Akio Morita Quotes
I believe one of the reasons we went through such a remarkable growth period was that we had this atmosphere of free discussion.
You can be totally rational with a machine. But if you work with people, sometimes logic often has to take a backseat to understanding.
If you go through life convinced that your way is always best, all the new ideas in the world will pass you by.
In the long run, no matter how good or successful you are or how clever or crafty, your business and its future are in the hands of the people you hire.
To gain profit is important, but you must invest to build up assets that you can cash in in the future.
I knew we needed a weapon to break through to the US market, and it had to be something different, something that nobody else was making.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Advertising and promotion alone will not sustain a bad product or a product that is not right for the times.
Once you have a staff of prepared, intelligent, and energetic people, the next step is to motivate them to be creative.
All you need is the best product in the world, the most efficient production in the world and global marketing.
If we face recession, we should not lay off employees; the company should sacrifice a profit. It's management's risk and management's responsibility. Employees are not guilty; why should they suffer?
Americans make money by playing 'money games,' namely mergers, acquisitions, by simply moving money back and forth ... instead of creating and producing goods with some actual value.
My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target. The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States.
My chief job is to constantly stir or rekindle the curiosity of people that gets driven out by bureaucracy and formal schooling systems.
There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies.
I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.
The remarkable thing about management is that a manager can go on for years making mistakes that nobody is aware of, which means that management can be a kind of a con job.
We treat employees as a member of the family. If management take the risk of hiring them, we have to take the responsibility for them.
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.
We want everybody to have the best facilities in which to work, but we do not believe in posh and impressive private offices.
Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want.
I often say to my assistants, "Never trust anybody," but what I mean is that you should never trust someone else to do a job exactly the way you would want it done.
If we do our best and make efforts, a peaceful and great future will become ours without fail. Whether we succeed or not depends on the strength of our resolve and the amount of our endeavor.
The important thing in my view is not to pin the blame for a mistake on somebody, but rather to find out what caused the mistake.
The company must not throw money away on huge bonuses for executives or other frivolities but must share its fate with the workers.
More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.
Executives of the company must have the necessary qualities to direct the personnel by showing them the way to do things.
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.
(Japanese Government believes that if you have a big laboratory with all the latest equipment and good funding it will automatically lead to creativity. It doesn't work that way.
Japanese people tend to be much better adjusted to the notion of work, any kind of work, as honorable.
Without an organisation that can work together, sometimes over a very long period, it's difficult to see new projects to fruition.
When I find an employee who turns out to be wrong for the job, I feel it is my fault because I made the decision to hire him.
We want to keep the company healthy and its employees happy, and we want to keep them on the job and productive.
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.
