Sony follows this in its work. Case "Organizational structure of SONY Corporation." Golden period of the corporation

company founder Sony

Recipe " Japanese miracle "The Japanese themselves put it into two words: " WAKONI esai ". This means "taking the latest knowledge developed by foreigners, but not allowing it to shake the foundations of the Japanese way of thinking."

Japan has proven surprisingly open to fresh ideas. However, innovation alone would not be enough for a “miracle”. An equally important component of WAKONI Esai was the development of the communal consciousness of the Japanese, which was expressed in the corporate spirit. “Old and new” were combined most harmoniously in the brainchild of the famous Akio Morita - in the concern Sony.

Sony is one of those that gave the phrase “Made in Japan” prestige and made Japan one of the most technologically advanced countries in the eyes of the whole world. Sony was created after the end of World War II, during a difficult time for the country. This was the most opportune moment for the revival of the country. The company was founded by two physicists: Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka.

Morita became a legend during his lifetime. From the founder Sony there were many roles: physicist, engineer, inventor, businessman, athlete (for 30 years, every Tuesday, at exactly 7.30 am, the cheerful and fit Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Corporation appeared on the court; and also scuba diving, windsurfing, water skiing...) .

was born January 26, 1921 in Nagoya, in a family of respectable distillers. His ancestors made a living by making sake, a rice liquor; That’s why Akio Morita’s parents hoped to eventually transfer the family business to him. Akio was the eldest son, and in Japan at that time almost all children of merchants and entrepreneurs followed in the footsteps of their parents. However, Akio did not want to study the ancient skill and brew sake, as all his relatives did up to and including the fifteenth generation. It was the 20th century, and the boy was interested in mathematics and physics. Oddly enough, the father approved of his son’s decision and allowed him to follow his own path.

For this, Morita enters the Imperial University in Osaka. After graduation, he goes to military service, where he manages to receive the rank of officer. After finishing his service, Akio Morita goes to work at the Japan Precision Instrument Company, where he meets Masaru Ibuka.

Masaru Ibuka was physicist from head to toe. He was Morita's elder by 13 years. Already from his student years, he stood out from his classmates, for which he received the nickname “genius-inventor.” At the time of Morita's arrival at the Japan Precision Instrument Company, Ibuka was her general director. The future founders of Sony quickly found a common language. Passion for technology was the meaning of life for both. They did not think about any revolutions, but simply did what brought them pleasure and money... with which problems soon came.

After the end of the war " Japan precision instrument companies“lost the military orders that had supported her life for the last few years. All employees lost their jobs overnight, and Ibuka lost his business. Akio Morita, in order to somehow earn some money, gets a job as a teacher at a university, and Ibuka goes to a small workshop for repairing electrical appliances. But for both, these decisions became a cage in which the bird could be imprisoned. They longed to invent, to create something of their own. And of course, make money from this, which a small repair shop and teaching at a university could not bring, which Morita got rid of quite quickly, because by law officers did not have the right to be teachers.

Start

On May 7, 1946, the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabusiki Kaisa company was founded, the authorized capital of which was $375 (Morita even borrowed a small amount from his parents). The company initially had a total of 20 employees (all from Ibuki's previous project). However, the company's activities were not revolutionary. No inventions or discoveries at first. You just had to survive. The company's activities in this regard consisted mainly of the production of voltmeters, rice fryers and small electrical appliances.

« History of our company, Morita later wrote, is the story of a group of people seeking to help Ibuka achieve his dreams". Ibuka was too much of a dreamer for business; he did not fit into the well-established rhythm of work. Therefore, Morita, having taken over the management of the enterprise, entrusted the technical part of the work to his partner. The business tandem lasted for about half a century.

Ibuka was actively generating ideas. For example, I came up with an electric rice cooker, a kind of hybrid of a bucket and an electric stove. It was possible to cook rice in it, but eating it later was not possible: it either burned or came out undercooked.

However, it was on such units that the company’s philosophy was formed and honed, which was not to bring to mind products that already existed on the market, but to produce completely new products.

The company's first major discovery took place in 1949, when Masaru Ibuka patented a magnetic tape for sound reproduction. A year later, the G-Type tape recorder was released, which, despite its poverty, became the basis for the company's future developments. The G-Type tape recorder had only two disadvantages. But they put an end to his future. It was heavy and expensive. The G-Type weighed 35 kilograms and cost $900. A total of 20 of these VCRs were produced. It was not possible to sell them until Akio Morita decided to appeal to the Supreme Court of Japan, making an offer to purchase these tape recorders in order to replace stenographers with them. The deal went through and 20 G-Types went to court (it will be released in two years a new version tape recorder whose weight will be 13 kg). In the early 1950s, Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka acquired a license for the production of transistors from the American Western Electric (the price of the patent was 25 thousand dollars). This was a turning point in the company's history. In 54, the first transistor produced in the bowels of Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabusiki Kaisa was released. After this, the first radio receiver developed not for military purposes comes out. The receiver was given the name TR-2 (until then TR1 already existed, it was an unsuccessful receiver). This radio receiver began to be in quite high demand and soon Ibuka and Morita released a television and VCR. These devices were also based on a transistor. In 1956, physicist and future Nobel Prize winner Reion Esaki joined the company and would contribute to the company's future successes.

By the end of the 50s, Morita and Ibuka began to think about entering the company into the US market. It was clear that the current name was not suitable for this. It was too complicated and long. It was decided to rename the company Sony.

This word was derived from the Latin sonus, which means “sound.” Another consonance was the English sonny, “son”. It seemed to emphasize that the company was run by young and energetic people. But in Japanese, "Sleepy" would mean "to lose money." When one letter was removed it became Sony. The word was easy to remember and pronounce, and was not tied to any known national language.

Expansion in the USA

In 1963, Sony listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. It was the first Japanese company to be listed on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). To achieve a stronger position in the American market, Akio Morita moved to the United States and soon moved his entire family there. Having settled in New York on fashionable Fifth Avenue, Morita temporarily became an American. Thus, he sought to understand the specifics of American business, the characteristics of the market, the traditions and character of Americans. The sociable and witty Japanese easily made acquaintances in the business circles of New York. He realized what his company lacked—openness. The traditional isolation and impenetrability of Japanese culture reduced its effectiveness management decisions. A new look at Western business, a view from the inside, allowed Morita to combine the experience of East and West, Japanese thoughtfulness, centralization and European openness in his policy.

In 1968, the first Trinitron color TV was made in Sony laboratories, then sales offices and enterprises were opened in the USA, Great Britain, and Germany. Factories and factories were built - in San Diego, Bridgend, the number of employees and employees grew (now Sony enterprises employ 173 thousand people).

Rock and roll era

Morita was a true workaholic and demanded the same dedication from his employees. At the same time, his range of interests was limited to the affairs of the corporation: Morita loved painting and music, especially Beethoven, played sports and closely followed the successes of famous tennis players. Morita also wrote books, the most popular of which was his autobiography “Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony” (New York, 1988).

In the early 1960s, with the advent of rock and roll, young people began to listen to more music. Morita often watched his children listen to the Beatles, Little Richard and Elvis Presley from morning to evening. And not just teenagers: even Japanese adults now bought expensive stereo systems for cars and took large, heavy tape recorders with them on picnics or to the beach. And although the department of new technologies fundamentally did not want to release a tape recorder without a recording function, Morita insisted on his own. This is how the Walkman portable player, a bestseller in the late 1970s, was born. The combination of Sony Walkman did not seem very successful to the managers, and they came up with several variations of the name for Europe and America: Freestyle for the Swedes, Stowaway for the UK and Soundabout for the United States. However, the level of sales immediately fell - trademark ceased to be recognized, and Morita unified the name again. The correctness of his decision was immediately confirmed by new growth in profits.

