Akio morita made in japan pdf download. “Made in Japan”: the story of Sony founder Akio Morita

05.12.2023

Akio Morita

Made in Japan

Formation of a transnational concern

(Introductory article)

The book lying before the reader comes from the pen of an outstanding capitalist of our days. The hearing has difficulty reconciling with such a combination of words. An outstanding scientist, artist or great politician - all this sounds quite familiar, even if we are talking about a figure in a Western country. But a talented capitalist... We know very little about the names of the architects of modern business and have very little idea of their real functions in the economy. Henry Ford, two or three more entrepreneurs from bygone eras - and that’s practically all. As if bourgeois society could demonstrate its amazing vitality without promoting talented people to positions of production organizers.

The brilliant tandem of Akio Morita, who was responsible for the commercial side of the business, and Masaru Ibuki, the technical genius of the company, turned a small and unknown company into one of the largest transnational corporations in the world. Moreover, through their efforts, not just a large company was created, but an innovative company. It was the Sony Corporation that was the first to launch a transistor radio into mass production and created the world's first home video recorder. A portable cassette player with headphones - an indispensable attribute of modern youth culture - is also the brainchild of Sony, and first of all A. Morita personally. Together with the Dutch concern Philips, the company developed and introduced a fundamentally new laser sound recording technology, and silver compact discs have already replaced, and in the 90s will finally replace, the usual long-playing records. Finally, Sony has recently come closer than other companies to creating high-definition television technology (HDTV), which promises to turn the home screen into a true window to the world.

A. Morita's book is simply interesting to read. But it is also interesting as a document of the era, as a self-portrait of a modern capitalist. And if some features of his activity shock the reader (for example, his dexterity in suppressing a strike and splitting a trade union), while others delight him (for example, his ability to maintain a friendly, purely human atmosphere in the company’s team), then it is not the image that is to blame. The depicted object itself is contradictory - a major entrepreneur of our day.

A few words about the purposes of this introductory article. In the Western literary tradition there is a genre that is almost unknown in our country - the “Success story”. A person who has achieved a lot in life does not write cold, objective memoirs, but tries to show through what qualities he achieved victory. But one can only evaluate what has been done by comparison. Our commentary will be mainly devoted to comparisons: the fate of the Sony Corporation against the backdrop of what usually happens to an average company, and the style of A. Morita as the head of Sony in comparison with common methods of managing capitalist enterprises.

1. Firm and market

How does the modern capitalist market function? What are the conditions in which the Sony company was able to emerge and very successfully - not only for itself, but also for the economy as a whole - to develop its activities? Until relatively recently, this question would have been of interest only to a narrow circle of specialists. Now it has acquired an unexpected poignancy. The prospects for a fundamental change in the structure of the Soviet market force us to take a closer look at the interaction of powerful elements in the Western market: monopoly and competition.

A simplified view of things reduces the market mechanism to one of two extremes: “the dominance of monopolies” or “complete freedom of competition.” Both of these approaches (oddly enough, they are easily combined with each other: the economy is alternately viewed as either purely competitive or monopolized) are unproductive. Moreover, they do not reflect the real situation in the modern world. Another thing is even worse. With this direction of research, the most important thing eludes him - the mechanism of coexistence and complementarity of both principles, equally necessary for the current capitalist economy.

In its rapid development, Sony Corporation went through three important stages: a small manufacturer, a specialized company and a large monopoly. Firms of all these types constantly operate in the capitalist market and perform important functions in it. Let's follow the history of Sony and the demands that the market made of it in each new capacity.

SMALL PRODUCER. The beginning of the Sony company, then still called Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, was founded in 1946 by a workshop for remaking radio receivers. Few could foresee the great future of this enterprise, which suffered from a lack of financial resources, did not have attractive products in its production program and was constantly afraid of being forced out of the market by more powerful competitors. Thousands of companies operating in any capitalist country in the field of small business still exist in such seemingly unenviable conditions.

Nevertheless, their number is not decreasing, and in recent years has even been growing.

If we try to briefly convey the contents of the table. 1, then it comes down to demonstrating the enormous role of small business. It is widely known that monopolies do not completely displace small enterprises. But the numbers say more. Namely, that small enterprises, at least in purely quantitative terms, represent the largest sector of the economy. Indeed, from the data in the table it follows that in most capitalist countries at least half of all employees work in small and tiny enterprises. For some countries this share is significantly higher. So, in the homeland of Sony - in ultra-modern Japan - half of all workers are employed in the smallest firms alone, and small and tiny enterprises together provide employment to three-quarters of the Japanese.

