About 10 years ago, on October 28th, 1999, I was invited to give a talk about this topic at Stanford University’s US-Japan Technology Management Center for Stanford Faculty, alumni and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. 10 years is a good period to check out how much of that is still valid today, and how much Japan has changed during the last 10 years.-
Gerhard Fasol’s lecture at Stanford University “New opportunities vs old mistakes – foreign companies in Japan’s high-tech markets”
A few days ago the New Context Conference was held here in Tokyo, mainly about social network systems (SNS), top executives including CEO of LinkedIn, Facebook, and some exciting new photo, video conference and e-learning companies discussed market entry to Japan.
Japan’s two markets
Takeshi Natsuno, one of the three key DoCoMo managers who together started i-Mode and arguably started the world’s mobile internet revolution launching i-Mode back in February 1999 gave the keynote discussion. Natsuno shared his very interesting observation, that Japan consists of two markets:
new Japan = people below 50 years age and
old Japan = above 50 years age
…and having managed i-Mode (today: 48 million paying subscribers) for almost 10 years Natsuno-san is certainly one of the best to know. (Natsuno-san’s main job today is to make Japan’s very cute equivalent of YouTube profitable – read more about this in a future issue of our newsletters).
New Japan vs Old Japan in my talk at Stanford University
Actually, you’ll find a similar observation about “old Japan and new Japan” in my presentation entitled “New opportunities versus old mistakes: foreign companies in Japan’s high-tech markets” which I gave some years ago at Stanford University to faculty, students, alumni and silicon valley managers.- (You can view and download the slides of the presentation below.)
Natsuno-san talking at the New Context conference in Tokyo about old Japan, new Japan, the future of the mobile internet, and the mobile industry. Natsuno-san is one of the three inventors of i-Mode.
