The PS3 More than agameWill the high price scare gamers.docx

The PS3: More than a
game
Will the high price scare gamers
away or will the PS3 be the
salvation of Sony? (more)
Sony CEO Howard Stringer aims to lead
an analog company into the digital age.
More from Fortune
RIM reports bleak earnings,
announces layoffs
Chief Justice Roberts: Statesman?
More like master politician.
Beyond ACA: Healthcare reform
for entrepreneurs
FORTUNE 500
Current Issue
Subscribe to Fortune
FORTUNE:
Secrets of Greatness: Great Teams Full coverage
The Welshman, the Walkman, and the
salarymen
Sony slept through the dawn of digital media. Now Sir Howard

Stringer and his
polyglot crew are trying to wake the company up.
By Marc Gunther, FORTUNE senior writer
June 1, 2006: 3:30 PM EDT
(FORTUNE Magazine) - One day last July, two naked men
lowered themselves into a hot spring in
Hakone, a Japanese tourist town known for its beautiful lake
and views of Mount Fuji.
One was a pallid, curly-haired 63-year-old Welsh-born
American citizen who carries a few extra kilos on
his 6-foot-3 frame. The other was a slight, balding, dark-haired
58-year-old Japanese engineer. The two
men had scarcely met, but they needed to get to know each
other in a hurry, so they had arranged a
weekend in the country, enjoying a walk in the woods, a boat
ride, and a piano concert. A big job awaited
them - the task of overhauling Sony, the troubled electronics
giant that had once symbolized the rise of
postwar Japan.
Since then, the unlikely duo of Sir Howard Stringer and Dr.
Ryoji
Chubachi has rattled Sony (Research) to its foundations -
cutting
costs, selling assets, upending old ways.
The company, which rose from the rubble of bombed-out Tokyo
to
delight consumers around the world with the Walkman, the
Trinitron TV, the CD, and the PlayStation, needed a jolt. Sony's
core electronics business has lost money for the past three
years.
Too many of its products lack pizzazz. Once celebrated for

innovation, Sony has become an analog company in a digital
world.
Sony, as a result, finds itself under attack from Microsoft
(Research), Samsung, Apple (Research), Sharp, Nokia
(Research), Canon (Research), and Dell (Research), to name a
few of its many competitors. Sir Howard, who is chairman and
CEO, and Dr. Chubachi, who is president, are making every
effort
to inject a fighting spirit into a far-flung company that has in
the
past been just a little too nice.
"We know that Sony is a kind, fair-minded, and intelligent
company," Stringer told 1,000 company executives soon after
taking over last year. "But is it a tough company? It is time to
find
out."
This is the story of a charismatic Welshman who set out to
remake
a profoundly foreign corporate culture - and instill a new sense
of
teamwork. Since Stringer has been in the job only for a year, it's
a
story without an ending. But that doesn't mean it lacks for
lessons.
Getting started
Stringer and Chubachi began the overhaul by attacking expenses
at a place with a habit of keeping executives and businesses
around forever. The Aibo, a beloved robotic pet, was put to
sleep.
They shut down the Qualia line of boutique electronics that
included a $4,000 digital camera and a $13,000 70-inch

television.
They eliminated 5,700 jobs and closed nine factories, including
one
in south Wales. (He took some flak back home for that.)
They have sold $705 million worth of assets. You probably
didn't
Top Stories
What's next for your insurance
Stocks close lower, but pare earlier losses
EU leaders continue to debate growth measures
Nike shares sink after earnings miss
Investors exiting stocks at faster clip
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
Follow the news that matters to you. Create your own alert to
be notified on topics you're interested in.
Or, visit Popular Alerts for suggestions.
Manage alerts | What is this?
Home Video Business News Markets Term Sheet Economy Tech
Personal Finance Small Business Leadership Like 92k
U.S. Log In CNN
Lessons from Sony
What we can learn from Sony's
situation.

