ABSTRACT
Makoto Iida’s innovative strategy has focused on new business development with the intention of creating new services rather than simply improved products within existing services. Since the mid-eighties Iida has ventured into a series of computer-based information service businesses. With regard to Videotex Centre’s own activities Tao recognized three conceivable focuses for the company’s service: families, the general public, and corporations. Iida’s decision on the method through which Videotex Centre’s service would be financed was a partial reflection of his frustration with the temporal discrepancy between societal perception and societal behaviour. In 1990 Secomnet introduced an economical voice-line network service which links, by a direct dial line, all the nodes of a client’s business within Japan including the head office, branches, affiliated corporations, suppliers and distributors, factories, distribution centres, and customers. Iida assigned one SECOM executive to head the three-year development of a computer controlled travel service.
