Episode Details

What I learned from reading Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita.  

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[0:01] Forty years ago, a small group gathered in a burned-out department store building in war-devastated downtown Tokyo. Their purpose was to found a new company, their optimistic goal was to develop the technologies that would help rebuild Japan's economy.

[5:00] I was born the first son and fifteenth-generation heir to one of Japan's finest and oldest sake-brewing families. The Morita family has been making sale for three hundred years. Unfortunately, the taste of a couple of generations of Morita family heads was so refined and their collecting skills so acute that the business suffered while they pursued their artistic interests, letting the business take care of itself, or, rather, putting it in other hands. They relied on hired managers to run the Morita company, but to these managers the business was no more than a livelihood, and if the business did not do well, that was to be regretted, but it was not crucial to their personal survival. In the end, all the managers stood to lose was a job. They did not carry the responsibility of the generations, of maintaining the continuity and prosperity of the enterprise and the financial well-being of the Morita family. 

[8:18] Tenacity, perseverance, and optimism are traits that have been handed down to me through the family genes.

[9:25] I was taught that scolding subordinates and looking for people to blame for problems—seeking scapegoats—is useless. These concepts have stayed with me and helped me develop the philosophy of management that served me very well.

[10:28] I had to teach myself because the subjects I was really interested in were not taught in my school in those days.

[14:09] The emperor, who until now had never before spoken directly to his people, told us the immediate future would be grim. He said that we could “pave the way for a grand peace for all generations to come," but we had to do it "by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable."

[23:58] When some of my relatives came to see me, they were so shocked by the shabby conditions that they thought I had become an anarchist. They could not understand how, if I was not a radical, I could choose to work in a place like that.

[24:28] Ibuka and I had often spoken of the concept of our new company as an innovator, a clever company that would make new high technology products in ingenious ways.

[29:36] We were engineers and we had a big dream of success. We thought that in making a unique product, we would surely make a fortune. I then realized that having unique technology and being able to make unique products are not enough to keep a business going. You have to sell the products, and to do that you have to show the potential buyer the real value of what you are selling. 

[32:20] There was an acute shortage of stenographers because so many people had been pushed out of school and into war work. Until that shortage could be corrected, the courts of Japan were trying to cope with a small, overworked corps of court stenographers. We were able to demonstrate our machine for the Japan Supreme Court, and we sold twenty machines almost instantly! Those people had no difficulty realizing how they could put our device to practical use; they saw the value in the tape recorder immediately.

[38:03] Marketing is really a form of communication. We had to educate our customers to the uses of our products.

[39:15] We would often have the market to ourselves for a year or more before the other companies would be convinced that the product would be a success. And we made a lot of money, having the market all to ourselves.

[40:20] The public does not know what is possible, but we do. So instead of doing a lot of market research, we refine our thinking on a product and its use and try to cr