YouSaid · the spoken record

Akio Morita

lines on the record: 44
first: 2019-12-15
most recent: 2019-12-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And then he's got more advice. He says it again never stopping resourceful. Some people have said that the post-industrial society is here, and some predict that we cannot expect technological innovation anymore. Isn't it funny? He's writing these words in 1986. This book is 1985. The book was published in 1986. And the reason I think that's funny, because they say people say the exact same thing today. Oh, that's it. We're done. Some people have said that this is the post-industrial society's here. And some predict that we cannot expect technological innovation anymore. And then we will have to live smaller lives with less satisfaction and luxury. I don't believe it. My prediction is that we can enjoy our lives with less energy, less of the old materials, fewer resources, more recycling, and have more of the essentials for a happy and productive life than ever. Step by step, year by year, we must all learn how to be more skillful and efficient in using our resources economically.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have no such expression. He's got more advice that he mentions a number of times, it's extremely important to him. He says, My point is that it is unwise merely to do something different and then rest on your laurels. You have to do something to make a business out of new development, and that requires you keep updating the product and staying ahead of the market. You learn in school only becomes useful when you add something to it that is yours and you do it yourself”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was disappointed to see how little was done in redesign of products in other countries like the US that had their own oil. In the US and Britain, such a crisis did not have the heavy impact on every single citizen that it did in Japan. So he continues. When you were told from childhood on that the metal object you hold in your hand comes from iron ore mine in countries far away, which is transported to Japan at great expense and is produced in furnaces that use gas and coal from other faraway places, such objects become very valuable. Our general philosophy throughout industry in Japan is that everybody is an inspector and that the goods being made must be made correctly at every single stage of the operation. This is natural to us. I am reminded of the American expression. There's plenty more where that came from.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very best use of. To waste something is considered a kind of sin. We have developed this concept that goes beyond mere frugality or conservation, the wasting of anything was considered shameful, virtually a crime. We have always had to practice conservation for survival. So I'm just going to give you some background into why they've optimized so much for this one trait. We learn once again the meaning of Montana when the oil crisis came, but we also learned how to apply the principles that underlying the expression and today with a much expanded economy, we use less crude oil, coal and natural gas than we did in nineteen seventy three because we have learned how to be efficient. So he's saying this has been in our culture for a while. We had to do it because Japan lacks a lot of natural resources. We rely on outside countries to produce it for that. And so in times of struggle, we get really good and really efficient. And then when we don't have time to struggle, we still maintain that.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Age companies for it's coming for people in Japan to work into their 70s and 80s. All right, so now let me go back to what he feels is like more of a Japanese tendency, which obviously other people and other cultures also have this traits, but he feels it's more common in Japan and less common in America at this time. All right, so this is one of the most significant value concepts that we have cherished from ancient times. It's this concept called Montanai. There's no way it's correct. So let me just describe what it is. It is a key concept, one that may help explain a great deal about Japan, the Japanese people, and our industry. It is an expression that suggests that everything in the world is a gift from the Creator and that we should be grateful for it and never waste anything. All things are provided as a sacred trust and actually are only loaned to us to make the barrier.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, you guys are making a lot of mistakes here, in his opinion. And, you know, there's no right, one right way, which is beautiful. So he says. In Japan, the founder and CEO must resign if their shame brought to the company, and this is much less important in less worrisome because the management of a company is more collective. So one person can leave. It's not the end. Japan optimizes for long-term investment over short-term profits. Japan is less hierarchical. He gives an example of this. We air-conditioned our factories before our offices. America does a reverse. Most importantly, the most important thing for Japanese companies is continued employment and improvement of workers. America, it's the profit of shareholders. Japan believes any type of work is honorable. They won't look down on specific jobs. Americans are like, they turn their nose up. And they think all work. Japanese beliefs work is honorable in itself. He says Americans believe some type of work is honorable. And he says there's no mandatory retirement.