1975 The first home video cassette recorder SL-6300

1979 First portable player TPS-L2 1980 First CD prototype

1982 Video camera BVM-1

1982 The first CD player CDP-101

1984 Portable CD player D-50

In 1982 year Sony Corporation released the first CD on the market. The most familiar storage medium for people in the 1990s, the CD was originally intended only for recording sound transferred to digital format. The standard CD-rom capacity of 640MB was determined in a rather interesting way. Morita spent marketing research, during which it turned out that among potential buyers The majority of CD-roms are supporters of classical music, who are ready to fork out money for a CD that is not cheap for the sake of high fidelity. And on the Japanese music market, among other classics, the absolute leader in sales is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which takes 73 and a half minutes to perform. By transferring 74 minutes of 16-bit stereo sound into bytes, Sony engineers obtained a capacity of 640MB.

At the end 1980s Sony entered the world of show business and the film industry: in January 1988, the corporation acquired the recording studio CBS Records Inc., later transformed into Sony Music Entertainment. And most recently she bought the film studio Columbia Pictures, one of the largest film studios in America.

To become completely related to music, in 1988 year Sony acquires the record company CBS Records Inc and renames it Sony Music Entertainment. Today, this company is one of the largest recording companies in the world. A year later, Sony acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc., thereby adding its name to the film industry.

Next come 90s- time when Sony I just started riveting technological innovations. Participation in the development of the DVD format, the creation of Blu-Ray, new TVs, the most popular series of Sony Vaio laptops, game console Play Station and Play Station Portable, Memory Stick series digital cameras Cyber-Shot, laptop batteries, monitors, an entertainment organizer called CLIE, a series of DVD players, a video camera and camcorder, Bravia TVs, Cell phones, produced jointly with Ericsson and much more. That's what Sony has done lately.

It should be noted that at the beginning of its existence, Sony was strikingly different from other Japanese companies, thereby giving them food for thought (and even changing the concept Japanese business). The fact is that Sony hired people on a competitive basis, without considering their academic performance at the university or any connections in the company. This was strikingly different from the traditions accepted in Japan at that time, since 99% of companies took on leadership positions people who are somehow familiar with the president. Sony has made the hiring process impartial. They say that for many years Akio Morita personally talked with the candidates. This practice will subsequently be adopted by other Japanese companies.

Philosophy of success

Revolutionary developments have become a Sony trademark. The company created the first transistor television (1959), the first liquid crystal television (1962), the first VCR (1964), etc.

“Success is achieved by following less traveled paths,” Morita liked to say. It was this principle that he based his company philosophy on.

And Morita considered the formation of a corporate philosophy to be the most important task of a manager. A leader-manager needs a theoretically strong and practically applicable concept in order to develop a way of thinking that would push subordinates to achieve their goals in any conditions.

The actions of the manager depend decisively on how he understands the essence of the enterprise. The management concept adopted in the United States consists of setting measurable goals and objectives and developing specific means of achieving them. American-type managers illustrate their projects with flowcharts in the form of squares, circles and arrows between them.

For a Japanese manager, a company is not a passive object of management, but something organically whole, a living organism endowed with a soul. For it to live, it is not enough just to design it and assemble it from individual cubes. He needs to be raised. And the source of a company’s development is its soul, in other words, its philosophy, system of values and beliefs. The notorious hymns, program speeches of managers and wall propaganda are nothing more than the most figurative and capacious expression of the mission, ideals and raison d'être of the enterprise.

Thousands of employees united in a single labor impulse with the help of unorthodox spells. Their authors knew better than anyone the national weaknesses of their compatriots.

First of all, the feeling of duty to the team is almost identical to the feeling of shame: the Japanese are psychologically uncomfortable, ashamed not to do what others do - not to stay after work, not to help their comrades.

The Japanese's heightened sense of gratitude was also exploited. So, a Japanese man who gets a job feels indebted to his employer for the rest of his life and pays off the debt with his labor. This makes it clear why the lifelong employment system was able to establish itself in Japan.

Founders

Morita was remembered by the public as a born businessman. While Ibuka prioritized invention and laboratory work, Akio dealt with management issues. And he dealt with them perfectly. At the same time, he wrote two books. The first was called “Meaningless School Achievements.” In it, the author explained why successful schooling does not in any way affect a person’s future achievements in life, and in particular in business (in general, Akio was an ardent opponent of the idea that success depends on successful studies at school and in college). Morita's second book was the famous "Made in Japan" - the history of the Sony Corporation. This book was published in the late 80s, but is still being republished today.

Akio Morita received many awards during his life. He is the first Japanese person to receive the OBE medal. In addition, he was awarded the honorary title of recipient of the National Order of the Legion of Honor, and also received the Order of the Holy Treasure, First Class, from the Emperor of Japan. Akio Morita was a workaholic, devoting himself completely to work. In addition, he demanded the same from his subordinates. True, it is worth noting that Morita completely ignored other aspects of life. Yes, he was a fairly active tennis player, loved skiing and scuba diving. The West loved Morita. It was he who found the way to the hearts of Americans and Europeans for Sony.

Masaru Ibuka is less famous outside of Japan. The reason for this was that he was involved in the scientific development of new products for the company and tried not to be visible all the time, like Morita. A clear division of responsibilities among company leaders has largely become one of the key factors for successful management at Sony. But don’t think that Ibuka dealt only with technical issues. For example, it was he who drew up the famous company charter, which is still observed today: “We will never receive income through dishonest means. We will focus on producing sophisticated devices that benefit society. We will not divide our products into mechanical and electronic, but we will try to apply our knowledge and experience in both areas simultaneously. We will provide complete independence to those enterprises that will cooperate with us, and we will try to strengthen and develop relationships with them. We will select employees based on their abilities and personal qualities. There will be no formal positions in our company. We will pay our employees bonuses proportional to the income generated by their activities and will make every effort to provide them with a decent living." Masaru Ibuka would have turned 100 years old this year.

Read more...

The idea of producing a wire tape recorder. For the first time such tape recorders appeared in Germany. At Tohoku University (in northern Japan), research was carried out to produce a special steel wire V

Sony and its mission.

Like every company, Sony has a date of birth - May 7
1946. Its original name was Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, or Tokyo Telecommunications Company. Her start-up capital was 500 dollars. The company's founders began by assembling electric heating pads, which they sold at street markets in Tokyo for a profit. Then we mastered the production of short-wave set-top boxes for medium-wave radio receivers, as well as spare parts
(motors and pickups) to repair and improve old turntables produced before and during the war. These goods were regarded by the founders of Sony as temporary, providing the opportunity to quickly replenish working capital.

Two ideas for technology-intensive products soon emerged.

The idea of producing a wire tape recorder. For the first time such tape recorders appeared in Germany. At Tohoku University (in northern Japan), research was carried out on the production of special steel wire as a kind of tape. The Sumitomo Metals company, capable of producing the necessary wire, refused the order. In addition, experiments have shown that wire is not entirely suitable for implementing this idea.

The idea of producing a tape recorder. The implementation of this project, which was embodied in the Model O, released in 1950, required research and development to create technology for the production of magnetic tape.

In 1948, employees of the American laboratory Bell Lab Research invented the first transistor. American experts believed that the transistor could only be used in hearing aids. But the leadership
Totsuko (as Sony was called at that time) went further - it set out to develop its own high-frequency transistors for radio receivers.
This was done by the company's research laboratory, using the acquired patent. In 1955, Sony mastered the production of miniature parts and released a transistor radio (model TN-55), and in 1957, its “pocket” version. In January 1958, it changed its name to Sony Corporation.

Therefore, the content of Sonya’s mission was the following:
"innovative ideas - latest technology- technology-intensive products - consumers all over the world.”

An important stage in the development of Sony's mission was 1958, associated with the beginning of the export of its products. The basis for this was the solution of the most important problems in the domestic market:

Finding a “niche” in the domestic market using technology-intensive goods;

Gaining respect for your brand;

Creation of your own stores, and later - your own sales and distribution network;

Gaining pioneering fame.

Sonya's mission is determined by the appearance of the company's founders, who also became its leaders. If we translate it into the language of a figurative formula, it looks like this;

Mission = (knowledge, ingenuity, enthusiasm) x (intuition, courage, audacity).

The first bracket can be called personal “Capital number one”, and the second - “Capital number two”. The fusion of both naturally led to the emergence of the mission.

