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A pioneer of products ranging from transistorized radios to solid-state television sets to the Walkman and Discman to VCRs, by Sony employed more than , workers and was the world's leading maker of consumer, non-consumer, industrial, and professional electronics and entertainment software. Morita was a pioneer in marketing as well.
His initial failure to sell tape recorders developed in convinced him that market creation must accompany product development. On his first trip to Europe in , he was deeply impressed and encouraged by the success of N. Philips, which had grown from a small light bulb maker in a rural Dutch town into the world's leading electronics maker.
Morita then decided to target the world market, particularly the affluent U. Recognizing the importance of establishing company identity in the world market, Morita adopted "Sony" finding a Western root from the Latin sonus, meaning "sound," and combining it with the English nickname "Sonny" , a name that foreign customers could easily remember, as his company's trademark in Totsuko became Sony Corporation in In the mid s most Japanese producers relied on giant Japanese trading companies to export their goods, but Morita decided to build his own distribution route in which the message of the new technology and its benefits could be directly passed on to the consumer.
Switzerland as its sales arms. In February , Sony established the Sony Corporation of America; and in less than two years, they became the first Japanese company to offer its stock in the United States. Sony felt that moving much of its manufacturing and sales to the United States and Europe would only improve its business, something other Japanese companies had yet to discover.
Sony subsequently expanded its sales force and production facilities into an international network, with a few hundred subsidiaries and affiliated companies worldwide. Beginning in , in response to changing world market conditions, Sony expanded into the nonconsumer sector, such as broadcasting equipment, semiconductors, video communications, and computers.
In , Morita wrote Made In Japan, a historical biography detailing his rise to success that, according to Inc. Morita was often a spokesman for Japanese management. In articulating his own ideas, he emphasized the importance of teamwork and of motivating people by providing challenging work in a family-like environment; engineers in industrial companies particularly need targets for their creativity.
Above all, management must treat workers not as tools but as fellow human beings. Morita argued that manufacturing determines the strength of the economy and blamed excessive financial dealings to create paper profits for undermining this base. Morita praised familialism and loyalty to the company as facilitating long-range planning and investment.
He often criticized American management's preoccupation with quarterly profits and dividends and its tendency to postpone investment in equipment. Morita was also outspoken on U. He warned, for example, against "hollowing out" the economy in the United States by moving manufacturing plants overseas to exploit cheap labor. Although most of the controversial statements were credited to Ishihara, some critics blamed Morita for his arrogance.
Morita, however, praised the openness of American markets and, in his efforts to reciprocate it, established in the Sony Trading Company, whose mission is to promote U. Morita became executive vice-president of Sony Corporation in , president in , chairman and chief executive officer in In , Sony was awarded an Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for the development of Trinitron—the first time an Emmy had been given for a product.
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Sony's third Emmy was awarded for their one-inch helical-scan videotape recording; and it's fourth came in , for a new video recorder with mass image storage capability specially suited for computer graphics. In , Billboard gave Sony its Trendsetter Award for their revolutionary small D-5 compact disc player. Morita, himself, received the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts "for outstanding contributions to technological and industrial innovation and management, industrial design, industrial relations and video systems, and the growth of trade relations.
As vice-chairman of Keidanren Japan Federation of Economic Organizations and chairman of the Council for Better Corporate Citizenship within Keidanren, Morita was active in educating Japanese companies abroad to become good citizens of local communities.
He addressed a letter to the G-7 leaders meeting in Tokyo—the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and Canada—encouraging them to seek ways to lower all economic barriers between North America , Europe, and Japan to forge a new world economic order. On November 30, at the age of 72, Morita suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.
Besides the Sony Corporation's concerns, much of Japan worried about what the loss of Morita from the helm would mean for the country. Jolie Solomon and Peter McKillop wrote in Newsweek that Morita is seen as "the epitome of the transnational executive," or, as General Electric chairman Jack Welch calls him, "spiritually global.
