Word: morita
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...much deeper understanding of the nature of the friction than either side has shown so far. Many Japanese leaders play down the American resentment as being largely a consequence of the 1970 U.S. recession, and they figure that it will fade as business continues to revive. Even Sony's Morita, who knows the American mind well enough to have outguessed some U.S. marketing men as to what products would sell well, takes that line. "I have been a salesman for 20 years," he says, "and I know that whenever a salesman's customers do not want to buy, he starts...
...extent the Japanese worker has financed this system. His phenomenal savings rate, a product of the desire for security, has fed funds to the industrial machine. Last year the Japanese saved 19.4% of their incomes; in the U.S., a 7% savings rate is considered startlingly high. Observes Morita: "Saving is a hobby of the Japanese people...
...shift workers from one job to another and can invest huge sums to train them without worrying that they will jump to competing firms. As a result, workers tend to identify with the company rather than with a particular skill, a fact that is reflected in union organization. Says Morita, smiling: "Our labor situation is better than yours, because in the U.S. your unions are independent. In Japan, all our unions are company unions...
...manufacturer of soy sauce and sake, Morita started out as an engineer. As a wartime navy lieutenant he was assigned to help an engineer named Masaru Ibuka develop a heat-seeking bomb. After the defeat, Ibuka opened a communications-equipment business in a Tokyo shed, and Morita joined him. The two begged and borrowed $500 to start Tokyo Telecommunications Co., later Sony. Ibuka, who was Mr. Inside, developed the products and became president; Morita, Mr. Outside, specialized in marketing and became executive vice president. Sony succeeded because its chiefs were among the first Japanese businessmen who did not copy Western...
...string of Sony products followed: the first small transistorized TVs, the world's smallest AM radio, even the video-tape cassette recorders used by U.S. astronauts on Apollo moon flights. Their development is a tribute to Ibuka's inventiveness and Sony's highly flexible operating methods. The company, says Morita, is not constricted by a formal research and development budget; it simply pours as much money as seems necessary into a promising idea. Sony's top managers also frequently tear up the organization table, assigning people from throughout the company to work on what looks like the next...