Innovator’s Dilemma – The Brilliant Vision of Kouji Ohboshi

Innovator’s Dilemma – The Brilliant Vision of Kouji Ohboshi

NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode revolution ……. how did it happen? NTT was fortunate to have a visionary by the name of Kouji Ohboshi. Ohboshi became responsible for running NTT’s (unprofitable) wireless business in the mid-1990’s. Although Ohboshi navigated DoCoMo through significant growth in the late 1990’s as mobile services were adopted into the Japanese mainstream, Ohboshi also saw a plateau coming for that growth as saturation would eventually evolve the market into facing commoditization pressures and declining revenues.

Ohboshi’s vision to solve the impending revenue decline? Evolve DoCoMo’s mobile solution (along with marketing tactics that kept messaging simple) to harness the coming evolution in the NTT DoCoMo mobile networks by pivoting their strategy into providing life style value via harnessing the power of their data network.

Although short-term cannibalization threats were a concern, Ohboshi understood the long term benefits of his vision (and the consequences of failure of this quest). With the power NTT DoCoMo’s brand and billing core competencies, Ohboshi connected the dots with compelling content that was of interest to the Japanese market … and created history with i-mode, which now serves as the beacon for other mobile providers’ services (i.e.: Venison Wireless’ Get It Now, Vodafone Live!, etc.

* Interesting footnote: Ohboshi got an assist from McKinsey & Co. The consulting form’s report endorsed pursuing the mobile multi-media opportunity (evidence that McKinsey learned from the guidance (per “legend”) they provided to AT&T Executives in the mid-1980’s concerning the mobile opportunity: “….other than construction workers, who needs a mobile device….”, which cooled AT&T Officers’ interest in aggressively dedicating themselves to wireless at that time.