The original statement of the Sony philosophy was as follows: “If conditions could be created in which people could unite with the firm intention of working together and using their technical abilities to realize their deepest desires, then such an organization could bring great pleasure and benefit "
Subsequently, the “leading force” was identified very clearly: “No theory, program or government policy can make an enterprise successful; only people can do this.” And the main thing in people is their abilities, and in leaders - “the ability to use abilities.”

The undisputed leader of the company was one of its founders, Ibuka.
The originality of his thinking and even genius in the technical field, the ability to look into the future played an outstanding role in the production of technology-intensive products. “The childhood of Sony is the activity of a group of people striving to implement the ideas of their technical leader. "Sony's youth" is Ibuka's ability to "...take a group of young and daring engineers and turn them into a team of managers who know how to collaborate in an atmosphere that encourages everyone to speak their mind."

The strength of Sony lies in the ability of its managers to find application for extraordinary individuals, their ideas, and harmoniously combine different opinions. These are not big words or idealization. The weakness of many companies is that the personnel service and its managers consider themselves to be the “arbiters of the destinies” of the people who come to work for them. They “bind” a person to a position and consider their task completed. In fact, finding a person’s true place in an organization is a constant process of search and self-search, assessment and self-assessment to realize the abilities of a “working person.”

As practice shows, companies that tried to reach the forefront in business often suffered complete fiasco precisely because they failed to create a management system based on the use of the abilities of their employees. According to experts, in the 21st century, organizations that use systems for managing the abilities of their personnel will become the predominant type of enterprise.

The fate of an innovator is to move forward. It is impossible to stand still, as this may lead to the loss of conquered positions.

The paradox is that Sony, as before, will have to get ahead, first of all, of itself. Avis Car Rental had the following motto: “We are in second place. Therefore, we try harder.” Sony has a more difficult task: “We are in the lead. Therefore, we try as hard as we can.” To maintain the mission in the future, it is necessary maintain this unique edge. As time passes and Sony's leaders change, will new generations of managers be able to retain and enhance the values and innovative style of their predecessors in such critical areas as R&D, management and marketing? Practical answers are key to the mission " Sony" in the 21st century.

Sony management.

It is believed that the success of Japanese companies does not depend on the policies of the authorities or economic theories. Everything that is achieved is done by people.

The most important task of Japanese managers is to create an atmosphere of cooperation between workers and management, to formulate in the minds of workers an attitude towards the corporation as a family.

Such a system, for example, cannot be mechanically transferred to Russian soil; betting on people is very risky.

But no matter how talented the managers are, the fate of the company is in the hands of the workers who make up the team. When a young worker is hired, the company is handed over to him.

In Japan, the school year ends at the end of March. All those invited to work for the company at the end of the last semester gather together at Sony headquarters in Tokyo. At this meeting, acquaintance occurs, and their prospects open up for young people. Young people are told that during their studies they received no reward for poor knowledge. a large number of points, for good ones - a hundred. Someone from the top management of the company tells them: “At work, you can get an unlimited number of points for your work, or get a very small number of points because of a mistake. But this mistake can lead to very large losses in the company. Therefore, your mistakes could be catastrophic for the company."

Working with people in industrial enterprises, Japanese managers understand that workers do not work only for money; workers should feel that they are members of a family and are treated as respected members of the family, as close colleagues.

Engineering and technical workers at Sony enterprises have a uniform - identical jackets and have lunch in cafes at the same tables where workers eat. Not a single manager in the company has a separate office. All managers sit in the same rooms with their subordinates.

Every morning, foremen talk to workers before starting work and give them instructions. Masters are interested in the health of their subordinates and the health of their family members. They find out if people have problems that can be solved with the help of the administration. All young engineers in the company begin their careers on the assembly line in order to understand the technology in practice and get an idea of their influence on this process. An in-house newspaper is published weekly where vacancy announcements are posted. This practice makes it possible to change jobs within the company.

In this case, they kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, the employee finds himself more suitable job, on the other hand, the personnel service identifies managers with whom people do not want to work. This information makes it possible to draw organizational conclusions.

If the Sony company has achieved success, then these successes can be attributed mainly to the fact that the company's managers have the ability to cooperate.

The company respects the opinions of different people. And when they ask how people with different views are compatible, they are told what would happen if all managers had the same opinion. Different opinions help to find the truth and move the company forward.

Sony has a manifesto developed by managers. The manifesto is called "Spirit of Sonya".

In particular, the manifesto says: “Sony” is a pioneer and will never follow others. By making progress, Sony wants to serve the whole world. The path of a pioneer is full of difficulties, but despite numerous hardships and obstacles, Sony employees will always be harmoniously and closely connected by the joy of participating in creative work and the pride of investing their unique talents in achieving this goal. The Sony principle is to respect and encourage the abilities of everyone (a person in his place) and, as always, strive to bring out the best in a person, believe in him, which constantly gives him the opportunity to develop his abilities. This is the life force
"Sony".

In the company's tradition, senior managers are required to attend gala dinners on the occasion of the anniversary of the company's founding or other events organized at the company's expense at Sony's parent enterprises and its foreign branches.

In the company, employees constantly strive to make innovation proposals, which are greatly encouraged. On average, there are 8 innovation proposals per employee per year.

If company employees are faced with unfamiliar situations, then the principle “act without waiting for instructions” applies. In this way, employees are taught to be independent in resolving issues.

Japanese workers constantly operate in conditions of self-motivation and self-stimulation. Top managers, relying on the integrity of middle managers, are engaged in planning and prospects for the development of the company. That's why Sony doesn't strictly regulate responsibilities. Everyone acts like a family - doing what is necessary.

If a defect occurs in a company, they do not look for the culprit, but look for the reason. And if you ostracize the perpetrator in a marriage, he may lose motivation for the rest of his career, and if he knows that he made a mistake, it will not happen again. The company's family policy constantly bears fruit. During the economic recession of 1973/1974, inflation was around
25%. At some Sony factories, workers were sent home. But suspended professionals could not sit quietly at home when their company found itself in dire straits. They came to their businesses, did the cleaning, mowed the lawns and did any kind of work without getting paid a yen for it.

And one more important aspect of the company’s work. When a company gets into trouble, the first thing they do is reduce wages high-ranking managers, and then middle managers and workers.

The qualities of managers at Sony are judged primarily by how well they organize a large number of people and what results they can achieve from each individual.

At Sony, the age limit for the president is 65 years. But the experience of retired managers is widely used. They work as advisers, inspectors, experts. Attend meetings and meetings with the right to an advisory vote. Some retired managers find work in small firms and subsidiaries of Sony.

I would like to give a few opinions from one of the founders of the company, Akio
Morita, on the problem of management.

First opinion. The art of management is elusive, which cannot always be judged by today's financial results. They can be wonderful, but the company will die after some time. Investments are needed for the future.

Second opinion. The main indicators of a manager’s abilities are how he organizes work and how effectively he achieves results from each of them, combining them into a single whole.

Third opinion. Good results in management, they are obtained as if by themselves if employees voluntarily and enthusiastically follow the leader in order to achieve them.

According to A. Morita, it was the unique practical concept of “Sony Management”, which became its spiritual strength, that ensured, provides and will ensure the achievements of the company. What is characteristic of her?

First of all, Sony, like other Japanese enterprises, according to A.
Morita, looks like a wall made of stones. First, people are accepted into it, they take a closer look at these “raw stones,” and then determine the possibilities of use in the “wall.” Stones come in different shapes and change over time. New circumstances also appear in the activities of the company itself - then the entire wall or part of it needs to be rebuilt. This mobility, variability and adaptability to new conditions “from a person” is an important feature of “Sony management”.

According to A. Morita, American companies are more like a brick wall, where each brick has a precisely defined scope of activity. If a person applying for a job is less or more than a certain brick, then he is rejected. Here they adhere to the rule of “a person for a specific job,” while “Sony management” is “based on the principle of “the best use of a person’s abilities.”

The HR department and the head of the department do not always hit the mark when hiring, and therefore the employee begins to look for a more suitable place. There are managers who view employees as performers of their teams.

Sony grasped the range of these problems and began publishing a weekly newspaper with the publication of so-called internal vacancies. This made it possible, along with rotation, to create a kind of self-search mechanism for a job that is more consistent with personal abilities.

