Hello all,
The recent discussion here on Keitai-l, regarding Japan Inc's Wireless
Watch's article "Dirty Little Secret", is really, really interesting. The
various people who have taken the time to comment on it (including David "no
time for catch lines" Davies' long postings) have thought this over
thoroughly, and it seems now that we have grown to see the "Big Picture"
arise when talking about the Japanese mobile internet.
<warning><b>
LONG and a bit BORING
</b></warning>
Because what *is* the Big Picture?
By sheer coincidence, at the same time I was reading a translation of Sony
founder Morita and our all-time favorite Tokyo Governor Ishihara's book "A
Japan that can say no". This book is quite outdated now, but it still holds
valuable truths on how Japan is feeling towards foreign industry relations.
Here is a URL to it:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rufusis/japanno/
Of course, Ishihara's comments have to be taken with a de~kai* grain of
salt. The most interesting part of this book however is Morita's "rant" on
creativity in part 5. Here he takes on the old Western dogma that Japan is
not creative because it only copies Western technology and remodels it, then
selling it at a lower price on world markets (with support of the Japanese
government).
Please take the time and read it (it's quite short):
http://home.earthlink.net/~rufusis/japanno/part05.html
Basically, he identifies three types of creativity:
* Basic creativity -- Inventing products
* Production creativity -- Manufacturing products
* Marketing creativity -- Selling products
He stresses the importance of the ability to turn technology into products.
What is vital for successfully doing so is combining these three types of
creativity. He also gives an example: Sony did not invent the transistor
radio, and vacuum-tube radios where already in use in most homes. An
American company produced transistor radios before Sony did, but failed
marketing them. Sony succeeded, let's say, by using the second and third
types of creativity.
In his words, Sony envisioned a world in which each person would want his
*own* small radio, not just one large radio for the whole family (smart
people reading this will now already say "aha!" and see the parallel ;-)
This is true for a lot of other successful Japanese products, including
(second) cars. For VCRs and TVs the second type of creativity was Japan's
big plus when taking on competitors on price and quality (low failure rates,
JIT production systems etc.).
According to him (and I agree) Japan did not have a lot of basic creativity
but used the *other* two types of creativity to conquer the world with its
products. What we are witnessing now is that Japan is leading the world in
not just the third, the second, but in all *three* categories of creativity.
The first one included: Basic creativity -- inventing a unique product!
The mobile internet (AKA: i-mode, J-Sky, EZweb)
Whereas many companies in Europe (and to some extend in the US) have tried
to invent the product (or better; the service) they have not succeeded in
combining all three levels of creativity. To say this in other words: These
services have not left yet the test-beds of the lab they were created in.
They have not been produced in great quantity, and have definitely not been
sold to the market in a successful way.
The Big Picture is that the mobile internet is the first area in which Japan
leads the world in creating, producing and marketing a unique product.
DoCoMo and its likes identified a need for people to have their own, private
electronic communication method -- similar to SMS in Europe. If they
envisioned more or not (I support Michael Turner's "coincidence theory" to a
certain extent) is not clear, but they also created a mobile environment
where users can access online data on a personal device.
Whether or not content providers are profitable, which is questioned by
Daniel Scuka and others, remains to be seen. As Michael Turner said in his
posting, maybe profitability isn't that important after all. But one thing
is certain: The mobile internet business itself *is* successful, and Japan
has, as a world's first, truly created a healthy industry around it. Of
course, the Aibo robot-pet and Camcorders would be other prime examples, but
they didn't spawn a complete industry ;-)
<personal_opinion>
One reason why many foreign observer downplay the mobile internet phenomenon
as a "cultural phenomenon", or otherwise question its significance, is envy:
Japan is truly ahead of its time in this area.
</personal_opinion>
Sincerely,
Victor Pikula
* dekai (J) = huge -- Ishihara is known to be an extreme rightist kind of
guy. Why Morita ever figured to team up with him, I don't know. Proves
Morita wasn't always right, but that's what you get for being a genius.
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Received on Sun Sep 9 16:34:46 2001