I believe in myself that I can accomplish something truly essential and meaningful for our society. And this project would be the one.

President, Executive Director

One of Japan’s major telcos had recognised that their traditional large revenue streams will inevitably diminish over time and that pushing sales and marketing, or developing new product plans simply won’t fill that gap. They knew they had to think outside the box and create very different revenue streams in areas that don’t look anything like a traditional telco.  

Accenture Strategy and 2nd Road were invited to support the client in a long term, patient approach to creating breakthrough innovation. The client understood that this approach is an investment in learning but that if they don’t start now, it will be too late. Instead of a creating a ‘project’, the client has created a new business unit focused on developing new revenue streams, and they have asked 2nd Road and Accenture to work with them in a long-term partnership to achieve these goals. Their aim is to create new customer experiences and new markets around those experiences.

2nd Road’s tools of ‘Big Design’ brought the client creative thinking at scale. “Big Design” harnesses strategic intent, the experience marketplace, hidden assets, and technology possibilities to create breakthrough ideas for creating new value in old markets. It means we have to bring a ‘strategic’ approach with a strong sense of intent to the challenge, and it means we have to create ongoing organisational capability to enable the work to go on forever not just be a one-off effort.

All of this is a challenge to traditional Japanese ways of doing business.  Our client knows this, yet  they are ambitious to reform the way Japan does business not just the way they do. As a result, they have engaged us to help them write a book on Innovation and Human centred business for the Japanese economy.