Well-known American authorities in the field of management, in particular
Peter Drucker, comparing the work of American and Japanese managers, emphasized the rational thinking of their compatriots. But the work practice of Japanese managers not only at home, but also at enterprises in the United States provided many examples of a different way of thinking and management style, leading to better results. So how is rationalism measured in management?
A familiar chain of actions, decisions, a familiar style of behavior or something else? Rationalism of management in Japanese, including
“Sony management” is about providing the “working person” with opportunities for self-expression and the realization of their abilities. Today, this type of “rational management” is considered the highest level of work, a kind of extra-class indicator, and requires managers to have appropriate thinking and preparation. This eliminates the style
“double standard” - we declare one thing, but do something else. If such rationalism is not natural, it will not work.

Studying the experience of Sony Management, you come to the conclusion that its past and current successes are due to the fact that managers often acted and made decisions contrary to “effective standards.” What explains this seemingly paradox?

The fact is that from the very beginning the company had a spirit of novelty and inventiveness, which over time turned into a system and one of the main components of the company's philosophy. Sony management technology is ingenuity in everything: in the emergence and “mining” of scientific and technical ideas, making decisions about creating a new product, planning its production, organizing sales and marketing, building and restructuring a management system, etc. Moreover, each employee has the right to submit his proposals for consideration by the company management. And they will definitely be considered. Moreover, according to A. Morita, “when an idea passes through the Sony system, its author continues to be responsible for assisting technical specialists, designers, manufacturers and marketers in its implementation and bringing it to its logical conclusion, be it technological process or new product, which goes on the market."

As the company formed and developed, its style increasingly showed the features and philosophy of a “single enterprise.” Briefly they can be expressed as follows.

1. Company employees are not a tool for achieving goals, but colleagues and assistants. If it is not possible to create a “spirit of a single team”, no, especially long-term goals will be achieved.

2. “The duty of the people who lead the company is to honestly lead the family of the company’s employees and take care of its members” (A.
Morita).

3. To create a “family spirit”, a wide variety of forms and methods are used, which over time reflect the reality - “the company is us”, and
"we are a company." Creating and maintaining such a spirit is a unique and complex art that does not tolerate falsehood or masquerade. But Sony managers had the appropriate abilities. They mastered this art and enriched it with their professional activities.

Bibliography:

Morita A. “Made in Japan. History of the Sony Company. /Translation from English M.:
Progress, 1993
"How Japanese Enterprises Work." /Ed. J. Mondena. M.: Economics,
1989
"Sony's Mission" Personnel Management. No. 10 1998.
“Lessons from the formation and development of the Sony company.” Personnel Management. No. 12
1998.

Everyone still remembers what a great company Sony once was and what an impact it had on our lives. Considering its past merits, it is difficult to believe that the company has not made a profit for 4 years in a row, that this year, according to an official statement, the planned losses will double - to $6.4 billion, which today is only 15% of its capital net assets(debt to equity ratio - 5.67), and its capitalization is four times less than ten years ago!

But until relatively recently, Sony was an innovative company and led the market. After World War II, it was Sony who created the transistor radio, which soon conquered the whole world. Under the leadership of one of its founders, Akio Morita, the company remained ahead of technological progress, and its leaders devoted much of their time to finding ways to apply its advances to the greater good. ordinary people. Driven by the idea not to occupy but to create new markets, Sony played the role of a pioneer and for a long time occupied a leading position in the sector that we now call “consumer electronics”. Here are just a few of the company's achievements:

— Sony has improved semiconductor-based radios to such an extent that they have surpassed tube devices in quality. This made reliable and inexpensive high-quality sound available.

— Sony has created a semiconductor TV, instead of a tube one, that is more reliable, functional and consumes less energy than its predecessor.

— Sony developed the Triniton format television tube, dramatically improving the quality of color display, and thereby forced a whole generation of viewers to switch to this format.

— Sony was one of the pioneers of video technology, introducing the Betamax format to the market, and only then lost to JVC in the format war.

— Sony was a pioneer in the creation of video recording cameras, turning half the world into amateur filmmakers.

Sony pioneered the market for personal cultural consumption with the invention of the Walkman, which for the first time gave people the ability to take recorded music with them on compact cassettes.

“Sony created the Playstation, which was far ahead of Nintendo, and made a whole huge market out of home video games.

Few technology companies can boast a comparable success story. Eyewitnesses said that the company's management once devoted 85% of its time to issues related to research and development, 10% to personnel issues, and only the remaining 5% to finance. For Akio Morita financial results were precisely the results - the results of hard work to create new products and form new markets. If Sony did its core job well, the results should be consistent. And so it was.

By the mid-1980s, panic began in the United States about the absolute dominance of Sony and other Japanese companies in the world industrial production. And not only consumer electronics, but also cars, motorcycles, kitchen appliances, steel - the number of such industries was constantly growing. Politicians came up with a special name for Japanese competitors like the incredibly successful Sony - "Japan Corporation" - and constantly talked about how the Japanese Ministry international trade and industry (MMTP) effectively manages government resources, to “knock out” American manufacturers from the market. While rising gasoline prices hampered the growth of US companies, Japanese manufacturers managed to turn new inventions (often American) into very successful budget products, and only increased sales and profits.

So what happened to Sony?

In the 1950s, consultant William Deming convinced Japanese executives to focus on making things better, faster, and cheaper—even at the expense of innovation. Taking advantage of Japan's post-war dependence on foreign capital and foreign markets, this US citizen infected Japanese industry with the ideas of industrialization, as it was practiced in the 1940s - it is he who is credited with the initiative for the rapid and massive increase in production military equipment which allowed the US to defeat Japan.

Unfortunately, this obsession has left Japanese business leaders with virtually no skills to develop and apply innovation in any other area. Over time, Sony became hostage to the passion for developing industrial products, forgetting about the need to develop new markets.

Vaio computers, no matter how good they were, used almost no technology born in the depths of Sony. The company had to get involved in a war with Dell, HP and Lenovo, its success began to depend on the game to reduce the cost/price of computer production, and not on the development of new models. Sony has developed a clearly industrial-oriented strategy for itself, focusing on processes and production volumes, rather than trying to create something unique and new, head and shoulders above the competition's offerings.

In the mobile phone business, Sony entered into a partnership with Ericsson and subsequently bought it outright. Once again, consumers saw neither new technology nor an attempt to create a device that would stand out from the competition. Instead, Sony has focused on increasing production volumes and beating products from Nokia, Motorola and Samsung on price and functionality. Without any consumer or technology advantage, Samsung, which produces its phones outside of Japan, has left Sony's industrial strategy far behind due to its lower costs.

When Sony entered a new competitive frontier with the introduction of Blu-Ray technology, its strategy remained the same: first find a way to sell as many devices as possible using the new format. Therefore, the company did not sell Blu-Ray technology itself to anyone. It behaved in the same way in the audio file market, developing its own audio encoding format, applicable only to devices manufactured by Sony. In the conditions of the information economy, this approach could not satisfy consumers, so Blu-Ray turned out to be a loss-making undertaking, uninteresting to the market, and the same fate awaited the now closed series of Sony digital players.

We see a similar picture in almost all areas of the company’s business. For example, in the production of televisions, Sony has lost its technological advantage, once gained thanks to Trinitron picture tubes. In the flat-screen segment, Sony predictably - and with predictably disastrous results - applied its industrial strategy, trying to beat competitors by increasing volumes and reducing costs. But since these competitors were able to use the resources of countries with cheap labor and capital, Sony has already lost $10 billion in this market over the past 8 years. And despite this, the company is not going to give up and plans to stick to its policy.

Sony's current management bears full responsibility for maintaining this losing strategy.

Under Morita, new product development was at the forefront, and Industrial Age tactics were used to reduce costs. Sony executives who came to the company later were already trained differently: they came to implement the industrial strategy. In their minds, new products and new markets occupied a subordinate place. They were convinced that if Sony had high enough gross figures and managed to cut costs enough, sooner or later it would win the competition. And without any innovation.

