DoCoMo--Japan's Wireless Tsunami: How One Mobile Telecom Created a New Market and Became a Global Force

Rating:
Summary: Packed with important business insights
Review: How has Japan's NTT DooMo become as big as AOL's customer base - five times as fast? This is Japan's mobile phone service, who grew to second-largest in the world in just to years. Insights into industry secrets, Japanese business, the wireless and computer worlds like make DoCoMo--Japan's Wireless Tsunami: How One Mobile Telecom Created a New Market and Became a Global Force a book difficult to easily categorize, but packed with important business insights. Highly recommended for all readers.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad. Not amazing
Review: I picked up this book with the hope that it would share some insight into why i-mode was such a big success. It did that only.

This is an extremely 'business/management' style of book. Full of hullabaloo, simple to read and gets somewhat preachy at times.

However I did enjoy reading it, although I sometimes doubt validity of some speculations made (Such as Singapore eradicating paper and coin based money entirely by the year 2008).

I'll give it 3 stars because it did give me the answer I was looking for but it wasn't a life changing experience reading it. Sorry.

Rating:
Summary: Superficial and useless analysis
Review: John C. Beck, Mitchell E. Wade clearly do not know and understand the critical factors and strategy behind Ntt DoCoMo's i-mode. Most of the book is so superficial and general to be useless. Most of the intereting elements of Ntt DoCoMo strategy are not covered here so buy something else instead of wasting your money on this.

Rating:
Summary: Not really about about DoCoMo
Review: This book doesn't give a clear understanding of DoCoMo and it's mechanisms.
It's more of an unctious eulogy about people at Do-Co-Mo and the enterprise itself.
What we learn: Keichi Tachikawa had a keen sense of inequality, former Chairman Ohkochi is impatient, impatient etc., Keichi Enoki seems to be the lucky guy.
This is a latter day celebration of a Japanese enterprise. The rendering of the story could have been influenced heavily by the style of a communist storyteller, writing a biography of communist saint Breshnew or marshal Shukow.

Few facts. Tons of incense. Sprinklings of modern management thought.

Not devoid of facts, but these are incoherently interspersed into a rambling storytelling about all and everything.
This book did waste my time and continuous factless ramblings made me feel angry at times.

Rating:
Summary: Not really about about DoCoMo
Review: This book doesn't give a clear understanding of DoCoMo and it's mechanisms.
It's more of an unctious eulogy about people at Do-Co-Mo and the enterprise itself.
What we learn: Keichi Tachikawa had a keen sense of inequality, former Chairman Ohkochi is impatient, impatient etc., Keichi Enoki seems to be the lucky guy.
This is a latter day celebration of a Japanese enterprise. The rendering of the story could have been influenced heavily by the style of a communist storyteller, writing a biography of communist saint Breshnew or marshal Shukow.

Few facts. Tons of incense. Sprinklings of modern management thought.

Not devoid of facts, but these are incoherently interspersed into a rambling storytelling about all and everything.
This book did waste my time and continuous factless ramblings made me feel angry at times.

Rating:
Summary: Typical fluff about a fascination with something Japanese
Review: This fluffy take on the human element of DoCoMo's success will not teach you anything about the wireless industry in Japan or the U.S. and hardly poses as a model or case study for anything related to strategy or how to "become a global force". Check out the market cap for DoCoMo in the last year and a half and look at the value and return in their overseas' investments and you will see why DoCoMo is a typical example of floundering, conservative Japanese management styles that aren't taking the world like a tsunami, but trickling in with little or no impact. Global competitors look at DoCoMo's business model as something to emulate, but their weak strategy and feet dragging business style make them a bloated telecom giant wasting away shareholder value. This books talks nothing of that and merely goes on and on about the success of i-mode, which would be relatively interesting if you hadn't read about it ten times in Business Week or Forbes Magazine in the last two years. NOTE: We used DoCoMo as a case study in my Japanese business school and despite all sorts of flowery talk about the creation and success of i-Mode, nearly every member of the class was critical of this company's overall global strategy.