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did not work together. Okay, I love this part. So now we're in the chapter I told you about earlier where he thinks about technology as a survival exercise. That's a very unique way of thinking. I don't think I've come across. And I think it's practically correct. But this is going to be a longer part where I'm going to read to you. And essentially the main idea here is being wasteful is the opposite of resourcefulness. And I always think like the best description of like what traits you need for entrepreneurship comes from Paul Graham. If you think about all the people that have studied entrepreneurship, very few probably have studied as much or to the degree that Paul Graham has, right? Meaning like multiple companies, not just your own. And that's his line, the trait that he sees that successful entrepreneurs must have is, and I say successful people in general and all kinds of domains is that they're relentlessly resourceful. And I keo obviously was like you don't start Sony.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To work with Sony, and the punchline is if you care about the product you're making, study the details. So he says, the Soviets were eight to ten years behind Japan and the West in their consumer electronic technology. And so he takes a tour of the factory and they want to work together. And they're asking, what do you think? And, you know, he's got a sharp tongue. He says, in Japan, we used our top talent in our best brains and spent years seeking ways to increase the efficiency and the productivity of even such a simple thing as a screwdriver. We have racked our brains and made detailed studies and experiments to decide just what is the exact and precise temperature for a soldering iron in each particular application. You do not make any such effort here to do it because nobody seems to care. So needless to say, Sony and the U.S.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say the same thing. He's like, listen, we spend less than 1% of our operating profit on the headquarters, corporate headquarters. We see some companies have spent in excess. We look at the books, we analyze our numbers, and they're spending in excess 10%. 10% of the company's assets on headquarters. And he's like, me and Charlie Munger have studied this. And what we found is there's no correlation between the percent of money that you spend in your company on operations, like on headquarters and everything, to performance. That's a hell of an indictment. Meaning they're spending money for no increase in performance. And what happens when a company or a person is not resourceful? Eventually those resources are going to move to other people that are resourceful. Okay, so where we are in the story, Akeyo is visiting. He's invited to the USSR and they want to work together. And so this part was fascinating because this is what Akeo told the government in the USR when they wanted...”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we do not believe in posh and impressive private offices. Generally, in the Japanese industry, the investment goes into those things that relate directly to the product. This is not rocket science, but there's something about human nature that we, like comfort is a false God. Like, we should not just be trying to make our lives more comfortable. You never adapt and progress and learn in comfort. You just don't. And so I think like fetishizing that. And every time I see super nice company offices, I'm like, oh, okay, well, this business isn't going to last that long. It says too often I found in dealing with foreign companies that such superlifious things as the physical structure and office decor take up a lot more time and attention and money than they are worth. Again, this is not, I mean, he's telling us, you know, he's experiencing this half of a century ago or whatever, maybe a quarter of a century ago this time where we were in the book. Warren Buffett.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If it is done properly with a healthy, it rewards you if it is done properly with a healthy transplanted tree. Advertising and promotion for a brand new innovative product is just as important. And the one thing that both these approaches to not only moving trees and gardening, but to preparing customers for new products, the one thing they both have in common is that it takes time. And that was something Akio talked about over and over again. Optimized for the long term. Great things are going to take a long time. You just, you can't, you know, this is what Warren Buffett was telling us. You can't make, what was it? You can't make a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. He's like, some things just take time. More difference between what he considers a difference between US and Japanese. His US partner comes over and looks at Sonya's offices at the time, and he was just shocked. It was like very basic. They had everything they needed, but it wasn't like ostentatious or anything like that. So it says.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, was that by saving money instead of investing in the business, you might gain profit on a short-term basis, but in actual fact you'd be cashing in the assets that had been built up in the past. So I like this idea. The way Akio would educate customers about a new product, it was actually inspired by this Japanese tradition of Namawashi. So let me read this part to you. One must prepare the groundwork among the customers before you can expect success in the marketplace. It is a time-honored Japanese gardening technique to prepare a tree for transplanting by slowly and carefully binding the roots over a period of time, bit by bit, to prepare the tree for the shock of the changes it is about to experience.