By 2005, Sony reached the culmination of this strategy by placing a non-Japanese at the helm of the company. Sir Howard Stringer made his reputation as the head of Sony's American subsidiary, who, in perfect accordance with the letter of industrial strategy, reduced the company's 30,000-strong workforce by 9,000 (that is, by almost a third). For Stringer, Sony's mainstream development was not about innovation, technology, or new products and markets.

In Stringer's version, industrial strategy meant an obsession with cutting costs. While Morita's management meetings were 85 percent dedicated to innovation and market applications of technology, Stringer brought a "modern" approach to Sony's business. Sony management began to be carried out in strict accordance with the MBA recipes of the 1960s. Focus on a specific limited range of products in order to increase production volumes, try to avoid the costly development of technological innovations in favor of mass production of other people's developments, reduce assortment renewal, focus efforts on increasing the service life of the product, extending the depreciation period of equipment, and constantly look for ways to reduce costs. Do not spare anything for this last goal, and reward those who have distinguished themselves, including with generous bonuses.

That is why, during Stringer's short tenure at the head of the company, Sony did not create a single high-profile new product. Rather, his reign will go down in history with two waves of massive layoffs - and this in a company (and country) historically committed to a policy of lifetime employment.

Sony's new CEO just said he's going to respond to continued losses with - you guessed it - a new round of layoffs. This time, it is believed that we will be talking about 10,000 workers, that is, 6% of the company’s total personnel. The new CEO, Mr. Hirai, who gained experience running businesses under Stringer's direct supervision, demonstrated that he has no intention of abandoning the industrial strategy.

EndSony

Japanese share capital laws differ from American and European ones. Local companies often have much more high level debt. Sometimes they can even operate with a negative indicator own funds— which in almost all other countries formally means bankruptcy. So it is unlikely that Sony will initiate bankruptcy proceedings in the foreseeable future.

But is it worth investing in Sony? After 4 years of losses, given its management's faith in its industrial strategy and its belief in the MBA wisdom of focusing on numbers rather than markets, there is no reason to believe that Sony's sales or earnings trajectory will change direction anytime soon.

Being for Sony employee, who is facing another wave of layoffs, would you want to work for this company? A business that systematically imitates external trends in product development, that pays little attention to innovation, and instead only thinks about cutting costs, is unlikely to become an interesting workplace. Especially if it offers almost no prospects for career growth.

It will also be of little interest to suppliers - after all, they already know that every new meeting with them will be devoted to discussing ways to further reduce costs - again, and again, and again.

Sony was once a company to watch. She was an innovator who opened up new markets time after time, much like Apple does today. But thanks to an industrial business strategy and a leadership style borrowed from legacy MBA programs, it's time to say goodbye. Sell Sony shares.

Looking for something original in the history of the founding of Sony is more useless than writing numbers on flowing water, as the Japanese would put it. Like other successful businesses, Sony started small initial capital($500 is not a significant sum) and several people united by one idea.

But the history of Sony's development itself deserves close attention.

Now Sony Corporation is a large transnational corporation producing high-tech electronics.

TVs, cameras, video cameras, game consoles, smartphones, e-books– this is not a complete list of products that have won the trust of amateurs and professionals.

Sony Corporation is a division of the Sony Group holding company and is also involved in its management. Other subsidiaries of the holding are engaged in film production (Sony Pictures Entertainment owns the film studios TriStars Pictures and Columbia Pictures), are responsible for music (Sony Music Entertainment), financial sphere(Sony Financial Holdings), etc.

The corporate headquarters is located in Tokyo.
The CEO is Kazuo Hirai, who took over this post in 2012.
The total number of employees worldwide is about 170,000 people.
Sony Corporation's market capitalization is $17.6 billion, and its sales are more than $78 billion (Forbes data as of May 2013).
In 2013, the Sony brand was recognized as one of the most influential at home (4th place in Japan’s Best Global Brands) and throughout the world (5th place in the Top Global Meaningful Brands Index).
The Sony brand is consistently popular among our compatriots, appearing in the list of “Russians’ Favorite Brands” either in second (2011) or third (2010, 2012) line.

It's hard to believe, but initially, to avoid drawing attention to the country of origin, Sony printed the words "Made in Japan" in small font on export products. Once, customs even “wrapped” their products because the microscopic inscription was not visible!

The company was “hiding” because cheap Japanese products (paper umbrellas, toys, etc.) gave goods from the Land of the Rising Sun a bad reputation in the West.

However, Sony Corporation managed not only to overcome this stereotype, but also to turn the words “Made in Japan” into a guarantee High Quality!

How did you manage to achieve this?

The company was founded on May 7, 1946 by 38-year-old engineer Masaru Ibuka and 25-year-old physicist, and was then called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation).

Masaru and Akio knew each other since the war, when they worked together in a group of scientists who worked for the benefit of the army.

In the new company, the founding fathers applied the rule of “divide and conquer.” Being a true technical genius, Ibuka became closely involved in the development of new products, while the enterprising Morita took up solving sales issues.

In his book of memoirs “Made in Japan,” Akio admitted that meeting Masaru turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of fate for him.

At first there were only 20 employees on staff. Could they imagine , that after decades the company’s staff will increase 8000 times?!

Despite the increased number, even now Sony employees perceive each other as one family. In this they adopted the philosophy of Akio Morita, a brilliant manager who knew how to unite and mobilize the team to accomplish assigned tasks.

He understood very well that “no matter how lucky you are... smart or dexterous, your business and its fate are in the hands of the people you hire.” Morita sought to know each employee personally and, to strengthen working relationships, interacted almost daily with young lower-level managers during lunch.

The company structure was also strengthened by the lifelong employment system, revived by the United States at Japanese enterprises in the post-war period. But since Sony has always differed from other Japanese enterprises in its openness to new ideas and flexibility, the company's management took into account the needs of workers, introducing the practice of transferring them from one job to another within the company.

At first, the company was located on the 4th floor of a burnt-out department store in the destroyed center of Tokyo, but soon moved to the old district of the capital. To get into the “new office”, one had to bend down and walk under the clotheslines on which the neighbors were drying diapers.

This shocked Morita's relatives who visited him so much that they reported to his parents that Akio had become an anarchist. However, Morita's father repeatedly lent money to develop the company. " Material aid"brought him good dividends - he later became one of the largest shareholders of Sony.

What did the inventors spend the money they received on?

Ibuka and Morita did not immediately find themselves in business. They were eager to create something fundamentally new, but at first they produced either radio set-top boxes, electric rice cookers, or heated pillows.

The search for my own business was crowned with success after 3 years.

In 1949, Morita bought an American tape recorder, combining business with pleasure - both the music could be listened to, and the acquisition could be disassembled and examined.

The information carrier in the tape recorder was unreliable and expensive wire, and Japanese engineers were inspired by the idea of creating a tape recorder. Tape media had a higher fidelity and made it easy to change the recording - it was enough to paste a new piece of tape in the right place.

The idea of a new product was not received with a bang by the company's employees - they had listened to Masaru's fantastic ideas for too long and no longer trusted them much. There was an urgent need to prove to colleagues (and especially to the accountant) that the project was worth the money and effort.

Ibuka and Morita decided to convince the chief accountant that they were right in the usual way for us - they took us to a restaurant. While he was eating both cheeks, his friends were praising their idea. Soon the accountant, with a full stomach and not quite a sober head, gave the go-ahead for scientific research.

The company began developing its own tape media for sound recording. Cellophane was initially used as a base, which was cut into long strips and covered with experimental compounds. But even durable types of cellophane, after a couple of runs through the tape mechanism, stretched and distorted the sound.

The next material for magnetic tape was high-quality paper. It was cut and glued by hand, so the company's founders actually had a hand in creating the product. But paper was no good either.

After the company obtained plastic and developed its own technology for its use, things moved forward with dead center.

As for the magnetic coating of the tape, Japanese researchers obtained it from iron oxalate, which was pre-fried in a frying pan!

I would like you to clearly understand that at first no one in the company really knew how to make this magnetic tape, but, nevertheless, this did not stop anyone. And already in 1965, IBM chose Sony tape for storage devices in computers.