Rating:
Summary: An insightful book about a breakthrough company.
Review: What we have here are really two separate but related books bound together in a single volume: One examines the extraordinary success of the world's second largest mobile phone company, Do-Co-Mo (which means "anywhere"); also, using Do-Co-Mo as a case study, Beck and Wade explain why that company's "huge techno-success story is all about feelings....In the end, what sets Do-Co-Mo apart is [in italics] passion." Reflecting on what they learned from their rigorous research, Beck and Wade confide that their findings forced them to propose "a radical, almost embarrassing idea: In managing your business, human passions matter. A Lot. More than any of us admit, and certainly more than any of us act on....Reflecting on the research presented [in this volume], we believe that a company that understands the power of human passions, and manages those passions in its customers, its employees, and its leaders, will create value faster than its competitors." So, this volume combines a highly informative, at times compelling case study with a thoughtful and eloquent explanation of how the core lessons of Do-Co-Mo's success can help literally any organization (regardless of size or nature) to achieve its own success by creating, nourishing, and sustaining the passion of everyone involved.

Please allow me a brief digression. By now I have become convinced that it is impossible to motivate others but that it is possible to inspire others to motivate themselves. I am also convinced that what people believe determines their values and those values determine their behavior. Throughout human history, the most effective religious, military, and social leaders have been passionate about the given enterprise and their passion was contagious. Because others shared their faith, exceptional success was achieved...often against what any sane person would agree are prohibitive odds. How else to explain the survival of the Christian church, for example, during decades of vicious and relentless persecution following the crucifixion? Draw up a list of those whom you consider to be the greatest leaders since then. How many were passionate in their beliefs? How many inspired others? Probably all of them, no matter which ones you named.

Obviously, this book will be of special interest to executives in companies now actively competing in one or more telecom marketplaces. There is much to be learned from the the case study based on DoCoMo, "Japan's wireless tsunami." Whether or not Beck and Wade intended it, I think this book will also be of substantial value to executives in all other organizations regardless of size or nature (including non-profits) which have failed to create, nourish, and then sustain passionate loyalty among their respective constituencies. It is no coincidence that the most highly admired companies, year after year, are also the most profitable. Extensive research among those employed by them or who do business with them reveals these common characteristics: identification with the organization's values, trust in its senior management, pride in its products and/or services, respect for associates, feeling appreciated, and passion to help the organization to achieve its objectives.

Speak with anyone employed by Southwest Airlines, for example, and ask her or him to share thoughts and feelings about this airline. Invariably the responses will be (in effect) "It's great fun to work here," "I really feel like I am making an important contribution," "Everyone I work with respects me and I respect them," "We're the best but we can be even better!" and "It's not just a job. It's a way of life...and I love it!" These are essentially the responses I have received whenever I have made such an inquiry of Southwest's pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, and reservation agents.

Recall Beck and Wade's affirmation: "We believe that a company that understands the power of human passions, and manages those passions in its customers, its employees, and its leaders, will create value faster than its competitors." As of when this review is written, Southwest Airlines' cap value is greater than its six major competitors...combined. Driven by passion as well as by ability, energy, and technology, DoCoMo now has approximately the same number of Internet customers as does American Online...and accomplished that five times faster. Draw your own conclusions.

Those who share my high regard for this book are strongly encouraged to check out Maister's Practice What You Preach, Hutcheson's Portraits of Success, Shuman and Twombly's Everyone Is a Customer, the fully revised and updated edition of Rosenbluth and Peters' The Customer Comes Second, Bossidy and Charan's Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, and Collins' Good to Great.

Rating:
Summary: Superficial and useless analysis
Review: Why would a couple of guys think they should write a book about DoCoMo? Most of us naïve book store browsers would assume that they have something interesting to say. They must have some insight into the company, some insider knowledge that would make such a book an interesting read. Well, think again. The writers of this book have absolutely no insider knowledge of DoCoMo, they also do not have anything interesting to say. They have records of one interview with the president of DoCoMo, and they have some newspaper-level information about the company. Possibly they also chatted with some employees. But that's it.
How then, you wonder, do they fill a whole book on DoCoMo? The answer is: They don't. Only a fraction of the book is directly related to DoCoMo. The rest is just...stuff. I'm not even sure how to call it, but it is blah-blah of no value.

Just imagine, the book's discussion of wireless business models, revenue sharing models with content providers, DoCoMo's 3G strategy, the FOMA service, their international expansion strategy...all of that together takes up about 8 (in words: eight) pages. Eight measly pages filled with common knowledge on all of those issues that are regarded as the most critical issues in today's wireless industry.

On the remaining 200 odd pages, we find trivia such as a graph of the rental prices in Tokyo (1/2 page) and a table of the top 20 Japanese companies (1 page). Give me a break. And then there are plenty of fuzzy-warm discussions about Love, Inequality, Luck, Impatience, and Fun. Let me warn you of this book...for me, it's too late. I already wasted my money.