Akio Morita Quotes

46 Sourced Quotes

We tell our young managers: 'Don't be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don't make the same mistake twice'.

Akio Morita
I have had my difficulties with the American legal system, and so I feel qualified to talk about it.

Akio Morita
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.

Akio Morita
The "patron saint" of Japanese quality control, ironically, is an American named W. Edwards Deming, who was virtually unknown in his own country until his ideas of quality control began to make such a big impact on Japanese companies.

Akio Morita
We made a completely new kind of transistor (the NPN BJT), and in our development work, our researcher, Leo Esaki, demonstrated the electron tunneling effect, which led to the development of the tunnel diode for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize seventeen years later, after he had joined IBM.

Akio Morita
More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.

Akio Morita
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.

Akio Morita
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.

Akio Morita
We want to keep the company healthy and its employees happy, and we want to keep them on the job and productive.

Akio Morita
I believe one of the reasons we went through such a remarkable growth period was that we had this atmosphere of free discussion.

Akio Morita
We want everybody to have the best facilities in which to work, but we do not believe in posh and impressive private offices.

Akio Morita
...the differences between U.S. and Japanese companies go beyond the cultural.

Akio Morita
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.

Akio Morita
To gain profit is important, but you must invest to build up assets that you can cash in in the future.

Akio Morita
"While the United States has been busy creating lawyers, we have been busier creating engineers." '

Akio Morita
Amenities are not of great concern to management in Japan.

Akio Morita
Only with these three kinds of creativity - technology, product planning, and marketing - can the public receive the benefit of a new technology.

Akio Morita
The concept of lifetime employment arose when Japanese managers and employees both realized that they had much in common and that they had to make some long-range plans.

Akio Morita
... the key factor in industry is creativity. I said 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.

Akio Morita
The effect of three things - the new laws, the revision of the tax system, and the elimination of the zaibatsu conglomerates - was to make Japan an egalitarian society for the first time.

Akio Morita
... if you are nothing but profit-conscious, you cannot see the opportunities ahead.

Akio Morita
.. 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.

Akio Morita
You can be totally rational with a machine. But if you work with people, sometimes logic often has to take a backseat to understanding.

Akio Morita
What we in industry learned in dealing with people is that people do not work just for money and that if you are trying to motivate, money is not the most effective tool.

Akio Morita
... without an organisation that can work together, sometimes over a very long period, it's difficult to see new projects to fruition.

Akio Morita
A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.

Akio Morita
The American system of management, in my opinion, also 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.

Akio Morita
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.

Akio Morita
Once you have a staff of prepared, intelligent, and energetic people, the next step is to motivate them to be creative.

Akio Morita
'There is a major difference between you and me,' I told him. 'Yes, I am rich. But you are wealthy. And that is why you can buy such (expensive jewelry (for your wife and why I cannot.'

Akio Morita