In 1950, the first tape recorder was released. It weighed 35 kg and cost 170,000 yen, i.e. $472 (a technician after university then received $30 per month).

Everyone liked the technical novelty, but it did not sell - inventing unique technologies and products was not enough. Morita took up marketing and managed to find consumers who saw the tape recorder not as an expensive toy, but as a useful thing. The Supreme Court of Japan purchased 20 tape recorders at once due to the shortage of stenographers in the post-war period. Schools are the next market.

In 1952, after Ibuka’s trip to the USA, the partners got the idea to buy a license for transistor, which would solve the issues of reducing the size of radio receivers. On next year Morita travels to New York to complete the patent acquisition.

During research in the field of transistors, the company's employees discovered and described the tunneling effect in diodes, Leo Esaki subsequently received the Nobel Prize.

In 1955, Akio decides to change the name of the company - with the unpronounceable “Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo” it is difficult to conquer the Western market.

The business of Japanese engineers was related to sound, and therefore the starting point was the word “sonus” (Latin for “sound”), the meaning was also suitable for the slang “sonny” (English “son”), as smart guys were called then. By crossing out one letter from “sonny,” which means “to lose money” in Japanese, Morita got “sony.”

So the corporation acquired a simple and memorable name, which became not only the name of the company, but also the brand of the goods produced.

In 1955 Sony introduces Japan's first transistor radio, the TR-55. Two years later, the company launched the first "pocket" receiver, the TR-63, into the US market, dubbed "the beginning of the end of the American consumer electronics industry."

In promoting its product, Sony resorted to a trick - the very first “pocket” receivers were still slightly larger than the pocket of a classic men’s shirt. For company representatives advertising the new product, special shirts with enlarged pockets were issued, into which the receivers could already fit!

In 1960 year Sony introduces the world's first transistor TV. The fact is that at that time televisions were incredibly huge because they worked on electronic vacuum tubes. Transistors were much smaller in size. The Japanese wanted to reduce the size of televisions using transistors, which they did brilliantly.

In 1961 The world's first portable TV appears.

The device caused a real sensation among consumers, even despite its high cost. It allowed

In 1961 year, 15 years after the founding of the business, the company's representative office in the United States, Sony Corporation of America, became the first Japanese company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The issue of shares brings its founders 4 million dollars! Then the cost of one share was $1.75; now the company’s securities can be purchased for an average of $18 (data from May 2014).

This is not the highest price for Sony shares; the shares reached their highest value in March 2000 and then cost almost $150 per share. Below is a chart of changes in the company's share price. The picture can be enlarged by clicking on it:

In 1963 This year the company introduces a new product - the world's first transistor video cassette recorder.

The XVIII Summer Olympic Games of 1964, held in Tokyo, contributed to the growth of Japanese demand for color televisions - everyone wanted to follow the progress of the competition (in the final standings, Japan then took 3rd place, behind the USA and the USSR). Sony is successfully developing the market segment of portable TVs, where it does not meet competitors.

What is the secret of the company's success?

Let us note the clear organization of the system - in order to effectively perform tasks, the company's structure was divided into groups (scientific knowledge base, project, business group), which had their own functions, but closely interacted with each other.

In addition to such objective factors as new technologies and competent management company, the accuracy of the Japanese, which Morita believed was in their blood, also played a role: “ Perhaps this has something to do with the care with which we have to learn to draw the complex hieroglyphs of our language.”

In 1968 In 2009, Sony began production of a color TV with a Trinitron kinescope, for the creation of which the National Academy of Television was awarded 4 years later. will award the company an Emmy Award.

In 1971 Sony introduces the world's first professional cassette format, U-matic. VCRs of this format were the first players in which the film was located in a closed housing. The "" company immediately bought 5,000 of these VCRs to train its mechanics and salespeople.

In 1975 year Betamax appears - f format video recordings for home use; At the same time, the household video cassette recorder appeared.

IN 1979 The company releases the first portable cassette audio player with Walkman headphones. The idea of its creation belongs to , who noticed that there are a great many people who do not want to part with their favorite music - even his daughter, once returning from a trip, the first thing she did was not say hello to her mother, but ran to the tape recorder.

In 1980 year the company introduces Betakam, a half-inch cassette format for home use.

In 1983 Sony and Philips released the first CDs. Initially, discs with a diameter of 11.5 cm were planned, but at Sony's insistence the size was increased to 12 cm - the company wanted the disc to be able to record Beethoven's 9th "chorale" symphony in its entirety, lasting 74 minutes.

The year 1990 became the most fruitful year for innovative developments - Sony released about five thousand new products!

In 1994 In 2009, the company launched the PlayStation gaming console on the Japanese market. This console will conquer a wide market, even entering folklore:

In Russian language lesson:

Teacher: What prefixes do you know?

Vovochka: XboxAndSony PlayStation.

By the way, these game consoles are popular not only among schoolchildren. A funny Sony ad shows how the gaming console turns a grown man into a child.

In the 90s, Cyber-Shot digital cameras, VAIO personal computers, DVD video players, Memory Stick memory cards and much more appeared.

Ibuka Masaru passed away in 1997, and in 1999. Their creative tandem, which lasted more than half a century, led Sony to the heights of success. The lines dedicated to Masaru's farewell say: "Every employee, starting with Akio Morita, worked to make Masaru Ibuki's dream come true." We can say that Masaru’s cherished wish has come true - the life’s work of Japanese businessmen, the Sony company, still lives, develops and wins the trust of more and more new customers.

In 2001, Sony, together with the Swedish company Ericsson, founded a company specializing in mobile phones and accessories. In 2011, having bought out their share from partners, Sony became the sole owner of Sony Ericsson and renamed the company Sony Mobile Communications.

With the new brand name “Xperia”, the company is strengthening its position in the smartphone market.

Since 2005, the company begins to produce televisions under the new brand “BRAVIA”, and already in 2006 it ranks first in the world in sales of plasma televisions.

As for our market, in Russia the history of Sony began in 1991. In 1997, the company owned the highest share Russian market TV sales – 22%. In 2013, Sony was awarded the national Product of the Year award, receiving as many as 9 awards.

Is Sony dying?

However, not everything is so rosy. The fact is that over the past five years, not counting 2013, Sony has been unprofitable. That is, she did not make a profit for four years, except for 2013.

The losses are caused by a reduction in Sony's global share in the production of almost all types of electronics. The leading position of the Japanese manufacturer was shaken by companies from Asian countries ( South Korea, Taiwan and China), with cheap labor force which were not easy to compete with.

The 2011 earthquake in Japan led to forced plant downtime and additional losses.

The strengthening national currency also played a negative role - the high exchange rate of the yen increased the cost of Japanese goods and made exports less profitable.

Many analysts predict the imminent demise of Sony and advise selling shares of this concern.

To finance its business restructuring program, the company is selling some of its office buildings.

Thus, the sale of a 37-story skyscraper with an area of 76 thousand sq.m. in Manhattan brought Sony just over $1 billion in 2013. For 3 years, Sony will still rent the space it previously owned.

To reduce costs, a decision has already been made to cut 5 thousand jobs, as well as to sell the Vaio computer and laptop division. The TV production line is planned to be separated into a separate company.

I don’t know what this is connected with, perhaps due to the fact that the founding fathers passed on to another world. They retired in the mid-nineties, but until their very last days they continued to advise and help their colleagues.

Masaru Ibuka was born on April 11, 1908, died on December 19, 1997.
born January 26, 1921, died October 3, 1999.

In 2000, Sony's share price reached an all-time high ($149.71) and then began to decline rapidly. They reached a historical low in November 2012, when they cost $9.74 per share.

With the passing of its founders, Sony seemed to have lost its sense of fashionable and unusually interesting gadgets. The company has become completely different. More recently, the company was a true pioneer in the world of electronics and led the market.

Under Morita, new products and innovations were placed at the forefront of the company's development. With the arrival of new managers trained in MBA programs, innovation took a back seat, and the first priority was given to reducing production costs and increasing production volumes and sales of existing products.

Previously, the company's management devoted 85% of its time to issues related to research and development, 10% to personnel issues and only the remaining 5% to finance.

