The reason: As the leader of the third party of e-commerce market
I have rarely seen the books written by Japanese in the book store in the U.S. I was proud when I found this book on the shelf in the book store because I would like American to know there are quite a few great business people in Japan. They don’t talk or write themselves too much, especially in English. However, as for service business, they have best knowledge and ideas in the world, I believe. Now, I would like to bring up Hiroshi Mikitani who is CEO of Rakuten.
Rakuten is the third largest e-commerce market place company in the world. You know, the largest e-commerce market place is Alibaba and the second place is Amazon. I don’t know much about Alibaba, so let me talk about the difference between Amazon and Rakuten. Amazon concentrates on direct selling to costumer but Rakuten seeks for co-prosperity of merchant and costumer. So Amazon is interested in sales but Rakuten is interested in distribution.
Alibaba is totally huge, the distribution of Alibaba is $250 Billon dollar, Amazon is $75 billion, Rakuten is just 17 billion. Amazon is showing their own so that, but as you know Alibaba is exceptional. However, by looking at sales, we have different view. Alibaba’s sales first half of 2014 was 5.6 billion while that of Rakuten was 52 billion there is no such difference. This is because Alibaba is the company in developing country. Alibaba’s fee is small but gaining merchants a lot. So Alibaba is expanding a lot, so that Rakuten have to find the different way to survive. I guess I still it is important for them to seek for co-prosperity merchant and costumer to vitalize the economy the area they are serving.
This is famous story in Japan. He decided to ‘Englishnize (from the book)’ his company. He designated English as the official languages in his company. Almost all Japanese top company said he was ridiculous but he had done. I was very skeptical about this. However after Englishization, the diversity of human resource in Rakuten has vitalized, which is good for future of this company.
I was skeptical about this Englishnized the company because I thought this lead to the company lack of originality. Why the people spend so much time to learn English? But after their English skills are up, the people started recognize both as company and employer. Rakuten is now expanding in the U.S. But I would like to be still skeptical to the company. I want them to expand all direction in the world. I do not want them to forget it.
And his company quit Keidanren which is the strongest economic lobby in Japan. The member of Keidanren consists of top Japanese companies, like Toyota, Canon. They themselves think they need to change themselves, but only his company quit it to claim.
He also describes his policy about management. He has strong faith in ‘Kaizen’, but not as a manufacture, as a service business. He also emphases the importance of the speed of changes. I strong agree with him. While one of the best virtue of Japanese is perfectionism, but he asks his employee “Don’t think, then act, think to act”. He is business person so that he is actually not my role model but I respect him on my own way.