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-Kei tai 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/
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/carlhirano
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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.