  feelings of others 
13.put  "Only you  feeling" to you e-mail. 
14.don’t speak ill of others even if others do
15.polish the networks by the business scene in daily life. 
16.E-mail to the person whom wants to be met again . 
17 scatter the seed of networks in one's twenties, and bear fruit in one's thirties. 
18.hear a surrounding reputation but not affected by them, and trust yourself
19.associate with the person who has morality 
20.host a small party to make your own platform and making alliance with peoples 
21.cross real and virtual, that is, meet  in person whom you find interesting at Facebook
22.have lunch meeting at guest’s near place 
23.arrive office ten minutes earlier in the morning and greet others
24.become a person who can apologize honestly 
25.look for another side of a person you are not good at communicating with 
26.enjoy others’ envy to you as you are already winner to him or her
27.pile a small success every day
28.make your boss and subordinates success
29.move for satisfactory of others first
30.respect others who you are negotiating with 
31.share your knowledge at your office around you 
32.see yourself  by objective eyes. 
33.Let's challenge your dream which seems a little difficulty. 
34.Be the chairperson of the event. 
35 shorten the time of the internal meeting by prior preparation 
36.put yourself  on the place where the person you can respect. 
37 be  professional 
38.Don’t make efforts by yourself
39 try to receive trust from others
40 make your own Platform

In closing, I must once again extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the people who worked with me without whom this book would not have been possible. 

I wrote 6 books so far in Japan and most of them were ranked No1 in Amazon Japan bestselling ranking but this book is originated for US people for my love to USA as my birth place.

From my home in Hongo, Bunkyo , Tokyo, Japan
July 2011
Carl Atsushi Hirano
Professor, BBT Univesity