Table I

The smallest are firms with the number of employees from 1 to 19 people, small - from 20 to 99, medium - from 100 to 499, large - more than 500. In the UK and Italy, the first two categories include firms with 1-24 and 24–, respectively. 99, 1–9 and 9–99 occupied.

Source: Midland Bank Review, Spring 1987, p. 17.

The role of small business is great not only quantitatively, but also functionally, that is, in terms of the tasks that it solves in the economy. Unfortunately, as the Soviet economist A. N. Tkachenko rightly notes, “in the available economic literature, all small companies operating in the field of material production are often considered exclusively as an appendage of monopolies, completely and entirely dependent on the interests and goals of the largest commercial and industrial corporations. Such an opinion, which has already become commonplace, for some reason avoided the need for strict factual proof, in practice it is difficult to reconcile with current realities.” Of course, dependent small businesses exist (estimated at about 1/3 and, apparently, no more than 1/2 of all small firms). But this does not mean that one can neglect the role of independent small companies or believe that dependent ones are absolutely loyal to their “suzerains.” In our opinion, small firms form a kind of foundation on which higher “floors” of the economy grow and which largely predetermines the architecture of the building. First of all, this applies to competitive relations in the economy. For small business, fierce competition is a natural state, directly resulting from its distinctive properties. The fact is that the strengths of small companies are associated with their ability to respond almost instantly to market demands and take into account the specific needs of a particular consumer. This is a kind of competition in flexibility, taking place under conditions of strict selection. In the UK, for example, in the first half of the 1980s, eleven percent of all registered firms ceased to exist each year. If we consider that the majority of liquidated companies are small, it is easy to calculate that in five to seven years the entire population of small companies is almost completely renewed.

Sony. Made in Japan Akio Morita

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Name: Sony. Made in Japan
Author: Akio Morita
Year: 1986
Genre: Biographies and Memoirs, Foreign business literature, Foreign journalism, Popular about business

About the book “Sony. Made in Japan" Akio Morita

Today it is difficult to imagine the global consumer electronics market without Sony equipment. The author, one of the founders of the Sony Corporation, talks about the history of the company, the development of the Walkman player, the Betamax VCR, the CD and other unique inventions. The book talks in detail about the relationship between big business and the state, trade unions, competitors, the characteristic features of Japanese management, in particular the perception of the corporation as a family, etc. In the conditions of post-war Japan, Morita had to create almost everything, even management approaches, from scratch , forming a new entrepreneurial culture and traditions. The book is intended for a wide range of readers.

On our website about books you can download the site for free without registration or read the book “Sony. Made in Japan" by Akio Morita in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.

Quotes from the book “Sony. Made in Japan" Akio Morita

We believe that a company that sells its property has no future.

A company that invests its profits in production rather than in dividends will ultimately provide more profit to its shareholders and certainly more than many companies in the US and Europe that pay dividends out of fictitious profits.

And therefore, every country must take care of increasing the level of education of workers, and the idea of preserving outdated jobs in the modern era does not make sense.

Training programs for university graduates entering Sony facilities include a program in which non-technical graduates receive a month of factory training and technicians work as sales associates in Sony stores selling our products.

Foreign managers do not seem to notice this. For example, in America people are accustomed to a system where a person sells his labor for a certain price.

I was starting to get a general understanding of the company's operations, its financial position, what was happening every day and the path the company was taking. I found it to be just as interesting as working in the studio.

Under Japanese labor law, the workweek has a maximum length of forty-eight hours (this will soon be reduced). And the average working week in the manufacturing industry is now forty-three hours.

I was hoping to see an increase in the number of foreign companies on Japanese soil.

In Japan, we believe that the most important thing for a company is the morale of its workers. If they are not enthusiastic about their company, it may die.

The site's observer studied the biography of Japanese entrepreneur Akio Morita, who built the Sony company and significantly influenced the development of the electronics market.

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Almost everyone knows the name Sony. The Japanese company has come a long way before achieving worldwide recognition, and its success is largely due to one of the founders, Akio Morita. The entrepreneur, who went through the war and the subsequent crisis, became one of those who helped restore Japan and bring it to its current level. Morita remains a role model for many Japanese, and his views on business are even studied at universities.

Early years. Military service

The creation of Sony's branch in France was delayed for several years, which was due to the company's former local partner, who was on excellent terms with the Minister of Finance. Morita held lengthy negotiations, used all possible levers and ultimately received the right only to a joint venture in France with a 50% division of shares.