1. Break down silos.
Teams are great ways to build
morale and competitive spirit, but
they need to be coordinated or
they risk duplicating tasks.
2. Listen to customers,
not just engineers.
Sony's engineers are among the
world's best, but they were slow to
see that customers demand user-
friendly software in the digital era.
3. Manage for success.
Sony's founders wanted to create
an ideal workplace, and its
employees are loyal and dedicated.
But success in the marketplace is
what ultimately pays the bills.
PlayStation 3 news
From the archives of Game Over, a
column by Chris Morris.
Sneak peek: PS3 - and
maybe "Halo 3"
New video games,
game machines get
ready for their coming
out party at industry
trade show. (more)
PlayStation 3 delay - a

good thing?
November launch might disappoint
some, but it could be just what the
system needs. (more)
PlayStation 3 price -
$500?
Analysts, developers say they
expect Sony's new console to
break new price barriers. (more)
know that Sony owned a chain of 1,220 cosmetics salons and
the
18 Japanese outlets of the Maxim's de Paris restaurant chain.
They're gone.
Gone, too, is a group of salarymen in their 60s, 70s, and 80s
who,
after retiring from senior management positions, were given the
title of "advisor," a tradition established by Sony's founders.
"That was very symbolic," says Hideki (Dick) Komiyama, a
Sony
executive and key ally of Stringer's. The 45 advisors each had a
secretary, a car and driver, and worst of all, the ability to gum
up
decision-making and second-guess people doing real jobs. No
more.
Such cost cutting is never pleasant, but it is not all that difficult
either. Harder and far more important is the job that now
absorbs
Stringer: transforming Sony from a traditional manufacturer of
standalone products into a nimble, digital creator of software,
services, and content as well as devices.

"Menus," Stringer says, "have displaced knobs."
That, in a nutshell, is why Apple's iPod, which neatly integrates
hardware, music, and an Internet platform, makes the Sony
Walkman look like a tired relic of the 1970s.
It's still hard to believe that Sony lost its leadership in portable
music players so quickly. Sony, after all, not only invented the
Walkman but also owns half of Sony BMG, the world's second-
largest music company, and the whole reason that Sony bought
music and movie companies many years ago was to acquire
content to support its devices. The missing ingredient was
software.
"The bridge between content and hardware is software, and that
was something we didn't master," Stringer admitted in one of a
series of frank conversations with FORTUNE in New York City
and
Tokyo.
Even now, Sony sells digital music players in Japan that are
beautifully designed but so complicated to use that the company
has opted not to export them to the U.S.
The cultural revolution will be televised
Nothing less than a cultural revolution will be required to
modernize
Sony. Sir Howard needs to break down the barriers between the
company's stubbornly independent business units so that people
-
and products - communicate easily with one another. He needs
to shake up a personnel system built
around seniority and jobs for life to give young people more
opportunity (Sony employs about 158,000
people). He needs to get product designers to pay more heed to

customers. And he needs to get all of
Sony to focus on shareholder value.
"In Japanese business, harmony has been more important than
profitability," Stringer says. "In the past
five or six years, we could go through whole board meetings
with no discussion of the share price."
This turnaround job won't be quick. Soon after becoming CEO,
Stringer read a book by Jack Welch about
how he revitalized GE in the 1980s, and one by Louis Gerstner
about how he did the same at IBM in the
1990s. (He also read about the collapse of AT&T, another
storied company.) Stringer was so impressed
with Gerstner's book that he flew to Florida to hire him.
"I have struck out the word 'IBM' and replaced it with 'Sony,'
and it still reads well," Stringer told him.
"You've got to help me."
Gerstner has since become a mentor, encouraging Stringer to be
bold. When Sony's Bravia line of liquid-
crystal-display TV sets became the market leader last fall,
Stringer was elated. The company had been
slow to offer flat-panel sets.
"We just cruised right by everybody," Stringer says. "There's so
much affection for the brand, especially in
the U.S., that people are almost prepared to wait to see what
Sony comes up with."
Gerstner took a different view. Success that comes too easily
will make the job of transforming Sony more
difficult, he warned Stringer.
"Sony's problems go well beyond short-term business