Now, most of the time at management planning meetings is devoted to how to increase production volumes, how to avoid spending on one’s own research and innovation in favor of mass production of other people’s developments, how to extend the depreciation period of equipment and other ways to reduce production costs.

The once most popular Walkmans have been pushed out of the market by iPods, which, by the way, appeared in 2001. But they firmly held the palm in this market for almost 20 years.

The same goes for many other areas in which the legendary Japanese brand has lost its technological edge, although some of Sony's products still deserve praise. For example, it was filmed inexpensively waterproof camera Sony DSC-TX200, which costs about 10,000 rubles. In my opinion, excellent quality and a very affordable price for an underwater camera with HD video recording.

I have had a Sony car radio in my car for many years now. I've been using it for eight years cell phone Sony-Ericsson, which still works great, except that it is outdated. It just needs to be replaced with a battery, otherwise it runs out quickly. I also still have a Sony digital camera that I bought back in 2006. True, the shooting mode switch is a little sticky, but you can get used to it.

While I was writing the article, I was surprised at how many gadgets I have of this brand, although I never considered myself a fan or a fan of this brand.

By the way, in 2006, Sony Corporation inherited all the technological developments from the leaders in the photo industry, KONICA-MINOLTA, which curtailed the production of cameras in 2006. It is worth noting that Konica and Minolta, which merged only in 2003, were considered the luminaries of Japanese photo production.

Both companies have existed since the beginning of the 19th century. Only Konica specialized in the production of rangefinder cameras, photographic film, paper and photo printing systems, and Minolta specialized in the production SLR cameras and optics, and of a fairly high class and was valued not only by amateurs, but also professional photographers worldwide.

Today Sony releases great amount a variety of cameras equipped with high-quality optics from Carl Zeiss, the legendary German concern with which the Japanese corporation has been working closely since 1995.

Sony remains to be Sony, just like in the slogan of past years - “it’s a Sony” (“this is Sony”).

Now the company has a new slogan. In 2009, the famous advertising phrase “like.no.other” (“like no one else”) was replaced by a new one: “make.believe” (“make it a reality”). This motto accurately reflects the company's philosophy that dreams should come true and plans should be realized; And Sony helps bring ideas to life.

The logo remains the same; the ’73 trademark is currently used. Back in 1981, as part of the celebration of the 35th anniversary of the founding of Sony, the company's logo was planned to be changed. But then, after going through the options, Ibuka decided that none of the proposed ones was better than the existing one. And why change anything, if it is with these letters, simple and expressive, that Sony has entered its name into the list of innovative companies? Let's hope that the new management of the company will remember past victories and traditions and regain the lost greatness of the brand that once thundered throughout the world!

Since 2008, the company has been a participant in the global Eco-Patent Commons project, created to solve environmental problems. Companies participating in the project provide free access to their patents for technologies and inventions that can improve the environmental situation.

Sony is generally one of the most environmentally friendly companies. In 2013, the company took an honorable 11th place in the “Greenest Brands” rating compiled by the Interband agency based on 83 criteria.

In a number of its eco-products, Sony uses kinetic energy. To recharge a “twist and click” digital camera, you need to rotate its body, while you can “charge” stereo “push and play” headphones by pulling the wire out of the case.

Sony specialists have developed new “biobatteries” that generate electricity by breaking down glucose under the action of enzymes.

By 2050, according to the environmental action schedule, the company plans to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions for both its factories and its products.

Personally, I like this company and the reliability of the devices it produces. The only wish is that it keeps up with the times and does not lag behind such geniuses and innovators of the industry as Samsung, who are not afraid to open new markets, create new products and trends in the world of consumer electronics.

In conclusion, I suggest you look at the history of Sony’s development in the form of infographics. Click on the picture to enlarge.

The Japanese themselves put the recipe for this Japanese miracle into two words: wakon yosai. This means taking the latest knowledge developed by foreigners, but not allowing it to undermine the foundations of the Japanese way of thinking.

Japan has proven surprisingly open to fresh ideas. However, innovation alone would not be enough for a miracle. An equally important component of wakon yosai was the developed communal consciousness of the Japanese, which found its expression in the corporate spirit. The old and the new were most harmoniously combined in the brainchild of the famous Akio Morita - the Sony concern.

Morita became a legend during his lifetime. The founder of Sony had many roles: physicist, engineer, inventor, businessman, athlete (for 30 years, every Tuesday, at exactly 7.30 am, the cheerful and fit Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Corporation appeared on the court; and also scuba diving, windsurfing, water skis...).

Akio Morita was born on January 26, 1921 in Nagoya, into a family of respectable distillers. His ancestors made a living by making sake - rice vodka; therefore, Akio Morita’s parents hoped to eventually transfer the family business to him. Akio was the eldest son, and in Japan at that time almost all the children of merchants and entrepreneurs followed in the footsteps of their fathers. However, Akio did not want to study the ancient skill and brew sake, as all his relatives did up to and including the fifteenth generation. It was the 20th century, and the boy was interested in mathematics and physics. Oddly enough, the father approved of his son's decision and allowed him to follow his own path.

Masaru Ibuka was a physicist from head to toe. He was 13 years older than Morita. Already from his student years, he stood out from his fellow students, for which he received the nickname “genius-inventor.” When Morita joined Japan Precision Instrument Company, Ibuka was its CEO. The future founders of Sony quickly found a common language. Passion for technology was the meaning of life for both. They did not think about any revolutions, but simply did what brought them pleasure and money... with which problems soon arose.

After the end of the war, the Japan Precision Instrument Company lost the military orders that had kept it alive for the past few years. All employees lost their jobs overnight, and Ibuka lost his business. Akio Morita, in order to somehow earn some money, gets a job as a teacher at a university, and Ibuka goes to a small workshop for repairing electrical appliances. But for both, these decisions became a cage in which the bird could be imprisoned. They longed to invent, to create something of their own. And of course, make money from this, which a small repair shop and teaching at a university could not bring, which Morita lost quickly enough, since by law officers did not have the right to be teachers.

On May 7, 1946, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabusiki Kaisa was founded. authorized capital which amounted to $375 (Morita even borrowed a small amount from his parents). The company initially had 20 employees in total (all from Ibuki's previous project). However, the company's activities were not revolutionary. No inventions or discoveries at first. You just had to survive. The company's activities in this regard mainly consisted of the production of voltmeters, rice fryers and small electrical appliances.

The story of our company, Morita later wrote, is the story of a group of people striving to help Ibuka realize his dreams. Ibuka was too much of a dreamer for business; he did not fit into the well-established rhythm of work. Therefore, Morita, having taken over the management of the enterprise, entrusted the technical part of the work to his partner. The business tandem lasted for about half a century.

Ibuka was actively generating ideas. For example, I came up with an electric rice cooker, a kind of hybrid of a tub and an electric stove. It was possible to cook rice in it, but eating it later was not possible: it either burned or turned out undercooked.

However, it was on such units that the company’s philosophy was formed and honed, which was not to bring to life products that already existed on the market, but to produce completely new products.

The company's first major discovery took place in 1949, when Masaru Ibuka patented a magnetic tape for sound reproduction. A year later, the G-Type tape recorder was released, which, despite its wretchedness, became the basis for the company's future developments. The G-Type tape recorder had only two disadvantages. But they put an end to his future. It was heavy and expensive. The G-Type weighed 35 kilograms and cost $900. A total of 20 of these VCRs were produced. It was not possible to sell them until Akio Morito decided to appeal to the Supreme Court of Japan, making an offer to purchase these tape recorders in order to replace stenographers with them. The deal went through and 20 G-Types went to court (in two years a new version of the tape recorder will be released, weighing 13 kg). In the early 1950s, Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka acquired a license for the production of transistors from the American Western Electric (the price of the patent was 25 thousand dollars). This was a turning point in the company's history. In 54, the first transistor produced in the depths of Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabusiki Kaisa was released. After this, the first radio receiver developed not for military purposes comes out. The receiver was given the name TR-2 (by that time TR1 already existed, it was an unsuccessful receiver). This radio receiver began to be in quite high demand and soon Ibuka and Morita released a TV and VCR. These devices were also based on a transistor. In 1956, physicist and future Nobel Prize winner Reion Esaki joined the company and would contribute to the company's future successes.

