Hiroshi Mikitani founded Rakuten and built it into Japan's largest e-commerce platform by prioritizing merchant empowerment over strict platform control. He is widely known for implementing a company-wide English mandate and for defining the "Rule of 3 and 10" framework for organizational scaling. This collection details his practical approach to managing rapid growth, maintaining execution speed, and building internet businesses that treat independent sellers as partners.

Visual summary of operating lessons from Hiroshi Mikitani.

Part 1: The Business-Dō Philosophy

  1. On Absolute Thinking: "All concepts are relative. Never believe in the absolute. No one single way of thinking is perfect." — Source: Rakuten Today
  2. On Relentless Questioning: "Particularly when things are going well, question yourself and your process. What can you improve?" — Source: Rakuten Today
  3. On the Value of a Brand: "Your brand is a symbol of your values, as important a symbol as a nation's flag." — Source: Rakuten Today
  4. On Building Foundations: "Without a solid foundation, even the most beautiful of buildings can collapse. The same goes for your dreams." — Source: Rakuten Today
  5. On Personal Development: "Having the right attitude, the necessary skills, and the desire to keep learning are the three key components to personal success." — Source: Rakuten Today
  6. On Working with Urgency: "We have only one life, and it must be lived to the fullest—not someday, but now." — Source: Harvard Business School
  7. On Self-Awareness: "The key to success is knowing the areas in which you are strong and the areas in which you are weaker." — Source: Business Insider
  8. On Positioning: "When you know your strengths and weaknesses, you can position yourself to be as successful as possible in any given situation." — Source: Business Insider
  9. On Conventional Wisdom: "People will tell you not to pursue your dreams. If you believe in your dreams, pursue them anyway." — Source: getAbstract
  10. On Professional Humility: "Avoid thinking you deserve success. Luck plays a role, and everything can change instantly." — Source: getAbstract

Part 2: The Speed of Execution

  1. On the Core Mantra: "When you launch a business, you may be tempted to move ahead carefully and slowly. My advice is the opposite. Embrace speed." — Source: Entrepreneur
  2. On Launching Early: "Too often, a worried entrepreneur will sit on a great idea, waiting until it is fully perfected before launching it. My suggestion is that process takes too long." — Source: Entrepreneur
  3. On First Mover Disadvantage: "While you are perfecting your wares in your R&D lab, your competition is out in the marketplace, trying new ideas, refining and tweaking as necessary." — Source: Entrepreneur
  4. On Momentum: Speed is not just about getting ahead early, but about generating the necessary momentum for a project's long-term viability. — Source: Rakuten Today
  5. On Iteration Over Perfection: You do not need to be 100% ready to act; setting hypotheses with about 60% certainty allows for rapid execution and data verification. — Source: Note
  6. On Embracing the Inevitable: "I believe speed is essential to success in business. But what I have been forced to realize is that when I insist on speed, I have to accept that will come with another element that does not make me as happy – mistakes." — Source: World Economic Forum
  7. On Launch and Refine: The path to a strong product relies on getting to market fast and operating a cycle of continuous refinement based on actual customer feedback. — Source: Entrepreneur
  8. On Bureaucracy: Rigidity and slow decision-making are the biggest threats to maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit inside a growing company. — Source: IMD Business School
  9. On Quick Corrections: The goal is not to avoid failure entirely, but to discover problems and fix them rapidly before they compound into systemic issues. — Source: World Economic Forum
  10. On Daily Urgency: Treating speed as a daily practice ensures that the organization remains highly responsive to technological shifts and market demands. — Source: Rakuten Today