problems," Gerstner told FORTUNE. "The cultural
issues, as I found at IBM, are the most fundamental, the most
difficult."
Complications
As Stringer got deeper into the work of fixing Sony, another
complication arose. A place that had at first
felt alien began to remind him of the old CBS, which was still
run by its founder, William S. Paley, when
Stringer went to work there in 1965. He found much to admire
about Sony's culture. "Integrity is
important," he says. "Quality is important."
People are proud, and loyal, and they feel their work matters.
Sony remains a company shaped by the
values set down in its prospectus 60 years ago by Masaru Ibuka,
the company's co-founder: "Purpose of
incorporation: Creating an ideal workplace, free, dynamic, and
joyous....We must place profit here as a
secondary motive....Our service commitment shall be pure and
total...."
Stringer does not want to be remembered as the CEO who
turned Sony into a ruthlessly Darwinian place.
"You have to find a way to marry the values that Japanese
business has, which are admirable, with the
competitive pressures that force them to behave differently," Sir
Howard explains. "How you manage and
orchestrate that compromise is critical. It's something I feel
every day. I can't come in and throw out the
baby with the bath water in the interests of the all-American

way. Nor do I want to."
Why Stringer? And why Sony?
Why Howard Stringer? He does not speak Japanese. He is not an
engineer. Until recently he knew little
about electronics and less about software. He spent most of his
career in journalism and entertainment,
and flopped the first time he ventured into the technology
world.
A Sony employee asks Stringer that question, albeit more
politely - they do everything at Sony more
politely - during a town meeting of employees at a plant that
makes camcorders and cameras in the
Japanese city of Koda.
"I didn't ask for the job," Stringer replies. "I didn't expect the
job. But I feel like the company is
extraordinary, and it deserves to succeed. There is so much
talent, so much brilliance, so much wisdom,
so much desire inside this organization.
"While I don't think I have the answers, I know that you do," he
goes on. "So my job is to motivate and
inspire and create an atmosphere in which you do your best
work."
The fact is, Sony doesn't need another engineer. It needs a
leader. No one has truly run the company for
years. Nobuyuki Idei, the last CEO, announced restructuring
plans in 1999 and again in 2003, but neither
program was bold enough to really change the business.
The outside world's demands

In the meantime, two big trends overwhelmed Sony.
Commodification is one. Almost as soon as Sony
unveils a new device, cheap knockoffs are built in China.
Stop into Bic Camera, a giant retailer in downtown Tokyo, and
the problem is evident: Eight floors of
electronics are packed floor to ceiling with products ranging
from big-screen TVs to tiny cellphones that
play video. Sony's prices tend to be high. No-name brands are
everywhere. DVD players sell for $25, less
than many DVDs.
The rise of digital media also caught Sony flat-footed. The
company makes more than 1,000 products -
TV sets, digital cameras, camcorders, laptop computers, the
PlayStation, portable music players, VCRs,
DVD players, stereos, tape recorders, clock radios, even a
nursery monitor. Some interconnect, but others
do not. Some use a proprietary form of digital storage called a
MemoryStick, but others use generic
products.
Rob Wiesenthal, a top deputy to Stringer who is in charge of
strategy and M&A, says, "I have 35 Sony
devices at home. I have 35 battery chargers. That's all you need
to know."
One of Stringer's priorities is to break down the silos that
isolate Sony's business units. This is a delicate
undertaking. Some silos, most famously the group run by Ken
Kutaragi that created the PlayStation, have
been enormously successful because they operated free of Sony
headquarters. Others wasted money by
creating competing products; at one point, three different
business units were developing their own digital
music players.

What's more, Stringer's discussion of silos sometimes gets lost
in translation because most Japanese
people have never seen one; one interpreter translated the word
as "octopus pot," meaning once you get
in you never get out. Eventually, Stringer did an interview for
the employee magazine devoted entirely to
silos, and to the theme of Sony United that he has been taking
all around the world.
"The Digital Age is about communications between people and
devices," he said, "and there is no getting
away from it."
Fiscal woes in the Digital Age
The Digital Age has not been kind to Sony. In fiscal 2006,
which ended March 31, Sony brought in $63.8
billion in revenues and only $1.6 billion in operating income.
Electronics, which account for about 64
percent of revenues, lost $264 million.
While Sony's music, games, and movie businesses were
profitable, the vast majority of operating income
was brought in by a financial services division, which includes
a life insurance firm and a bank. Those
companies are expected to be spun off in a couple of years.
"It's tough to support a stock price based on the financial
segment," says E. Katayama, an analyst in
Tokyo with Nomura Securities.
Shares of Sony have increased in value by about 28 percent
since Stringer and Chubachi took over in

