The Role of Communication in Formulating Business Strategies

Prof. Hiroyuki Morikawa, Chairman, Strategy & Planning Committee

5G has the potential of ending the stagnation in Japan’s drifting telecommunications field. While Japan has maintained its leadership and strength in high quality component production and design, it now needs to focus on how this technological edge can help society move forward. The introduction of 5G represents an ideal opportunity to do so. Especially in regards to IoT, it is certain that this technology will become indispensable to enable smarter ways of working in different industries. However, for this to happen, transmission costs for telecommunication carriers will need to drop dramatically. Otherwise, no one will use these services. Accordingly, for costs to drop for telecommunication carriers it is important that we employ incentive design. For that to occur smoothly 5G needs to become a technological resource in a growing Japanese economy that enables productivity increases and value creation. Naturally, it must also bring growth across all the regions of Japan.

Unlike the other committees of the 5GMF, the mission of the Strategy & Planning Committee is not about research and development of technology. Instead, our activities are concerned with promoting discussions and ideas from a business perspective. Examples of questions we are discussing include: Who will this technology be sold to? Who will this technology connect? How will they use it together? Will this technology meet the needs of the market?

With other subcommittees working on standards, which is, of course, an extremely important issue, it remains a low priority for the Strategy & Planning Committee. When constructing a business strategy, the first priority is answering the question of whether or not it will make a profit. In other words, we need to think of the practical starting point when deciding on business strategy and tactics. This means that in addition to engineers, business managers who are not a part of the technology world also need to take part in making these strategic discussions as soft skills such as communications and building relationships are also important aspects in these decisions.

Managers understand spending a reasonable amount on quality communication can give a project as much leverage as the investment in technology development does itself. Another topic of discussion is how to stop the declining value of intellectual property globally.

We hope you can join the Strategy & Planning Committee in these discussions.