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 .. Starting business in Japan

Special thanks to the invitation information from Assoc.Prof. Yuriko Sato, I attended a special lecture "Starting Business and Engaging in Volunteer Activities in Japan" by Dr. August Hergesheimer, Founder of Abios Co., Ltd. and Save Minamisoma Project. 

The lecture was at Tokyo Institute of Technology on October 30th, 2013. It is organized by the International Student Center, Tokyo Tech.

It was in the style of talk. Assoc.Prof. Yuriko raised the questions and then Dr. August answered those questions. The talk was mainly about his profile, his business, and his volunteer project.

There are many interesting things I learned from this special lecture.

Not heavy brain, but god-feeling
First of all, the way of thinking to create a new seed of business. He suggested that instead of using "heavy brain" (i.e., extensive information), we should use god-feeling to generate the idea of new business. As for his case, he established his business, Abios (nutrition business) in Japan. His company reached break-even point after the first year of business.

Consider five things before starting business
He mentioned 5 things to consider before starting business.
(1) "Product": but anyway product alone cannot make a great market;
(2) "Legality": how we can trade, protect, ...., our products;
(3) "Logistic";
(4) "Communication": how we can communicate the value of our product to the customers;
(5) "Cash flow": no cash flow, no business.

Language and information

It is true as he mentioned about the language and information. He talked the example of his business. In the past, the awareness of organic food for Japanese people was relatively low. One of the reasons is about language. Using Japanese and using English have different in terms of opinions since most of available information in Japanese language are written by Japanese, but available information English are not only written by American or English, but everywhere in the world. We can get more perspective by searching in English. Nevertheless, (in my opinion) information in Japanese also have many specific knowledge in various fields especially technology.

Save Minamisoma Project
Not only focusing on business, he is also working on his volunteer project, Save Minamisoma Project, which is founded by him. The project has established from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and continued until now. If you would like to join the project, you can easily join and check their facebook.

Finally, what necessary for the entrepreneur is "Attitude".

Dr. August and me at Tokyo Tech

Thank you very much Dr. August for many things you explained in the lecture room and many things you talked with me after that.

Let's Talk about .. Design (Thinking) of Business and Tokyo Tech IS Lab

This autumn my advisor, Prof. Junichi Iijima, has chosen a book called "The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage" by Prof. Roger L. Martin for our lab book reading seminar. For me, it is one of the interesting books because the book described and show many cases related to the story. Especially, the Knowledge Funnel of Prof. Martin explains how we can take a step to discover "innovation".

Last week, my lab mate, Chaeyoung Lim, presented about Design Thinking in this seminar. There is the definition of Design Thinking by Tim Brown (2008), CEO and president of IDEO, as "A discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and method to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity" mentioned in the book. I have known some works of Tim Brown since 2010 when I took a Design Thinking course of Assoc.Prof. Hiroyuki Umemuro. I also bought a Thai edition of the book "Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation" by Tim Brown at that time.

Tim Brown's concept of Design Thinking have been mentioned and referenced by many researches. From suggestion of Prof. Junichi Iijima and Asst.Prof. Jaehyun Park, I searched more about IDEO. I found many interesting stories created or supported by IDEO people. According to IDEO, innovation is the result of "Feasibility (Technical)", "Viability (Business)", and "Desirability (Human)". Prof. Iijima also said that currently our IS Lab at Tokyo Tech consists of experts in these three areas (i.e., Prof. Iijima in technological area, Assoc.Prof. Dai Senoo in business area, and Asst.Prof. Jaehyun Park in design area). 

I should learn more from them in order to be a person who can establish new innovation.

Ref.

[1] Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86 (6). 

[2] Brown, T. (2009). Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, NY: Harper Business.

[3] IDEO. About IDEO. Retrieved October 2013 from http://www.ideo.com/about/

[4] Martin, R. L. (2009). The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage, MA: Harvard Business Press.