June 2005. For the most part, that reflects the buoyant Japanese
economy and stock market; the Nikkei
225 index was up by 40 percent during the same period.
More revealing is the fact that Sony shares have lost 40 percent
of their value during the past five years.
(Maybe that's why the stock price never came up at board
meetings.) Sony's market capitalization of $45
billion today is smaller than Samsung's ($98 billion), Apple's
($54 billion), or Matsushita's (Research) ($53
billion).
The Sony board, led by Idei, turned to Stringer last spring
because it wanted to shake things up. Sir
Howard had restructured Sony's U.S. operations, which he had
guided since 1997. He took out $700
million in costs and, more important, persuaded Sony's
entertainment, electronics, and games units to
work together.
When Sony released its PlayStationPortable in the U.S. last
year, the first million units were packaged
with a Universal Media Disk of the "Spider-Man 2" movie
released by Sony Pictures Entertainment, to
underscore the idea that the game player could also be used to
watch video on the go.
Stringer encouraged cross-promotions (like product placements)
wherever possible. In the upcoming
James Bond movie, "Casino Royale," Stringer says Agent 007
"will carry so many Sony products that he
won't be able to stand up."
Temperamentally, Stringer bears little resemblance to
confrontational CEOs like Welch or Gerstner. "I'd
like to intimidate somebody once," he remarks, "but it doesn't

seem likely."
His preferred weapons are his British charm, his self-
deprecating sense of humor, and the genuine
pleasure that he seems to get from seeing others succeed. He
has a knack for managing difficult people,
as he did when he produced the "CBS Evening News With Dan
Rather" during its heyday, and when he
induced David Letterman to leave NBC for CBS.
Stringer's resume
A native of Cardiff, Wales, and the son of a Royal Air Force
officer, Stringer earned a BA and an MA in
modern history from Oxford and immigrated to the U.S. in
1965, seeking adventure.
He got more than he bargained for. After a brief stint as a writer
at CBS Radio, he was drafted and sent to
Vietnam. (When a Sony employee at the town meeting asks him
about his medals, he is quick to say that
he never fired a shot. "I have many medals because I was in
charge of medals," he jokes. In fact, he
received the U.S. Army Commendation Medal for meritorious
achievement.)
Returning to CBS, he produced documentaries and the news, ran
CBS News, and eventually led all of the
CBS broadcast group. He left in 1995 to run Tele-TV, a telecom
startup where his best efforts failed to
transform an ungainly joint venture of Bell Atlantic, NYNEX,
and Pacific Telesis into a force in the
television business.
Two years later he took a big pay cut and a small job to join
Sony Corp. of America. He was supposed to

coordinate operations without actually running any of them.
Soon, though, movies, music, and electronics
all reported to him.
In 1999, he received the title of Knight Bachelor from Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Tom Hanks, the star
of Sony Pictures' hit movie "The Da Vinci Code," told Stringer
at a promotional event that he probably
knew co-star Sir Ian McKellen from "your knighthood club
where you all get together, order pizzas, and
talk about the Queen."
As surprising as Stringer's appointment was Dr. Chubachi's. He
had toiled quietly in what he calls "the
hinterlands," overseeing the production of components like
optical disks and batteries.
Yutaka Nakagawa, another key executive on the turnaround
team, was also new to the senior ranks. "If I'd
met them, I'd never had a conversation with them," Stringer
says. "It occurred to me that it was an unusual
situation."
In an interview with FORTUNE, Dr. Chubachi suggests that he
and Sir Howard were chosen because they
knew enough about Sony to grasp its problems but arrived in
Tokyo as outsiders.
"If one wishes to start a major change, a sea change, a person
who stayed away from the mainstream,
who is from a remote area, may be called for," Chubachi says.
The two men turned out to have more in common than they
knew. Both had won Emmy Awards. (Stringer
collected 31 at CBS News; Chubachi won a technical Emmy for
developing metallic videotape.) Both love

