Thursday, October 8, 2015

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.