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he says that night I went to bed troubled. I couldn't sleep, tossing and turning, until I could stand it no more. In the middle of the night I grabbed the phone and called Harvey, the president or manager. He was in a meeting in New York. I got him out and yelled at him. If you're not going to spend a million or two million dollars, oh, this is a Betamex campaign. If you're not going to spend a million or two million dollars on the Betamex campaign in the next two months, I will fire you. I had never said anything like that. And he had never heard me sounding like that. It made an impression and I felt better. He spent the money, but I discovered later what they actually did. What they actually did was to shift the money from one part of the business so our total advertising expenditure remained the same. So he didn't actually do what he wanted him to do. The trouble with American management was that profit was the main goal. So now Kia's going to lay out his explicitly how he looks at this stuff. He says, my argument again and again.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so we're going to see this actually play out. This is a story about the difference in Japanese American management, and this has to do with Sony America. He says, my Sony American president was reluctant to spend the money. So they're launching a new product and very, very much like Steve Jobs. Akeel, he was huge about product launches. He wanted to educate. He wanted to make sure there was investment that people knew. Like it was an event, right? And he wants to do it at the very beginning. So it pops. So this is my Sony American president was likely to spend the money. He said if we spent a lot on this promotion and if he could not bring in enough sales, we would lose money. I told him over and over again, you must also consider the return that comes in five or ten years, not just the immediate return.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“be achieving good short-term goals at the same time destroying the long-term value of the company. He says it is not started at the bottom line of the balance sheet, which can be black one day and red the next, no matter what you do. I told my managers recently what you were showing to your employees is not that you are an artist who performs by himself in the high wire, but you are showing them how you are attempting to attract a large number of people to follow you willingly and with the enthusiasm to contribute to the success of the company. If you can do that, the bottom line will take care of itself.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is more on his management philosophy. I do not like to have my managers think they are special breed of people elected by God to lead stupid people to do miraculous things. The world of business has some peculiarities. The remarkable thing about management is that a manager can go on for years making a mistake that nobody is aware of, which means that management can be kind of a con job. That is because management, despite the work of the Harvard Business School and others and the increasing numbers of holders of advanced degrees in business administration, is an elusive thing that cannot always be judged by next quarter's bottom line. Managers can look good on the bottom line, but at the same time may be destroying the company by failing to invest in the future. So this is one of his main criticisms about the difference between Japanese management and American management, his American management does not invest enough in the long term to optimize for short-term profits. So that's an example of what he's talking about here that you can actually”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We learn a lot by listening to our employees. Wisdom is not the exclusive possession of management. So, this is another advice that he has for us don't sacrifice the benefits of individuality for the sake of consensus. When most Japanese companies talk about cooperation or consensus, it usually means the elimination of individuality. Many Japanese companies like to use the word cooperation and consensus because they dislike individualistic employees. I say that a manager who talks too much about cooperation is one who is saying he doesn't have the ability to utilize excellent individuals and their ideas and put their ideas in harmony. If my company is successful, it is largely because our managers do have this ability.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He comes up with a unique way to identify bad managers. I like this too. So he's talking to some young people working at Sony. He says before, and this is what a young person tells him before I joined the company, I thought this was a fantastic company. It is the only place I wanted to work. But I work for the section chief, Mr. So-and-so, and in my lowly capacity, I work for this man, not for Sony. And everything I do or suggests must go through this guy. I am very disappointed that this stupid section chief is Sony as far as my career is concerned. Now we go to what Akio's learning from this conversation. This was a sobering thought for me. I realized there might be many employees in our company with problems like this. So I started a weekly company newspaper where we could advertise job openings. This made it possible for employees to try for other jobs confidentially. We have had cases where we discovered a manager was inadequate because so many people working under him asked to be transferred.