Akio Morita (1921 – 1999)
Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony Corporation.
Advertising and promotion alone will not sustain a bad product or a product that is not right for the times.
I have always made it a point to know our employees, to visit every facility of our company, and to try to meet and know every single employee.
We tell our young managers: 'Don't be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don't make the same mistake twice'.
...without an organisation that can work together, sometimes over a very long period, it's difficult to see new projects to fruition.
My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target. The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States.
We want everybody to have the best facilities in which to work, but we do not believe in posh and impressive private offices.
To gain profit is important, but you must invest to build up assets that you can cash in in the future.
The effect of three things - the new laws, the revision of the tax system, and the elimination of the zaibatsu conglomerates - was to make Japan an egalitarian society for the first time.
The "patron saint" of Japanese quality control, ironically, is an American named W. Edwards Deming, who was virtually unknown in his own country until his ideas of quality control began to make such a big impact on Japanese companies.
Executives of the company must have the necessary qualities to direct the personnel by showing them the way to do things.
(Japanese Government believes that if you have a big laboratory with all the latest equipment and good funding it will automatically lead to creativity. It doesn't work that way.
...the key factor in industry is creativity. I said there are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business.
...I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.
In the United States businessmen often do not trust their colleagues. If you trust your colleague today, he may be your competitor tomorrow, because people frequently move from one company to another.
Once you have a staff of prepared, intelligent, and energetic people, the next step is to motivate them to be creative.
There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies.
The most important mission for a Japanese manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees, to create a familylike feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate.
I have had my difficulties with the American legal system, and so I feel qualified to talk about it.
...if you have so many lawyers, they have to find business, which sometimes they have to create. Sometimes nonsensical lawsuits are generated by lawyers. In this country (the United States everybody sues everybody.
The investor and the employee are in the same position, but sometimes the employee is more important, because he will be there a long time whereas an investor will often get in and out on a whim in order to make a profit.