Word: designer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sharp's strength. It was the first company to mass-produce the LCD calculator, and has been a leader in displays for gadgets like cell phones, camcorders and portable videogame consoles. But Sharp's success in the flat-screen world is the result of its willingness to marry elegant design to its technical skill by using teams that broke the rules of traditional Japanese business...
...rare move for a Japanese manufacturer, Machida blended Kita and Sharp's design teams from the initial stages of development. "Japanese management tends to think that designers are completely ignorant of business strategies," says Takekazu Inoue, senior consultant of brand and design strategies at the Japan Research Institute. "A bunch of doodlers who are only expected to create pretty packages...
...first line of Kita Aquos--a sleek, metallic-silver flat screen with two soft, round bulges at the bottom for speakers, set on a boomerang-footed pedestal--won a shelfful of design awards and a place in European museums like the Pompidou...
...design edge--and the company's manufacturing capacity--helped Sharp dominate the $80 billion flat-panel market for years, with more than 16 million Aquos screens sold since 2001. But competitors rushed in, and by 2005, Sharp had fallen behind Sony and Samsung. Consumers have benefited: three out of four TVs sold in the U.S. are now flat panels, and prices for 25-in.-to-29-in. models have dropped 72% in the past three years, according to DisplaySearch...
...Sharp decided to reinvest in design, creating a special team just to develop a new display for the U.S. and Europe, where demand is strongest. In April a few dozen designers quietly cleaned out their desks in Sharp's main design office in rural Tochigi prefecture and set up shop in a central-Tokyo building that used to house a high-security government agency...