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of vigorous exercise, not only for the heart, but also for the mind and the sense of confidence it gives you. It is important to maintain confidence in yourself. Here's some example of advice that Akio gives to young people. Essentially, the main point is don't work in a job that you hate, you're going to regret it. He says, nobody can live twice in the next 20 or 30 years is the brightest period of your life. You only get it once. When you leave the company 30 years from now, or when your life is finished, I do not want you to regret that you spent all those years here. That would be a tragedy. I cannot stress the point too much that this is your responsibility to yourself. So I say to you, the most important thing in the next few months is for you to decide whether you will be happy or unhappy here.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His ideas were very challenging. He said then a ballet dancer needs a mirror to perfect her style, her technique. A singer needs the same, an oral, an aural mirror. Olga is now the president of Sony. Okay, so now we're going to see some more glimpses into his own personal philosophy. He talks a lot about the benefits of spending time with young people, the benefits of vigorous exercise, and the benefits of maintaining self-confidence. So he says, I like to play sports with young people because I get ideas from them and they give me a fresh slant on almost everything. I think it is good for my spirit too to be with young people who are enthusiastic. Since I've been playing tennis, I notice my reflexes are improving and this pleases me because when you start to age, the reflexes and reactions tend to slow down. I notice when I begin to ski that my balance wasn't too good, but it has improved also. Every executive should be aware of the need for this.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's got another unique idea moving on. This is something I've never even heard of before. Hire a paid critic. This is a genius, man. So he says, Noria Oga, who had been a vocal art student at the Tokyo University of Arts when he first saw our first audio tape recorder back in 1950. So he says, I had had my eyes on him for all those years because of his bold criticism of our first machine. He was a great champion of the tape recorder, but he was severe with us because he didn't think our early machines were good enough. Now, I'm going to finish this paragraph, but I'm going to get to the punchline now because I think it'll help you understand. This paid critic he hires eventually becomes the president of Sony.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I attended middle school, discipline was very strict, and this included our physical as well as our mental training. Our classrooms were very cold in winter. We didn't have a heater, and we were not allowed to wear extra clothes. In the Navy I had hard training in boot camp, but every morning we had to run a long way before breakfast. In those days I did not think of myself as physically strong person, and yet under such strict training, I found I was not so weak after all, so essentially just learning about the adaptability of human beings, right? And the knowledge of my own ability gave me confidence in myself that he did not have before. It is the same with mental discipline. Unless you are forced to use your mind, you become mentally lazy, and you will never fulfill your potential. And I feel this is happening a lot. I think the Adventist social media obviously is a problem with that. There's way less people listening to educational podcasts, audiobooks, reading books.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why not take advantage of ours? Now this is a key. Fifty years ago, I said, your brand name must have been just as unknown as our name is today. I am here with a new product, and I am now taking the first step for the next fifty years of my company. Fifty years from now I promise you that our name will be just as famous as your company name is today. Okay, so now I'm going to fast forward in the book. He's got a bunch of other just explicit ideas that he feels is beneficial to building to work and to life. He's living in New York City. He founded the Sony American subsidiary. Now he's got to go back to Japan because his dad dies. And it's his responsibility to put the family's affairs in order. And so at this time, he's reflecting on the end of life. And then about what can he learn from his ancestors? And then what can he teach the lessons to?”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they like the radios that Sony's making, but they want him to privately label them. And so he's like, this is ridiculous. So he says they like the radio very much. And their purchasing officer said very casually, we'll take $100,000. 100,000 units, exclamation point. I was stunned. It was an incredible order where it several times the total capital of our company. He told me that there was one condition. We would have to put the Belova name on the radios. That stopped me. I had vowed that we would not be an original equipment maker for other companies. We wanted to make a name for our company on the strength of our own products. We would not produce radios other than under another name. When I would not brudge, he got short with me. And so this guy's being kind of like a jerk to him. He says, our company name is a famous brand name that has taken over 50 years to establish, he said. Nobody has ever even heard of your brand name.