Akio Morita turned a small bombed-out department store in Tokyo into Sony, one of the world's largest media conglomerates. As one of the few entrepreneurs who helped Japan's economy recover after WWII, he grew Sony from its origins in 1946 to a company with over 158,000 employees and $63 billion in revenues. Morita pioneered new technologies like the transistor radio and Walkman, and insisted on developing portable products for new markets when competitors said consumers only wanted standard sizes. He combined Western and Japanese management styles to focus on unleashing creativity and inspiring employees. Morita's unconventional ideas changed global business practices before his death in 1999 at age 78.

1. Akio Morita’s Life

2. Akio Morita turned what was once a small bombed-out department store in Tokyo into the world’s most successful consumer electronics company. Not only that but he was also one of the few entrepreneurs that helped Japan’s economy recover in the aftermath of World War II. Today, more than half a century after the company’s initial inception, and with Morita at the helm until his only recent departure, Sony remains one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, with over 158,000 employees worldwide and revenues in excess of $63 billion.

3. Born on January 26, 1921 in Nagoya, Japan, Morita entered into a family that had been in the sake brewing business for over fifteen generations. From his childhood, it had always been assumed that Morita would continue the family tradition of making sake. He had begun being groomed to take over the family business by the age of ten, at which time his father even made him attend all of the company’s board meetings.

4. After the War, on May 7, 1946, they founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation), the forerunner of the future giant manufacturer, Sony Corporation. Morita was only 25 years old. In mid-1950s the company developed magnetic recording tape and sold the first tape recorder in Japan. Later, in 1957, it produced a pocket-sized radio, the first full-transistorized radio in the world’s history. In 1958, the company was formally named Sony.

5. “ Carefully watch how people live , get an intuitive sense as to what they might want and then go with it. Don’t do market research.” Take Your Market Research to the Streets

6. “ I knew we needed a weapon to break through to the U.S. market, and it had to be something different , something that nobody else was making.” That something different came in the form of a walkman .

7. “ If you go through life convinced that your way is always best , all the new ideas in the world will pass you by.”

8. “ Don’t be afraid to make a mistake, but make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice .”

9. “ Advertising and promotion alone will not sustain a bad product or a product that is not right for the times.”

10. Morita did not like using different names in different countries, and insisted that the Walkman become the product’s universal name. Today, the presence of the word ‘Walkman’ in almost every major dictionary is evidence of Morita’s marketing success.

11. Management Means To Inspire Creativity. “From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people's inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability , but very few people know how to use it.”

12. “ The key factor in industry is creativity . 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.”

13. “ I believe people work for satisfaction. I believe it is a big mistake to think that money is the only way to compensate a person for his work. People need money, but they also want to be happy in their work and proud of it.”

14. “ The most important mission for a Japanese manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees, to create a family-like feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate. We will try to create conditions where persons could come together in a spirit of teamwork, and exercise to their heart’s desire their technological capacity.”

15. “ My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target . Management of an industrial company must be giving targets to the engineers constantly; that may be the most important job management has in dealing with its engineers.”

16. “ I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his schools records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.”

17. “ 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.

18. 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.

19. Morita believed that his management style was a mixture of both Western and Japanese traditions. He combined the two to create a style all his own, and one that would take his company to the top.

20. “ The American system of management, in my opinion, relies too much on outsiders to help make business decisions, and this is because of the insecurity that American decision makers feel in their jobs, as compared with most top Japanese corporate executives.”

21. When his competition told him that consumers would only want products that were of a standard size and shape, Morita made his products smaller and portable.

22. It was Morita’s willingness to challenge convention that led Sony to become the first Japanese company to become listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Morita paved the way for Japanese companies to raise foreign capital, instead of the traditional practice of borrowing money from Japanese banks. Today, Morita’s unconventional ideas have changed the way much of the world does business.

23. Create the Market Where There Is None. Morita understood that the very concept of innovation rested on the idea that he was presenting to people something they had never seen before. Thus, where there was no market, he knew he would have to create one, and that is exactly what he did at Sony.

24. In 1994, Morita suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while playing tennis, and subsequently announced his resignation as Sony chairman. Morita also published an autobiography, called “Made in Japan.” Five years later, at the age of 78, Morita died of pneumonia. His legacy lives on in the company he founded, the company that continues to be one of the world’s most renowned manufacturers of consumer electronics.

25. “ There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies. We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business. And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned.” Thank You Very Much Sompong Yusoontorn