Opening a branch in Germany (FRG), Akio approached the task in a non-trivial way. It would seem that the company should have located itself in Dusseldorf, where there is a powerful Japanese community. Morita felt that this would be detrimental to the employees: to work effectively in Germany, they needed to learn to understand the country and its people, but in Düsseldorf they would be surrounded by Japanese people. Therefore, a subsidiary company was opened in Cologne.

In parallel with this, new factories were opened in Japan, as well as a fairly large research laboratory. Thanks to Akio’s efforts, a shopping center with a French restaurant was created in Tokyo: there were plenty of Japanese establishments in the capital, and the cuisine of another country was a novelty. This idea came to the entrepreneur after a business trip to Korea, where he was constantly treated to national food, which he eventually got tired of.

Entrepreneurial views

Under Akio Morita, Sony's main goal was to create new revolutionary designs. He did not like to follow the ideas of others and believed that a successful company itself must create new markets and maintain leadership in them, and the main task of a manager is to build relationships between ordinary employees and management. Only those companies whose employees are united by a common goal achieve success.

Everyone who has their own business must understand that its success depends on each individual employee, regardless of position in the hierarchy. Talented employees need to be provided with decent working conditions, and top managers should under no circumstances consider themselves kings - otherwise this will have a disastrous effect on the company. Morita did not provide managers with separate offices, but whenever possible he dined with ordinary employees.

The formation of Sony was influenced by Morita's understanding of the mentality and history of his country. He considered the Japanese tradition, which obliges a person to work in one place all his life, to be harmful: if a person is not happy at work, he must change it. For those who were dissatisfied, Morita published a special newspaper at Sony, where he posted vacancies from other departments. So he offered an alternative to employees, and at the same time checked the effectiveness of managers.

Akio believed that it was bad for the brand if everyone in the company had the same opinion: management should have different points of view. In his autobiography, Made in Japan, he recounted the time a conservative Sony executive decided he needed to resign. Morita said that the difference in views does not prevent them from working together successfully and dismissal would be disloyalty to the company. Another example of this approach is the hiring of Norio Oga, who criticized the company's first tape recorder.

Akio always asked for feedback from workers, because they are the ones who know better than others how to simplify and improve the work process. Also, in his opinion, every company employee must be able to act without additional instructions.

The attitude of an entrepreneur towards hiring and retirement is interesting. By Morita's will, experienced managers who had reached retirement age could remain employed as consultants. During training, new employees become familiar with all aspects of the company's work: engineers undergo a month's internship in the sales department, and salespeople spend a month in the factory.

Akio was taught from childhood that education in itself does not bring any benefit - a person must learn and acquire the necessary skills himself. When hiring new employees, Morita was not interested in their academic success and was guided only by what the applicant demonstrated during the interview. In their subsequent careers, education also did not play a special role - employees were promoted for specific merits and achievements.

Morita devoted a significant part of his life to searching for a middle ground between the American and Japanese approaches to business. He emphasized that US entrepreneurs do not like to take responsibility and think a lot about dividends and bonuses, while the Japanese are too cold and lack friendliness. Akio himself was on good terms with many members of the world's business elite, and prominent among them is Steve Jobs, who was an example for the Japanese.

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The site's observer studied the biography of Japanese entrepreneur Akio Morita, who built the Sony company and significantly influenced the development of the electronics market.

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Early years. Military service

Entrepreneurial views

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Translators O. Radynova, S. Shcheglov

Editor S. Ogareva

Technical editor N. Lisitsyna

Corrector M. Bubelets

Computer layout A. Fominov

Cover artist M. Sokolova

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Introduction

Forty years ago, on the evening of May 7, 1946, about twenty people gathered on the fourth floor of a fire-damaged department store in the war-ravaged center of Tokyo to found a new company, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, which would later become Sony Corporation. The founder of this company, Masaru Ibuka, was 38 years old, I was 25. Meeting him turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of fate for me, and working together gave me great pleasure. This book owes its appearance to a long friendship with Masaru Ibuka. Almost a week after Sony's fortieth anniversary, my wife Yoshiko and I celebrated our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Yoshiko serves as my diplomatic representative and partner and, together with my sons Hideo and Masao, and daughter Naoko, supports and understands me, which allows me to devote myself fully to my work.

I cannot express my gratitude enough to my parents, my mentors, and the many friends and colleagues both inside and outside Sony who helped create a creative and supportive environment.

I am deeply grateful to Edwin Reingold and Mitsuko Shimomura, who listened with inexhaustible patience and enthusiasm to my thoughts and long stories. Without them I could not have completed this book. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to many other people, especially my assistants Megumi Yoshii and Lydia Maruyama, for their important work in preparing the materials for this book.