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So not like everybody's telling them no, this is a bad idea, this is a bad idea, this bad idea. You know, his natural inclination is to be overconfident, right? And that he said, I'll risk my career. I will resign. That's what I would see. And I'm not saying everybody has to build a company that says a Sony, but we do need, we can't have new business creation at a 40-year low. That is a huge problem. We've got to do anything in our power to explain to new generations We need new small businesses. We do. That's who employs most of the people in this country. It's really important. And I think for one reason, I talked.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing nothing. What is that going to solve? That's ridiculous. So here's a, and again, a keel is cocky. That's what people said. He was too confident, too cocky. Well, this is an example where that profound belief in himself led to overcome all the objections into one of the greatest consumer products ever created. He needed that. That was a tool. They said it wouldn't sell and it embarrassed me to be so excited about a product that most other thoughts would be Dud. But I was so confident that the product was viable that I said it would take personal responsibility for the project. Check this out. I never had reason to regret it. The idea took hold and from the very beginning the Walkman was runaway success. So I'm pretty sure he said, I don't know why I didn't include that in my notes, but I'm pretty sure he said that if the Walkman failed, he would resign from Sony.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said, this is what he says back to his employees. He goes, millions of people have bought car stereos without recording capability. And I think millions will buy this machine. And this is one of the best sentences in the book. The accountants protested, but I persisted. So let me read the back cover because he talks about the walkman since it's so important. And this is his quote on it. He says, nobody openly laughed at me, but everybody gave me a hard time. It seemed as though nobody liked the idea. I do not believe that any amount of market research could have told us that the Sony Walkman would be successful. And again, 400 million units moved. That's amazing. So the Walkman comes out and he says, I thought we had produced a terrific item, and I was full of enthusiasm for it. But our marketing people were unenthusiastic, so he still has to fight this battle. At the engineering level, now at the marketing sales level, and at the accounting level. They said it wouldn't sell, and it embarrassed me to be so excited.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I said, Ibuka's complaint set me into motion. I ordered our engineers to take one of our reliable small cassette tape recorders, strip out the recording circuit and the speaker, and replace them with a stereo amplifier. I outlined with other details I wanted, which included very lightweight headphones. Now, so he's got an idea from a product, first he sees the problem. I'm sure Abuka is not the only person that feels as a way, right? Humans, all human, almost every human loves to listen to music. And he's like, but it's too big. Can we make a smaller? So he says, everyone gave me a hard time. It seemed as though nobody liked the idea. It sounds like a good idea, but will people buy it if it doesn't have any recording capability? So he's talking about the pushback he's getting from internally from the company. I don't think so. People are saying, hey, it's a good idea, but since you can't record on it, no one's going to buy it. And then I just uses his own basic judgment.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Abuka and Abuka came into my office one day with one of our portable stereo tape recorders and a pair of our headphones. He looked unhappy and complained about the weight of the system. I asked him what was on his mind and he explained. I like to listen to music, but I don't want to disturb others, so you need a private way to do that, right? I can't sit next to my stereo all day. So now you need to be private, but you need it to be portable. This is my solution. I take the music with me, but it's too heavy.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then they can reinvest those profits to make more products, and you have this wonderful virtuous cycle. We have to keep a premium on innovation. For many years now, we have put well over 6% of sales into R&D, and some years as much as 10%. Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want, that type of thinking is found all throughout history. That's a key saying it. You could easily say Henry Ford would say the same sentence, Steve Jobs would say the same sentence. 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 create a market for it by educating and communicating with the public. So that's like just a basic business principle that worked in his days and will work today and it'll work in the future. As an example, I can cite the Walkman. The idea took shape.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wanted to change the image of Japanese goods as poor in quality, and we reasoned if you're going to sell high quality expensive product, you need an affluent market. And that means a rich, sophisticated country.