This word was derived from the Latin sonus, which means sound. Another consonance was the English sonny, son. It seemed to emphasize that the company was run by young and energetic people. But in Japanese, sonny would mean losing money. When one letter was removed it became Sony. The word was easy to remember and pronounce, and was not tied to any known national language.

Expansion in the USA

In 1963, Sony listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. It was the first Japanese company to be listed on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). To achieve a stronger position in the American market, Akio Morita moved to the United States and soon moved his entire family there. Having settled in New York on fashionable Fifth Avenue, Morita temporarily became an American. Thus, he sought to understand the specifics of American business, the characteristics of the market, the traditions and character of Americans. The sociable and witty Japanese easily made acquaintances in the business circles of New York. He realized what his company lacked - openness. The traditional isolation and impenetrability of Japanese culture reduced the effectiveness of his management decisions. A new look at Western business, a view from the inside, allowed Morita to combine the experience of East and West, Japanese thoughtfulness, centralization and European openness in his policy.

In 1968, the first Trinitron color TV was made in Sony laboratories, then sales offices and enterprises were opened in the USA, Great Britain, and Germany. Factories and plants were built - in San Diego, Bridgend, the number of employees and employees grew (now Sony enterprises employ 173 thousand people).

Rock and roll era

Morita was a true workaholic and demanded the same dedication from his employees. At the same time, his range of interests was not limited to the affairs of the corporation: Morita loved painting and music, especially Beethoven, played sports and closely followed the successes of famous tennis players. Morita also wrote books, of which the most popular was his autobiography Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony (Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony, New York, 1988).

In the early 1960s, with the advent of rock and roll, young people began to listen to more music. Morita often watched his children listen to the Beatles, Little Richard and Elvis Presley from morning to evening. And not just teenagers: even Japanese adults now bought expensive stereo systems for cars and took large, heavy tape recorders with them on picnics or to the beach. And although the department of new technologies fundamentally did not want to release a tape recorder without a recording function, Morita insisted on his own. This is how the Walkman portable player appeared, a bestseller in the late 1970s. The combination of Sony Walkman did not seem very successful to the managers, and they came up with several variations of the name for Europe and America: Freestyle for the Swedes, Stowaway for the UK and Soundabout for the United States. However, the level of sales immediately fell - the trademark was no longer recognizable, and Morita again unified the name. The correctness of his decision was immediately confirmed by new growth in profits.

The first home video cassette recorder SL-6300

The first portable player TPS-L2

First CD prototype

Video camera BVM-1

The first CD player CDP-101

Portable CD player D-50

In 1982, Sony Corporation released the first compact disc to the market. The most familiar storage medium for people in the 1990s, the CD was originally intended only for recording sound transferred to digital format. The standard CD-ROM capacity of 640 MB was determined in a rather interesting way. Morita conducted a marketing study, during which it turned out that among potential CD-ROM buyers, the majority are fans of classical music, who are ready to fork out for a price that is not cheap for the sake of high fidelity. CD. And on the Japanese music market, among other classics, the absolute leader in sales is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the performance of which takes 73 and a half minutes. By converting 74 minutes of 16-bit stereo sound into bytes, Sony engineers obtained a capacity of 640MB.

In the late 1980s, Sony entered the world of show business and the film industry: in January 1988, the corporation acquired the recording studio CBS Records Inc., later transformed into Sony Music Entertainment. And most recently she bought the film studio Columbia Pictures, one of the largest film studios in America.

To completely become related to music, in 1988 Sony acquired the record company CBS Records Inc and renamed it Sony Music Entertainment. Today, this company is one of the largest recording companies in the world. A year later, Sony acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc., thereby adding its name to the film industry.

Then came the 90s - the time when Sony began to simply rivet technological innovations. Participation in the development of the DVD format, the creation of Blu-Ray, new TVs, the most popular series of Sony Vaio laptops, the Play Station and Play Station Portable game consoles, Memory Stick memory cards, a series of Cyber-Shot digital cameras, batteries for laptops, monitors, an entertainment organizer for called CLIE, a series of DVD players, camcorders and cam recorders, Bravia TVs, mobile phones produced jointly with Ericsson and much more. That's what Sony has done lately.

It should be noted that at the beginning of its existence, Sony was strikingly different from other Japanese companies, thereby giving them food for thought (and even changing the concept of Japanese business). The fact is that Sony hired people on a competitive basis, without considering their academic performance at the university or any connections in the company. This was strikingly different from the traditions accepted in Japan at that time, since 99% of companies hired people who were somehow familiar with the president to leadership positions. Sony has made the hiring process impartial. They say that for many years Akio Morita personally talked with the candidates. This practice will subsequently be adopted by other Japanese companies.

Philosophy of success

Revolutionary developments have become a Sony trademark. The company created the first transistor television (1959), the first liquid crystal television (1962), the first VCR (1964), etc.

Success is achieved along untrodden paths, Morita liked to say. It was this principle that he based the philosophy of his company.

For a Japanese manager, a company is not a passive object of management, but something organically whole, a living organism endowed with a soul. For it to live, it is not enough just to design it and assemble it from individual cubes. It needs to be raised. And the source of a company’s development is its soul, in other words, its philosophy, system of values and beliefs. The notorious hymns, program speeches of leaders and wall propaganda are nothing more than the most figurative and capacious expression of the mission, ideals and raison d'être of the enterprise.

Thousands of employees united in a single impulse of work with the help of simple spells. Their authors knew better than anyone the national weaknesses of their compatriots.

First of all, a sense of duty to the team, almost identical to a feeling of shame: the Japanese are psychologically uncomfortable, ashamed not to do what others do - not to stay after work, not to help their comrades.

The Japanese's heightened sense of gratitude was also exploited. Thus, a Japanese person who gets a job feels indebted to his employer for the rest of his life and pays off the debt with his labor. This makes it clear why the lifelong employment system was able to establish itself in Japan.

Founders

Morita was remembered by the public as a born businessman. While Ibuka preferred invention and work in the laboratory to everything else, Akio dealt with management issues. And he dealt with them perfectly. At the same time, he wrote two books. The first was called “Meaningless School Achievements.” In it, the author explained why successful studies at school do not in any way affect a person’s future achievements in life, and in particular in business (in general, Akio was an ardent opponent of the idea that success depends on successful studies at school and in college). Morita's second book was the famous “Made in Japan” - the history of the Sony Corporation. This book was published in the late 80s, but is still being republished today.

Akio Morita received many awards during his life. He is the first Japanese person to receive the OBE medal. In addition, he was awarded the honorary title of recipient of the National Order of the Legion of Honor, and also received the Order of the Holy Treasure, First Class, from the Emperor of Japan. Akio Morita was a workaholic, devoting himself completely to work. In addition, he demanded the same from his subordinates. True, it is worth noting that Morita did not ignore other aspects of life at all. So, he was a fairly active tennis player, loved skiing and scuba diving. The West loved Morita. It was he who found the way to the hearts of Americans and Europeans for Sony.

Masaru Ibuka is less famous outside of Japan. The reason for this was that he was engaged in scientific development of new products for the company and tried not to be in sight all the time, like Morita. A clear division of responsibilities among company leaders has largely become one of the key factors for successful management at Sony. But don’t think that Ibuka dealt only with technical issues. For example, it was he who drew up the famous company charter, which is still observed today: “We will never receive income through dishonest means. We will focus on producing sophisticated devices that benefit society. We will not divide our products into mechanical and electronic, but we will try to apply our knowledge and experience in both areas simultaneously. We will provide complete independence to those enterprises that will cooperate with us, and we will try to strengthen and develop relationships with them. We will select employees based on their abilities and personal qualities. There will be no formal positions in our company. We will pay our employees bonuses proportional to the income generated by their activities and will make every effort to provide them with a decent living." Masaru Ibuka would have turned 100 years old this year.

home » Earn money online » Sony follows this in its work. Case "Organizational structure of SONY Corporation." Golden period of the corporation