Salvation and hope

When the incredible news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima arrived, I was having lunch with my fellow sailors. The information was sketchy: we weren't even told what kind of bomb had been dropped, but as a military engineer fresh out of college with a physics degree, I understood what kind of bomb it was and what it meant for Japan and for me. The future had never been so uncertain - after all, Japan had never lost a war - and only young people could remain optimistic. Still, even then, I believed in myself and my future.

Many months have passed since I realized that Japan was losing the war and there was no point in continuing it, but I also knew that the military wanted to fight to the last soldier. I was 24 years old, a graduate of Osaka Imperial University, and working as part of a multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers that would improve thermal seeker weapons and night sights. The military authorities hoped that Japanese technology would change the course of the war, and although we worked very hard, we still knew that it was too late and that our projects would not be successful. We lacked funds and time. And now, after Hiroshima, it became clear to me that time had run out.

Unlike the civilian population, who at that time were under constant surveillance and surveillance by the police and army, I had access to naval information and could listen to shortwave radio broadcasts, although this was prohibited even for off-duty Navy officers. Even before the events of August 6, 1945, I knew that the Americans were much stronger than us and the war, one might say, had already been lost. But nevertheless, the message about the atomic bombing was unexpected for me. The bombing took us by surprise.

On that hot, humid summer day, we did not yet know what a terrible weapon the dropped bomb turned out to be. The newsletter that lay on our table in the officers' mess only said that the bomb was "a new type of weapon that produces a blinding flash," but this description left us in no doubt that it was an atomic bomb. device. However, the Japanese military authorities hid specific information about what happened in Hiroshima for a very long time, and some officers did not believe that the Americans had an atomic bomb. We are not far enough advanced in our theoretical research to know the extent of the destructive power of such weapons and to imagine how many people could die as a result of their explosion. We did not yet know how terrible atomic weapons were, but I saw the terrible consequences of conventional incendiary bombs because I arrived in Tokyo the day after squadrons of B-29s dropped incendiary bombs on the night of March 9-10. , causing a fiery tornado in which 100 thousand people died in just a few hours. I also had to witness the terrible bombing of my hometown Nagoya. All of Japan's great industrial cities, with the exception of Kyoto, in 1945 were partially scorched deserts, bleak, charred ruins - all that remained of the homes of millions of Japanese. That an atomic bomb could be even more terrible seemed incredible.

Although the bomb was dropped on August 6th at 8.15 am, we did not hear about it until noon on August 7th. My reaction to the news of the Hiroshima bomb was that of a scientist. I no longer cared about the rice on the plate in front of me, although during the war in Japan it was a great luxury. I looked around at my colleagues sitting around the table and said: “From now on, we may well abandon our research. If the Americans were able to create an atomic bomb, then we are too far behind in all areas to catch up with them.” My boss was very angry with me.

I knew something about the potential of atomic energy, but it seemed to me that it would take at least twenty years to create an atomic bomb, and I was shocked to learn that the Americans had already done it. It was clear that if the Americans had gone so far, our technology was simply primitive compared to theirs. I said that whatever weapon we invented, it would be much worse, and it seemed to me that we would not have time to create anything in time to counteract this bomb - neither new weapons, nor protective equipment. The news about Hiroshima was something completely incredible for me. The technical gap it indicated was colossal.

We knew that there were differences between American and Japanese technology. However, we thought our technique was very good. This was true, but we still tried to find as many new ideas as possible everywhere. One day, for example, we received equipment from a downed B-29 bomber and noted that the Americans were using better technology and different electrical circuitry, but none of it was much better than ours.

That's why, when I first heard about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, I was amazed that America's industrial power was greater than we had imagined, simply incomparably greater. But for me it shouldn’t have been so unexpected. As a boy in school, I saw a film about the construction of Ford Motor Company's River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan. The concept of this gigantic construction project delighted me. The film showed large ships carrying iron ore from distant mines to Ford's River Rouge smelter, where it was converted into various grades and profiles of steel. The finished steel was sent to another plant of the plant, where various parts for cars were cast or stamped from it, and in the next part of the same plant, cars were assembled from the parts. At that time, Japan did not have this type of integrated production. As fate would have it, many years later, when the country was recovering from the war and creating new industry, building new efficient factories on the coast and creating complexes similar to the Ford factories that we saw before the war, I had the opportunity to visit the River Rouge plant. I was surprised, puzzled and disappointed to see the same images that I remembered from a film made almost twenty years earlier. It seemed that the technology had not changed since then. Then I thought about what would happen to American industry and the dominant position that America occupied, the envy of the whole world.