Let's Talk about .. Business Transformation and Technology Innovation with Motorola

Following a suggestion from Prof. Junichi Iijima, on October 6, 2015, I attended a lecture "How to Manage “Business Transformation” due to Fast “Technology Innovations” in a Global Company to avoid Irrelevance" by Dr. Mohammad Akhtar (Senior VP at Motorola Solutions, Inc.).

This is my summary from the lecture.

Along the lecture, Dr. Mohammad often mention that business needs to be moved otherwise it will die. He started his lecture by compressing a history of Motorola since 1928 to present together with lessons learnt.

Innovation
Innovation is about always looking forward, not backward, and making somebody life simpler.
A minute you stop changing, a minute you die.

Even human being also have innovation. For example, our brain, looking into a human's brain, brain can do more thing in present era than a far past time.

Who we are and What we are
Before starting anything, we have to look into who you are and what you are. For example, when saying 'Motorola', people in U.S. think about mobile innovation. When your are clearing your business, you should clear who and what you are.

Consumer means 'you and I'
Like Motorola started from consumers, you need to focus what the customers need. Motorola started with a business of mobile devices. Different customers have different scope and requirements. You should focus on what problem you're going to solve. Also, the uniqueness is also important. If you just make something, other people can easily copy your product, then you may lose your business. In mobile business, once connectivity improved, it's time to improve user experience. Especially, when mobile device is something people cannot live without it. In order to maintain sustainability in your business, it should not be easily copied.

AT&T and Motorola worked on many researches. Combining at TV and wireless services is one example. The business, actually, is selling a program on this service. The point is that this service can let the people buy immediately when they want to buy. The longer time the customers have, the more things they think and consider, the higher chance they may not buy.

Japan with individual preference, Motorola with networks
Japan seems to focus individual preference. We can say Japan focused on gadgets, not the network. That's a reason why Motorola worked with Qualcomm. At that time, Motorola worked for all mobile career operators in Japan. Anyway, Motorola made mistake at the end.

The lesson learnt is 'You need to see something beyond the thing people see'.
BUT 'Don't be rush to IDEA'.
AND ALSO 'Don't be afraid of changing a business model'.

Patents
"Patents are key to long term survival capabilities". When a company buys another company, a buyer may consider the price of a company as the value (number) of patents.

An exit
We will fail if we do not define exit. All businesses should prepare their exit. They may sell the company, moving to other market, etc. Time to change a business model or product is when your are on the top of the market share. For example, Motorola Razr was the most popular mobile phone, however, the company just worked on a line extension after its peak while Apple iPhone started creating its ecosystem which became more impact than a hardware issue.

Then, Xiaomi also created their ecosystem in China and became a majority share of mobile phones in China.

Pocketability
Pocketability was termed by docomo. In the past, mobile phones should be fit within the size of pocket. However, the current time showed that the bigger one, such as a candy bar type, reached higher share in the market.

Product lifecycle
Product lifecycle is short in technology. Especially non-traditional competitor which can come at anytime. The example is the introduction of 3G during the mature time of 3G signal. So, you should think 'out of the box'.

20-year product life cycle in technology (in the past) has been changed to '7 years' (now).

Core competencies
When you know your core competencies, you should make it stronger. Then, nobody can flight with your core competencies. Just 'Wanna be' cannot survive, but 'Core competencies' can.

One of the core competencies of Sony found by Dr. Mohammad was the 'No requirement of manual'.

Osborne effect
When the new product was introduced into the marketing then appropriate time, the effect of the new product could make some problems to the current product.

Huawei case
Huawei who was 'a fast learner' in the past became 'a fast leader' in the business area.

Thank you, Dr. Mohammad for your interesting lecture.

Let's Talk about .. d.school comes to Tokyo Tech 2015 (Lecture)

On July 17, 2015, I attended a special lecture "Practicing Innovation: Experiences and Experiments at the Stanford d.school" by lecturers from d.school of Stanford University at Tokyo Institute of Technology. It was organized by the Team-Oriented Cross Border Entrepreneur Cultivating (CBEC) program and the Academy for Global Leadership (AGL) of Tokyo Tech

This is my summary of what I learned from this lecture.

Before the lecture, there was an introduction of CBEC program by Prof. Junichi Iijima (Head of Tokyo Institute of Technology EDGE Program). Then, the lecture started with three lecturers of d.school: Dr. David Janka, Scott Witthoft, and Thomas Both.

d.school

d.school, or its full name as Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Standford, is a startup-like organization providing the elective courses for students at Standford University. No matter which programs you belong, you can join courses at d.school.

d.school believes that by design thinking, they can train people then later those people can be flexible to contribute what they learned or trained in any other context.

Thus, students in d.school are not only students of Stanford University, but also working people from companies or organizations.

Experiential learning

Instead of only receiving knowledge from professional persons, at d.school, students can learn by doing things = experience. Therefore, it's usual to view the environment of d.school's classes as lecturer and students staying at the same level. Moreover, the teaching way is giving the area for students and let them explore by themselves, instead of giving questions and answers to them directly. For example, letting them redesign radio programming.

