Marketplace 3.0

Rewriting the Rules for Borderless Business

By: Hiroshi Mikitani

Narrated by: Jun Naito

Hiroshi Mikitani, founder of e-commerce giant Rakuten, has seen the next battleground in the fight for the future of the Internet. Today's major e-commerce players are quietly building borderless platforms that are overturning the global brick-and-mortar model, and changing the way local businesses think about their customers. But is this good or bad? Rejecting the zero-sum model practiced by some global retailers, who view the Internet purely as a facilitator of speed and profit, Mikitani argues for an alternate model that benefits vendors, customers, and communities alike by empowering players at every step in the process. He shows why emphasizing collaboration over competition, customization over top-down control, and long-term growth over short-term revenue is by far the best use of the Internet's power.

Rakuten is already pioneering this new model, and Marketplace 3.0 offers colorful examples of its success in Japan and around the world. Marketplace 3.0 is an exciting new vision for global commerce, from a company that's challenging all the accepted wisdom.

©2013 Hiroshi Mikitani. Recorded by arrangement with Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC. (P)2013 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

"Japanese executives aren't known for bucking the establishment. Hiroshi Mikitani is a rare exception at a time when rebellion is most needed." ( Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

Reads like a infomercial

Would you try another book from Hiroshi Mikitani and/or Jun Naito?

I wouldn't bother reading another book by Hiroshi Mikitani.

What could Hiroshi Mikitani have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Hiroshi Mikitani should have delved into issue building global markets, as implied by the title, instead of focusing almost exclusively on his internal HR processes.

What does Jun Naito bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The narrator was fine.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Marketplace 3.0?

Everything except the section about introducing English

Any additional comments?

The book is really a long boring boast about the success of Hiroshi Mikitani's company. The issue of bringing English into the company as a means of upsetting the traditional social hierarchy and putting the management in to a global mindset is interesting. The rest of the book is not.

great business book

I really enjoyed this book. I there is something for everyone about leadership or international business concepts.