hiroshi mikitani

I started few days ago reading Marketplace 3.0: Rewriting the Rules of Borderless Business written by Hiroshi Mikitani the CEO of Rakuten.

I will not discuss the detailed content of his book which is extremely interesting to read for every person involved in daily consumer related business activities not matter the industry, even that his company is mostly focused on online marketplaces but a lot can be learned from this gentleman and the culture he created for Rakuten in Japan and its subsidiaries worldwide.

Mikitani is a visionary and this is very obvious in his book or when you take a look at the global success of Rakuten which means “optimism” in Japanese, he started a very small company and took it big and i am sure his dreams are way beyond what he already achieved.

You can feel how Mikitani is keen about lifting every one around him up to the top and setting his standards very high, his vision of going global and making all the needed efforts to achieve it without losing focus on the core business and the fundamentals.

He easily can be an excellent business mentor for many <failed CEOs who unfortunately think they have what it takes to run a company or create a business culture> thru his book at a very marginal cost, by just buying his book(s).

But the question is if humans are not resistant to change, the positive change!

I am looking forward to finish this book to start his latest one entitled The Power to Compete: An Economist and an Entrepreneur on Revitalizing Japan in the Global Economy.

Rakuten Group is one of the world’s leading Internet service companies, providing a variety of consumer- and business-focused services including e-commerce, eBooks & eReading, travel, banking, securities, credit card, e-money, portal and media, online marketing and professional sports. Rakuten Group is expanding globally and currently has operations throughout Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Oceania.

Yesterday evening, I was more than happy catching a TV interview with Carlos Ghosn, the Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, on the Lebanese channel MTV (Murr TV), hosted by Jessica Trad Kastoun.

I was really pleased seeing a non-political interview with a high calibre CEO like Carlos Ghosn, but unfortunately I felt the presenter was not ready to face such a business giant, even that it was obvious she did her homework before the interview, but many times during the interview you could feel the repetition of the questions indirectly.

Sometimes the guest was asked a long question and the hostess was expecting a longer answer, but the surprise was when Ghosn was shooting short answers straight to the point, so you could hear the silence for few seconds, but Ghosn was clever enough to feel it and continued talking in order not to embarrass the hostess.

Another annoying thing, was the translation the hostess was trying to do while Ghosn was talking, mainly for the technical words in English or French. I suggest for future interviews to subtitle the words in Lebanese and let the guest continue with the flow of the answer.

But would definitely like to see other Lebanese business gurus on screen talking and discussing useful matters and topics that motivates and gives positive energy.