Takeshi Natsuno

Plenty of people at NTT DoCoMo Inc. (NTDMY ), Japan's dominant wireless carrier, helped make a success of i-mode, the two-year-old mobile Internet access service that today boasts some 25 million subscribers. But there's one individual who stands out as a linchpin in this story--Takeshi Natsuno, the guru of i-mode content.

A graduate of Wharton Business School, Natsuno gets the credit for designing a profitable, info-entertainment wireless platform that has morphed into Japan's biggest market success in years. He lured high-quality content providers with a micropayments scheme that enables providers to charge fees for their services--ranging from horoscopes to stock quotes. While PC-based sites are scrambling for a source of revenue, DoCoMo's content partners each charge up to $3 per user in monthly fees, which DoCoMo collects for them. "To become profitable ourselves, we have to motivate and enrich the content providers," says Natsuno.