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This. So, what do you do when your pocket size radio doesn't fit into a pocket? A Kio's idea? You make the pocket bigger. So he says, it was a bit bigger than a standards men shirt pocket, and that gave us a problem. We like the idea of a salesman being able to demonstrate how simple it would be to drop it into a shirt pocket. So we came up with a simple solution. We had some shirts made for our salesman with a slightly larger than normal pockets, just big enough to slip the radio into. Now they're not the only ones that came up with this idea in this next paragraph is a reminder that products don't compete. Companies do. So it says an American company called Regency put out a pocket-sized radio a few months before ours, but the company gave up without putting much effort into marketing it. As the first in the field, they might have capitalized on their position and created a tremendous market for their product, as we did.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Valid reasons for investing that much money in such an object. At that moment I knew that I had to sell a recorder. I knew that to sell a recorder, we would have to identify the people that would be likely to recognize the value in our product.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like jobs in that sense. So he says, so at this point, I should give you some background. They launched it. No one's buying it. It's really expensive. It's big. And so he's like, what the hell? What are we doing? So he says, a fortunate chance incident helped me see the light. I was still trying to figure out what we were doing wrong and trying but failing to sell our tape recorders. When I happened to stroll by an antique shop, I noticed a customer buying an old vase. Without hesitation he took out his wallet and handed over a large number of bills to the antique stealer. The price was higher than we were asking for a tape recorder. Why I wondered would someone pay so much money for an old object that had no practical value, while a new and important device such as our tape recorder could attract no customers. To me there was no contest. The tape recorder was the better bargain, but I realized that the vase had perceived value to that collector of antiques, and he had”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For this, it's a hell of a statement, right? Ibuka believes strongly that all we needed to do was make good products and the orders would come. So did I. We both had a lesson to learn. 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. I was struck with the realization that I was going to have to be the merchandiser of our small company, because even though they're both engineers, Abuka was like the more he was better at it, he was more qualified. And so this is the role Keo adopts his whole life. So in that sense, you can think of the very early days of Apple. Ibuka is kind of like Wozniak and Akio is.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Teachers that have And so they fired all of them because they didn't want them like people that fetishized war to teach the new generation. They just went through like a devastate, the most devastating time in Japanese history. So anyone who kind of repeats of that. Now, Akeo gets a lucky break because he doesn't have to teach anymore, but he's still on the government payroll by mistake. So says months went by without any notice that I had been officially purged from a university job. And every month the school would call me to tell me to tell me to come and pick up my pay because for some reason I remained on the payroll. So he's able to get money from the government of Japan, his normal paycheck, but work at Sony full time. This went on until October of 1946 when the Ministry of Education finally got around to issuing my personal purge notice. I welcomed the subsidy while it lasted because our new company was not setting any records for financial success in those days. Yeah, that's an understatement. So during the early days of Sony, they had no money.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Ibuka is doing all of this before he's going to start being partners with IO. So Keo sees all this is happening. He senses an opportunity and he jumps on it, which is another good idea by him. So he says, I wrote to him immediately and said I would like to visit him in Tokyo. I said I wanted to help him in his new business and would support him in any way I could. He wrote back immediately, inviting me to come see him and the new company, but he told me that things were pretty tight and that he was paying his people out of his own pocket and was looking for funding. Because I knew Abuca they had met previously when Akea was studying physics. Because I knew Abuka was having trouble meeting his payroll, I got the idea that I could work with this new company part-time and teach part-time. So at a time, Akio, before he found Sony, he's teaching physics at the university. And what happens is the government decides, hey, any...”