In addition, they can learn to work in team. Within the team made of students from different areas, through Design Thinking, they can learn other perspectives.

Pop-up classes

Pop-up classes = d.fundamentals + d.skills + d.advanced. d.school made the Pop-up classes. These are opportunities for people from outside to come to teach students. Until now, there were 39 pop-up classes and 105 teaching team members,

even thought there was no credit and no teaching paid. Some examples of pop-up classes were Sticky stories, civic dreams + human spaces, etc.

d.bootcamp

d.school has also made a 4-day workshop at Standford. This bootcamp brought people from different industry sectors to make a team. They had to engage the users in order to understand the actual problems before designing a prototype.

Then, we went back to those people (users) to test their idea and got feedbacks. d.school operated these kinds of practices following the "Prework -> bootcamp -> StartUp" steps. After the bootcamp for weeks or months, the participants then later can create something by Design Thinking they have learned.

Alum action

From a week till months, there was follow-up to look at how they used what they learned and what they made from what they learned.

Location as prototype

In the beginning period of d.school establishment, d.School had no permanent location. So, they had to move every period of months. Nonetheless, it's good in terms of making a variety of prototypes. They later realized as opportunity to keep trying new things and checked if it worked or not...Till they got their current place.

Studio Space

They took a video to see the hours of things' movement in their studio. We could see that the studio was changed through many shapes for different purposes of different users.

Radical collaboration

They made a program called fellows. At the beginning, fellows were the graduates of Stanford, but later fellows could be experienced persons from a variety of working environments. They were persons who had never came to d.school, but had lots of knowledge and experience. They came to learn at d.school. Then, they applied design thinking when they went back to their industry.

Sprint planning

In each project, the team members worked with sprint planning. They could see the schedule of who, what, how, etc. in the specific period of time. One example as the practical outcome was Low cost ( partnered with miraclefeet. This product helped the children in Brazil who have the problem of clubfoot.

Purpose learning

The purpose learning is one of the ideas to change the way of studying. By changing from the major-oriented learning, which students were assigned to learn following the fixed curriculum, to the mission-oriented learning. They learn how to reach their goals.

Creative self-efficacy<...>Creative Impact

Many people focused on the external part (creative impact). But we also should pay attention to the individual level for internal part (creative self-efficacy).

Panel discussion
During the panel discussion, the moderator was Assoc.Prof. Céline Mougenot from Tokyo Tech.

- Collaboration with people from different background can make the different point of view.

- Space: a variety of created behaviour from team members; not the fancy ones but the one that can be used for all purposes.

Setting up and cleaning up space is not the assigned responsibility of students, but they know it as norm. Then, the next one can use. They did not use the word "clean the space", but "reset the space".

- Key to be creative: Dr. David always makes observation notebook. He observes the world and describes what he has learned through sketching in his notebook. Thomas considered practicing with your interest or with your assigned things. The more you practice with it, the more you became familiar and became confident. Scott always tries to make the tangible things, not just only making some ideas.

Let's Talk about .. Events in UNWCDRR 2015

On January 15, 2015, I joined the Tokyo Conference on International Study for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2015 (ISDRRR2015) at The University of Tokyo. I found the information in the poster session mentioned about the interesting international symposium.

This symposium is Disaster Management Policies - Preparedness against Large Tsunamis and Earthquakes etc.

National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and UNESCO will hold this international symposium on March 14, 2015 (Saturday)

Date: March 14, 2015
Time: 13:00-20:00 (Reception desk opens at 12:45)
Venue: Sendai City AER TKP Garden City Sendai, Hall D (30th Floor)
Language: English/Japanese with simultaneous translation equipment

- "GRIPS Disaster Program & a Policy Proposal after 2011 Tohoku Earthquake" (by Adjunct Prof. Shigeru Morichi, GRIPS)
- "Japanese National Government Policy on Disaster Management (DM)" by Mr. Hiroto Izumi, Special Advisor to PM)
- "Updated DM Policies of Large Cities in Japan" (by Prof. Fumio Takeda, GRIPS)
- "Landslide Dams formed by Earthquake and their Countermeasures" (by Prof. Hiroshi Ikeya, GRIPS)
- "Japan's Crisis Communication and Foreign Responses during the nuclear disaster" (by Senior Prof. Keiichi Tsunekawa, GRIPS)
- "Comparison of Reconstruction System of the Queensland Flood and of the Great East Japan Earthquake" (by Prof. Hajime Inamura, Tohoku Institute of Technology)
- "Sustainable Development and Disaster Risk Reduction" (by Ms. Chikako Takase, Director of UN Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD))
- "Public Opinion in Areas Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake" (by Assoc.Prof. Kazunori Kawamura, Tohoku University)
- and more

If you are interested in this symposium, please contact to Prof. Shoichi Ando (ando@grips.ac.jp) by March 3, 2015.