classical music. Both enjoy baseball.
At a Sony town meeting, Stringer was asked if he admired
Bobby Valentine, the former manager of the
New York Mets who led the Chiba Lotte Marines to their first
Japanese baseball championship in 31
years. Never one to pass up a teachable moment, Yankee fan
Stringer replied that like Valentine's teams,
Sony has to "learn to be tough" and to "liberate the energy of
young people."
Engaging the Sony youth
Getting young players into starring roles at Sony is key to
Stringer's reform agenda. But it isn't easy.
Historically, Sony people waited a long time for top jobs. When
Stringer offered a promotion to one
executive, he demurred, saying, "But I'm only 48." Stringer was
taken aback. "You wouldn't hear that at
Google," he says.
The trouble is that Sony "has a lot of people in their 50s who
are not incompetent, but they are analog
people in a digital world," Stringer explains. "I'm trying to
figure out how to solve that. It's not something
you can be cavalier about." He'd like to invigorate the company
from the bottom up, not the top down.
"What I've tried very hard to do is stimulate a kind of internal
revolution," he says. "We've got to find ways
to drill holes in the crust."
Not surprisingly, Stringer and his message are being embraced

more readily by middle managers than by
those atop the hierarchy.
"Sony United is like an airplane," he says. "The cabin class is
united. The business class is getting united.
It's the first class that I have the biggest problem with." He had
dinner with one famous Sony engineer who
told him that software was not important.
Stringer has brought in a crew of aides from the West to work
with Japanese insiders like Komiyama to
promote change. They include Wiesenthal, a trusted dealmaker;
general counsel Nicole Seligman, one of
the very few high-ranking women in the company; a star
software engineer named Tim Schaaff from
Apple, to centralize the look and feel of Sony products; and
Andrew House, a Briton who is fluent in
Japanese, to be Sony's first-ever chief of global marketing.
Sony's research suggests that while the brand
still connotes quality, trust, and reliability, it is slipping when it
comes to innovation and style, particularly
among the young digerati.
The digerati themselves are somewhat harsher. Randy Giusto,
who is group vice president of the mobility,
computing, and consumer markets at technology research firm
IDC, says: "Sony used to be very Apple-
like. They had a loyal following. But that's been tarnished in
recent years. They haven't been able to put
the puzzle pieces together of owning Sony pictures and Sony
electronics and Sony games."
Sony's image took a beating last fall when it was revealed that
Sony BMG Music, its fifty-fifty joint venture
with Bertelsmann, had surreptitiously loaded copy-protection
software onto CDs that then installed itself

on users' computers. The software left computers vulnerable to
hackers and allowed Sony BMG to track
listening habits. A class-action suit over the software was
settled in May, but in the meantime technology
Web sites called on readers to boycott all Sony products.
Sony's electronics division has had customer-relations problems
of its own.
"We have this entire corps of very talented engineers, but there
are times when they lose sight of
customers in their ardent, devoted efforts to develop great
products," Chubachi says.
In the past, designers and engineers were discouraged from
listening to customers; that way, they would
avoid preconceptions and be free to invent great things. But the
result was products like Sony's DSC-T7
digital camera, whose sophisticated technology made it the
thinnest camera in the world. Customers didn't
much care. They wanted technology to eliminate blurry images
and take better pictures in low light.
Six months later Sony came out with the DSC-T9 camera, which
met those needs. "It is selling
explosively, much better," Chubachi says.
A new focus on great products
Stringer and Chubachi also want Sony to focus on "champion
products." Some already fall into that
category. The Bravia line of flat-panel TVs has won rave
reviews. So have Sony's SXRD rear-projection
sets. Sony's digital cameras have ranked first or second in U.S.
market share in recent quarters, and its
camcorders are doing well too. Sony Ericsson, a joint venture

