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Founders: #102 Akio Morita (Sony)

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

[00:00:01] Forty years ago, a small group gathered in a burned-out department store building in the war-devastated downtown Tokyo. Their purpose was to found a new company, and their optimistic goal was to develop the technologies that would help rebuild Japan's economy. In this early gathering was a young engineer, Akio Morita, then just 25 years old. Today that company is one of the most powerful and respected multinational corporations in the world, Sony, and Akio Morita is its outspoken chairman. The Sony story is one of consistently high-quality merchandise and phenomenally successful…

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