[.ca] Docomo--Japan's Wireless Tsunami: How One Mobile Telecom ... (ISBN 0814407536)

From Amazon.com:
America is just waking up to the vast potential of the wireless Web. In Japan, nearly a third of the population already works, plays, and shops with wireless, continuously connected to a universe of data, services, and communities. The force responsible is a young company with a name that means "anywhere" in Japanese: DoCoMo. Another case study that examines a specific corporation for management lessons it can share with others, DoCoMo--Japan's Wireless Tsunami takes a riveting look at the world's second-largest mobile phone service that has, after only two years, a customer base as big as AOL's. Don't think of this book as an apology for the languishing telecom industry. Instead, it's an inside look at how creativity and innovation were nurtured at one of the world's stodgiest companies--Nippon Telephone and Telegraph--and how a small team of committed visionaries never said "Never" and created DoCoMo's extraordinarily popular I-mode technology. For those who've read of the importance of "intrapreneurship" in corporations, here is a real-life exploration of that principle in action. Noted business strategists John Beck (The Attention Economy) and Mitchell Wade give us story upon story of the dynamic personalities behind I-mode, from NTT Chairman Kouji Ohboshi--who saw DoCoMo through a series of crises that would have meant early death for most U.S. startups--to CEO Keiji Tachikawa, whose post-WWII childhood gave him a keen grasp of the economics of disparity. With chapter headings like "People-People Who Need People" and "Passion Is Destiny," this book sends the strong message that every successful business model depends so heavily on the human factor--a point that seems lost in the venture-capital-dominated model of the West. With lessons for all business leaders, in any industry, this book stands as a testament to the pivotal role of conviction, integrity, and personal passion in business success. --Charles Decker

Superficial and useless analysis:
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.

Save your money and time!:
Very disappointing. 98% presentation and 2% substance. If this were a term paper in a business school, I'd give it C--- (triple minus). Who am I to judge? Well it almost made me wanna write my own version of what DoCoMo is, and how it reached the position it is today. A little more detail. There's almost no info on the technical aspect of i-mode, except that it is packet-switching and runs on PDC. The authors attributed the success mainly to the management team. That's where they miss the point. After reading the book, you would still have no clue why i-mode succeeded in Japan, but has yet to dominate in other world regions. I would give it 0 star. Amazon doesn't allow me.

Packed with important business insights:
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.

Nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing relevant:
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.

Not really about about DoCoMo:
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.