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When my time returned on my radio and I heard the announcement that Japanese forces had attacked Pearl Harbor. Now, okay, everybody knows that happened, right? His response was fascinating to me. Listen to what he says. I was shocked. I remember thinking that this was a dangerous thing. I had grown up believing the West was somewhat superior in technology. Knowing about America's technology, I was concerned that a mistake had been made”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Myself, because the subjects I was really interested in were not taught in my school in those days. In fact, I became so engrossed in my electronic tinkering that I almost flung out of school. And I think it's really hard to tell what you're meant to do in life. There's so many options. Like you have, especially when you're younger, like, and you don't know much about the world, it seems like there's all these possibilities are limitless and you have this paradox of choice. How do you pick one thing out of millions of different options or opportunities? And I think one easy way to figure out how you would like to get an enjoyable life is just listen to your passions. Like what do you do for fun? I always talk about that my love of that word auto telek. It describes an activity that you're doing just for the sake of itself. Is there an activity that you do in your life that's like that? And if so, is there a way to make money and build a career around it?”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That served me very well. So Jeff Bezos has this great quote where he says, you don't find your passions, your passions find you. And I think that is actually completely true. This example, Akeo is another example of that. He finds his obsessions with electronics extremely early in life. So he says, at this point he's a young boy. He says, I began to buy books about electronics. And I subscribe to magazines that contain all the latest information about sound reproduction and radio. These are industries that Sony is going to build some pioneering products in a few decades later. He says soon I was spending so much time on electronics that was hurting my schoolwork. I was devoting nearly all of my after school hours to my new hobby. This reminded me of when I did the podcast on the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, him and Bill Gates, you could change some of the words in that sentence I just read to you, and it would still hold true for those two as well. So the devotee of nearly all my after school hours to my new hobby. I had to teach my”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His predecessor as family head had started a beer business by hiring a Chinese brewery who had learned his trade in England. He also founded a baking company which prospered. Tenacity, perseverance, and optimism are traits that have been handed down to me through my family genes. Now he's going to tell us some explicit business lessons that he learned from his father. He says, I think it was very important that I was also cautioned time and time again as a young man. So now there's going to be direct quotes from his father. Don't think that because you are at the top, you can boss others around. Be very clear on what you have decided to do and what you ask others to do and take full responsibility for it. Now back to Keyo. He says, 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 managing”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of the best things that ever happened to Akeo is that he had a very understanding father, and his father, so the Japanese tradition, according to Keyo, was the firstborn son, has to take over the family business. That was Kio's destiny before Sony. And so as such, his dad from a very young age took Keio to work with him. He'd sit in on meetings, even from the age of like 10, 12, 13. He'd be in all these meetings. They'd be reviewing numbers. And Akia would talk about after the meetings were over and after he was essentially shadowing his dad, he'd have to think for a long time and try to interpret what the adults were talking about. And I think that is really important that Kia later in the life says he's a”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Japan's devastated, they just lost their first war in their entire history. And yet here we see the unwavering confidence of IKEO. He says, I don't mind saying that even then as a young man, I felt that somehow I had a role to play in that future. I didn't know how big a role would turn out to be. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about his early family history, which is fascinating because he comes from a family that had a family business for going back 300 years. And so he learns a lot from this family business, but specifically what happens to a multi-generational family business when you lose focus on the business. So I want to talk about that a little bit here. So I was born the first son in 15th generation heir to one of Japan's finest and oldest socky brewing families. The Marita family had been making socky for 300 years. It's bananas. So they had a really prosperous, they were one of the richest families in”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Future had never been more uncertain. Japan had never lost a war, and only a young man could be optimistic, yet I had confidence in myself and in my future even then. I was twenty four. Okay, so that's one of the first personality traits I want to bring to your attention. Akio was, he had the utmost confidence in himself even when at times he shouldn't have had. And a lot of people even called him cocky. You're going to see a lot of parallels between Keo and Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs actually met Ah at the very beginning. If you study the early days of Apple, Steve said that he wanted Apple to be the Sony of computers. And so that's one trait they share. And I'll talk a little bit more about what Steve Jobs said about Sony later on. All right, so back to the book. I had seen the terrible results of conventional firebombing. I was in Tokyo when the incendiary bombs whipped up a firestorm.”
2019-12-15 · Founders · #102 Akio Morita (Sony) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source