Part 3: Scaling and The Rule of 3 and 10

  1. On Organizational Breakpoints: "Every time a company triples in size, everything breaks." — Source: Business Insider
  2. On the Timing of Change: "Everything changes at roughly every third and tenth steps." — Reference: Sequoia Capital on the Rule of 3 and 10
  3. On Infrastructure Lifespans: "Anytime a company hits a '3 or 10' mark in terms of employee count, all of the infrastructure that got it to that point needs to be replaced." — Source: World Economic Forum
  4. On Communication Limits: As teams grow beyond the 10 and 30 employee marks, informal communication channels fail and formal structures must be implemented. — Source: Sean Hogue
  5. On Process Bottlenecks: Simple tools and ad hoc HR procedures that worked for a small group become significant operational roadblocks at larger scales. — Source: Business Insider
  6. On the Founder's Role: At higher intervals of the rule, founders can no longer be involved in every decision and must build capable layers of management. — Source: Changemaker Academy
  7. On Proactive Redesign: Leaders must redesign their internal systems actively before the next tripling milestone strains their operations. — Source: Chris Beaumont
  8. On Invisible Transitions: Many chief executives blow right through growth milestones without realizing it, accumulating severe organizational debt in the process. — Source: Business Insider
  9. On Structural Evolution: Just because a management process worked for you previously does not mean it will survive the next tripling in headcount. — Source: Rakuten Today

Part 4: Marketplace 3.0 and E-Commerce

  1. On Virtual Empowerment: "I decided Rakuten's mall would offer the opposite of the big companies' malls. It would offer not a controlled storefront, but rather virtual empowerment." — Source: Tharawat Magazine
  2. On Collaborative Retail: "Rejecting the zero-sum, vending-machine model of ecommerce... Hiroshi Mikitani argues for an alternate model that benefits merchants, consumers, and communities alike." — Source: Goodreads
  3. On Merchant Autonomy: "We offered merchants the opportunity to customize their web presence, rather than to fit into one designed by us." — Source: Tharawat Magazine
  4. On the Third Era: "If Web 2.0 described the shift from static to interactive life on the Web, then 3.0 is the next sea change—driven by personalization, intelligent search, and user behavior." — Source: Goodreads
  5. On Philosophical Differences: "I started the business to repair society, community and local merchants. They started the business to replace the gigantic merchants, so that's a fundamental philosophical difference, and it is very difficult to change." — Reference: LinkedIn News interview on YouTube
  6. On Avoiding the Amazon Model: "Employees hate me changing, and I say, if we wanna just copy Amazon, they're gonna hate me." — Reference: LinkedIn News interview on YouTube
  7. On Small Business Support: The internet operates best as an ecosystem designed to support and grow small and mid-sized brick-and-mortar businesses. — Source: Goodreads
  8. On Transactional Commerce: Treating the internet purely as a vending machine focused on speed and profit ignores the value of human connection in retail. — Source: Goodreads
  9. On Long-term Relationships: E-commerce should foster deep engagement and lasting relationships between independent sellers and their customers. — Source: Rakuten Today

Part 5: Englishnization and Globalization

  1. On the Language Mandate: "I remain fully committed to the process I've come to call Englishnization—making English the language in which we do business." — Source: Council on Foreign Relations
  2. On National Interest: "I do this because I am convinced it is the best thing I can do both for Rakuten and for Japan." — Source: Council on Foreign Relations
  3. On Global Baseline: "Put simply, global companies speak English. I do not believe a Japanese company can survive unless it can become a global company." — Source: Council on Foreign Relations
  4. On True Competitiveness: "More than just surviving, I am certain that if Japanese companies can transform themselves into truly global companies, we will see the return of prosperity to Japan." — Source: Council on Foreign Relations
  5. On Ambition: "Our goal is not becoming No. 1 in Japan but becoming the No. 1 Internet services company in the world." — Source: Simon Foucher
  6. On Growth Imperatives: "As we consider the future potential growth of the Japanese market and our company, global implementation is not a nice-to-have but a must-do." — Source: Simon Foucher
  7. On Operational Efficiency: "It is not just preferable, it is really critical for us to be able to do business and operate in English. Our staff doesn't need translators." — Source: Diggit Magazine
  8. On Talent Acquisition: Requiring English allowed the company to rapidly expand its recruiting pool to hire the best engineering and business talent globally. — Source: Rakuten
  9. On Economic Stagnation: Japan's economic malaise is deeply tied to a reluctance to adopt international frameworks and participate fully in the global market. — Source: Goodreads
  10. On Sharing Culture: Using a global language does not erase Japanese culture, but provides the necessary medium to share Japanese business values with the rest of the world. — Source: Dokumen