that makes camera phones and Walkman
phones, shipped 51 million of the devices last year.
Several new products also have Stringer excited. Sony is about
to release an electronic book called the
Sony Reader, which can hold dozens of books, personal
documents, and Internet content; unlike prior e-
books, the screen of Sony's is high contrast and can be read in
direct sunlight, like a printed book.
Another device, called LocationFree, can stream TV shows or
movies from a TV or DVD player at home to
any broadband Internet connection, for viewing on a computer
screen or a PlayStationPortable.
Sony's most immediate priority, though, is the launch of the
Blu-ray DVD format and PlayStation 3.
"Without a doubt, the most important product for them this year
is the PS3," says Ross Rubin, the
electronics industry analyst for the NPD Group, a market
research firm. "Not only has it been a huge
revenue and profit generator for them in the past, it is a Trojan
horse for Blu-ray, which has big
implications."
The Blu-ray launch will test the power of Sony United -
Stringer has thrown the weight of Sony's movie,
music, electronics, and games divisions behind Blu-ray. Sony
and MGM, in which it acquired a stake last
year, have the largest library of color films in Hollywood,
ensuring a plentiful supply of high-definition
content for Blu-ray players.
On May 24 in Tokyo, Stringer spoke to 1,200 Sony executives
about his first year on the job and the task

ahead.
"Last year was spent fixing what was broken," he said. "This
year we will concentrate on building for the
future."
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | | REPRINT
About CNNMoney
Contact Us
Advertise with Us
User Preferences
Career Opportunities
Business Leader Council
Content
Fortune Magazine
Money Magazine
Business News
Markets
Term Sheet
Economy

Tech
Personal Finance
Small Business
Video
Magazines
Subscribe to Fortune
Subscribe to Money
Give the Gift of Fortune
Give the Gift of Money
Reprints
Special Sections
Magazine Customer Service
Conferences
Site Tools
Site Map
Watchlist
Search Jobs
Real Estate Search

Mortgage and Savings Center
Calculators
Widgets
Corrections
Market Data Alerts
News Alerts
Stay Connected
My Account
Mobile Site & Apps
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
RSS Feeds
Newsletters
Tumblr
He talked about Blu-ray and the PS3, of course, and about a
drive for "vigorous growth" in the BRIC
countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China. He talked about
breaking down the silos, as always, and

about giving opportunities to talented people.
But Stringer set the company's most important priority as the
"conquest of software." Sony's hardware is
unrivaled, he boasted, as are its movies and music. But that is
not enough in the networked age.
"We have to honestly admit that our capabilities remain quite
modest." It will take years, he said, to make
Sony a world-class software company. "We will succeed," he
concluded, "because we must."
It's been a grueling year for Sir Howard. He has spent more than
500 hours in the air, shuttling among
New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, where he spends eight to
ten days each month. He has taken his
reform campaign to Sony outposts in Berlin, Shanghai, Beijing,
and Mumbai. Only occasionally does he
find his way home to the small town outside London where his
wife and two children live.
"I don't see my family much," he said, a bit wistfully, at a
gathering of Sony employees. "My family is you."
Stringer and Chubachi have come a long way since their
weekend at the spa in Hakone, but their hardest
work lies ahead. If they can't lead this once-great company into
the digital world, then all of Sony will find
itself in hot water.
FEEDBACK [email protected]ail.com
More Newsmakers
"The Social Network" mystery: Where are the lawsuits?
Republicans beware: Seeking blood usually leaves you bloody

Johnson & Johnson CEO Bill Weldon's painful year
The Hot List
100 best places to start a business
Diesel: The truck stops here
'You're working for gas now'
Market indexes are shown in real time, except for the DJIA,
which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer
LIBOR Warning: Neither BBA Enterprises Limited, nor the
BBA LIBOR
Contributor Banks, nor Reuters, can be held liable for any
irregularity or inaccuracy of BBA LIBOR. Disclaimer.
Morningstar: © 2012 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer The Dow Jones
IndexesSM are proprietary to and distributed by Dow Jones &
Company, Inc. and have been licensed for use. All content of
the Dow Jones IndexesSM © 2012 is proprietary to Dow Jones
& Company,
Inc. Chicago Mercantile Association. The market data is the
property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors.
All rights reserved. FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2012. All
rights reserved.
Most stock quote data provided by BATS.
© 2012 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All
Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to
you. Privacy Policy. Ad choices .

The PS3 More than agameWill the high price scare gamers.docx

The PS3 More than agameWill the high price scare gamers.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to The PS3 More than agameWill the high price scare gamers.docx

Similar to The PS3 More than agameWill the high price scare gamers.docx (8)

More from arnoldmeredith47041

More from arnoldmeredith47041 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

The PS3 More than agameWill the high price scare gamers.docx