4 ms·

I don't know of anyone in the West who knows of Rakuten, let alone uses it. I can't imagine their presence outside of Japan is very large. Rakuten has done a p

I don't know of anyone in the West who knows of Rakuten, let alone uses it. I can't imagine their presence outside of Japan is very large. Rakuten has done a pretty poor job of expanding out of Japan. For example, there was their failed "Lekutian" Chinese venture, in partnership with Baidu. Then they purchased Kobo, a Canadian e-reader company, but it's gained no traction either.

ekianjo 13y ago
I've been closely watching them in Japan, and while they brand themselves as being an international company (using English internally), I've heard a lot of things about how it works internally... and... they're very Japanese at their core. I don't see them being successful outside of Japan anytime soon. Just like 99% of Japanese companies (the exceptions being B2B companies focusing on high quality manufacturing/engineering goods where they crush the foreign competition easily). (Disclaimer: I live in Japan)
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  > I've been closely watching them in Japan, and while they brand themselves as being an international company (using English internally), I've heard a lot of things about how it works internally... and... they're very Japanese at their core. The "Englishnization" program is a complete farce. Just because your company's "official" language is English doesn't mean that your workers will actually use the language to speak to one another on a daily basis when they share a native language that isn't English. And even if the majority of your workers are speaking to one another in English, the company culture isn't going to be suddenly Westernized. Just look at Indian multinationals - many (most?) of them use English internally, but there are still plenty of cultural barriers when working with Westerners. > the exceptions being B2B companies focusing on high quality manufacturing/engineering goods where they crush the foreign competition easily This is definitely true. "Monozukuri", regardless of its recent coinage, is an apt descriptor of the mindset of Japanese businesses. For Japanese business to thrive, they should focus (more) on integrating themselves into the manufacturing supply chains in China by providing "high quality manufacturing/engineering goods."
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > "Monozukuri", regardless of its recent coinage, is an apt descriptor of the mindset of Japanese businesses. Precisely. And this is why so many regular businesses like Panasonic, Hitachi, are utterly failing overseas. They are focusing too much on the engineering bit, on which they are very good at (and where they made their bread and butter in the 80s and 90s), but fail to understand the concept of "product experience" that goes beyond Engineering. Japanese pre-smartphones phones could all do amazing stuff at the time, but the user experience was extremely poor and they never tried to push it forward. The same can be said for Sony and other major maker's appliances. Once China or Korea is good enough to copy their products, they lose their marketability because they lack any edge that would bring more value to their product. Sony in its whole was a huge FAIL: they had so many different divisions focusing on hifi, electronics and computing and they never could make any sense on how to make all this products branded as Sony work better together. It's like they were all made by different companies without any common goal or logic. And unfortunately, this "engineering comes first" mindset has not changed at the head of most of these consumer-products companies, and it will be the Death of them.
    - sgdesign 13y ago
      That would be a great topic for a presentation ;)
      - ekianjo 13y ago
        Haha seriously ? :)
    - w1ntermute 13y ago
      > Once China or Korea is good enough to copy their products, they lose their marketability because they lack any edge that would bring more value to their product. The funny thing is, the Chinese and Koreans are no better than the Japanese when it comes to UX or design sense. So while Samsung might be dominating the Android market for now, it won't be long before the Chinese come in and wipe them out.

ekianjo 13y ago

I've been closely watching them in Japan, and while they brand themselves as being an international company (using English internally), I've heard a lot of things about how it works internally... and... they're very Japanese at their core. I don't see them being successful outside of Japan anytime soon. Just like 99% of Japanese companies (the exceptions being B2B companies focusing on high quality manufacturing/engineering goods where they crush the foreign competition easily). (Disclaimer: I live in Japan)

w1ntermute 13y ago
> I've been closely watching them in Japan, and while they brand themselves as being an international company (using English internally), I've heard a lot of things about how it works internally... and... they're very Japanese at their core. The "Englishnization" program is a complete farce. Just because your company's "official" language is English doesn't mean that your workers will actually use the language to speak to one another on a daily basis when they share a native language that isn't English. And even if the majority of your workers are speaking to one another in English, the company culture isn't going to be suddenly Westernized. Just look at Indian multinationals - many (most?) of them use English internally, but there are still plenty of cultural barriers when working with Westerners. > the exceptions being B2B companies focusing on high quality manufacturing/engineering goods where they crush the foreign competition easily This is definitely true. "Monozukuri", regardless of its recent coinage, is an apt descriptor of the mindset of Japanese businesses. For Japanese business to thrive, they should focus (more) on integrating themselves into the manufacturing supply chains in China by providing "high quality manufacturing/engineering goods."
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > "Monozukuri", regardless of its recent coinage, is an apt descriptor of the mindset of Japanese businesses. Precisely. And this is why so many regular businesses like Panasonic, Hitachi, are utterly failing overseas. They are focusing too much on the engineering bit, on which they are very good at (and where they made their bread and butter in the 80s and 90s), but fail to understand the concept of "product experience" that goes beyond Engineering. Japanese pre-smartphones phones could all do amazing stuff at the time, but the user experience was extremely poor and they never tried to push it forward. The same can be said for Sony and other major maker's appliances. Once China or Korea is good enough to copy their products, they lose their marketability because they lack any edge that would bring more value to their product. Sony in its whole was a huge FAIL: they had so many different divisions focusing on hifi, electronics and computing and they never could make any sense on how to make all this products branded as Sony work better together. It's like they were all made by different companies without any common goal or logic. And unfortunately, this "engineering comes first" mindset has not changed at the head of most of these consumer-products companies, and it will be the Death of them.
  - sgdesign 13y ago
    That would be a great topic for a presentation ;)
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      Haha seriously ? :)
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
    > Once China or Korea is good enough to copy their products, they lose their marketability because they lack any edge that would bring more value to their product. The funny thing is, the Chinese and Koreans are no better than the Japanese when it comes to UX or design sense. So while Samsung might be dominating the Android market for now, it won't be long before the Chinese come in and wipe them out.