In recognition of "his distinguished corporate leadership and for a lifetime of innovative contributions in bringing advanced technologies to consumer electronics products," The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE presented Akio Morita with its Founders Medal less than a year after his stroke.
The award was accepted by his wife and one of his sons, as Morita was still in recovery stages. On November 25, , three months after being honored by IEEE and almost exactly a year after his stroke, Morita decided it was time to step down as chair of Sony, still debilitated from his brain hemorrhage. His resignation secured the Sony position for Noria Ohga, who still intended to retain his other Sony responsibilities.
Morita took over from Masaru Ubuka as honorary chair of Sony, Billboard reported, as well as being formally recognized as founder of the corporation.
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Ibuka was named founder in and will continue in that role and has also been named chief advisor. Steve McClure noted in his Billboard article that in Japan, such titles which indicate the friends' joint role in starting Sony are often awarded to executives who have essentially retired from their companies.
Morita's stroke left him partially paralyzed. He left for his Hawaii condominium in the fall of to recuperate.
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Fortune magazine reported that although his spirits were good and his mind lucid, he often had trouble speaking and moving. Part of his therapy involved his speaking in Japanese and English on alternate days. His power and influence are still prominent factors in Sony's efforts. Idei, who began work with Sony in , caught Morita's attention early on.
He spent over ten years in Europe where he founded Sony's French subsidiary. When he returned to Japan, he was made general manager of Sony's audio division in , where he was in charge of marketing such products as the Walkman and helped Ohga promote the audio CD. In the 80s, he ran Sony's home-stereo component group, and the video group when he helped with the promotion of the 8mm camcorder.
By , Idei had secured Ohga's former position of director of Sony's Design Center and was responsible for Sony's merchandising and product promotion. Morita suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in while playing tennis [ 10 ] and on November 25, , stepped down as Sony chairman to be succeeded by Ohga. He helped General Motors with its acquisition of an interest in Isuzu in In , Morita wrote an autobiography titled Made in Japan.
He co-authored the book The Japan That Can Say No with politician Shintaro Ishihara , where they criticized American business practices and encouraged Japanese to take a more independent role in business and foreign affairs. Actually, Morita had no intention to criticize American practices at that time. The book was translated into English and caused controversy in the United States, and Morita later had his chapters removed from the English version and distanced himself from the book.
In , he was the only Asian person on Time magazine's list of the 20 most influential business people of the 20th century as part of their Time The Most Important People of the Century. Morita, who loved to play golf and tennis, [ 23 ] suffered a stroke in , during a game of tennis. On October 3, , Morita died of pneumonia at the age of 78 in a Tokyo hospital, where he had been admitted since August Contents move to sidebar hide.
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Biography of thomas alva edison: Akio Morita (盛田 昭夫, Morita Akio, January 26, – October 3, ) was a Japanese entrepreneur and co-founder of Sony along with Masaru Ibuka.
Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item. Japanese entrepreneur — The native form of this personal name is Morita Akio. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals. Senior Third Rank. Nagoya , Empire of Japan. Early life [ edit ].
Sony [ edit ]. Other affiliations [ edit ]. Publications [ edit ]. Awards and honours [ edit ]. Television commercials [ edit ]. Death [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Akio died of pneumonia in at the age of 78 leaving three children with his wife Yoshiko. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
Type your email…. Continue reading. He was instrumental in earning global respect for products labeled "Made in Japan," a label previously associated with poor quality. He co-founded Sony Corporation in with his former military engineer colleague, Masaru Ibuka. Morita focused on general management while Ibuka took care of the technical aspects. The company's first office was a burned-down department store in Tokyo, with a staff of only 20 people.
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Sony's early inventions included rice cookers and electric heaters, but their breakthrough came with the development of the first tape recorder in However, it took several years before they could sell any units due to the high price and lack of demand. Eventually, they managed to sell their tape recorders to the Supreme Court of Japan, which needed them as replacements for stenographers.
Sony's first transistor radio, introduced in , was another significant success.