Part 6: Empowerment and Omotenashi

  1. On Providing Opportunity: "My goal was not as simple as giving someone a break; it was about empowering people to make their own breaks, over and over again." — Source: Rakuten Today
  2. On Core Mission: "At Rakuten, we have dedicated ourselves to realizing our core value of 'empowerment'—of people and society—since founding in 1997." — Source: Rakuten
  3. On the Internet's Nature: "What is the core value of the internet? Put simply: Fairness. With the internet, gaps in access to information and knowledge can be narrowed dramatically." — Source: Rakuten
  4. On Redefining Hospitality: "We are not here simply to facilitate e-commerce transactions, but to be in a service mind to our customers on a constant basis." — Source: Rakuten Today
  5. On Service Standards: "When we come to a market with the theme of omotenashi, we say: 'We are at your service.'" — Source: Rakuten Today
  6. On Anticipating Needs: The practice of omotenashi means anticipating customers' requests and addressing them before they are formally voiced. — Source: Internal Consulting
  7. On the Personal Touch: Retaining a human, personal element in digital interfaces prevents the platform from feeling like a sterile utility. — Source: Rakuten Today
  8. On Decentralizing Power: Giving control over page design and customer data directly to merchants creates a stronger overall ecosystem than hoarding it centrally. — Source: Tharawat Magazine
  9. On Long-term Value: Cultivating selflessness and attention to detail in merchant interactions builds trust that outlasts short-term pricing battles. — Source: Rakuten Today

Part 7: Failure and Continuous Improvement

  1. On the Cycle of Progress: "Try, fail, learn, grow." — Source: Rakuten Today
  2. On Defining Failure: "Failure is only truly failure when it does not lead to improvement." — Source: World Economic Forum
  3. On Actualizing Proverbs: "In Japan, there is an old proverb saying that failure is the foundation of success. When you take the attitude of implementing improvements soon after a failure, you are actualizing this proverb." — Source: Scribd
  4. On Finding Value: "When you trip over a stone, take a good look at that stone. It may well turn out to be a diamond." — Source: World Economic Forum
  5. On Societal Pressure: "As we grow older, we become afraid of failure. This is because society does not tolerate failure. However, innovation is born from failure." — Source: Note
  6. On Taking Risks: "When you take risks, sometimes mistakes will happen. Nobody likes them, but mistakes are going to happen. The trick is to embrace them as learning opportunities." — Source: World Economic Forum
  7. On Resilience: "Even if you challenge yourself and fail, if you keep challenging yourself, there will always come a time when you can recover from that failure." — Source: Note
  8. On the Cost of Inaction: "If you don't challenge yourself and regret not doing so, there is no way to recover from that." — Source: Note
  9. On Small Adjustments: A dedication to kaizen means viewing daily operations as a continuous experiment where minor tweaks yield major long-term gains. — Source: Entrepreneur

Part 8: Mindset and The Moonshot

  1. On Setting Goals: "Believe in the power of the moonshot. Aim higher than you think is reasonably possible. It's the stretch goal that fuels greatness." — Source: Rakuten Today
  2. On Group vs. Team: "Learn the difference between a group and a team. A group is a gathering. A team is united towards a common goal." — Source: Rakuten Today
  3. On Corporate Ownership: "Don't just do your job. Think of yourself as part of the larger whole of the company—part of a team." — Source: Rakuten Today
  4. On Outpacing Rivals: "It's not impossible to overtake others on the same route, but it's extremely difficult. In order to overtake your rivals, it's better to seek out a new path." — Source: 12min
  5. On Acting with Intent: "Don’t merely dream. Work hard and commit to success." — Source: getAbstract
  6. On Unknown Limits: "You have no idea what you can achieve. Set almost impossible goals." — Source: getAbstract
  7. On Overcoming Bureaucracy: Applying strict Key Performance Indicators to traditional environments is necessary to cure the safety-focused stagnation common in large institutions. — Source: Goodreads
  8. On Foundational Mantras: Start small, follow your inspiration, and remain completely open to altering your course when circumstances change. — Source: SuccessStory
  9. On Individual Responsibility: No business can sustain market dominance if its employees operate as a disjointed collection of individuals rather than a unified entity treating the firm as their own. — Source: Rakuten Today