Akio Morita Quotes
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A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.
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We tell our young managers: 'Don't be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don't make the same mistake twice'.
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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.
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...if you are nothing but profit-conscious, you cannot see the opportunities ahead.
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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.
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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.
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The most important mission for a Japanese manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees, to create a familylike feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate.
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I believe people work for satisfaction.
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Of course we have to make a profit, but we have to make a profit over the long haul, not just the short term, and that means we must keep investing in research and development - it has run consistently about 6 percent of sales at Sony - and in service.
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Advertising and promotion alone will not sustain a bad product or a product that is not right for the times.
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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.
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More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.
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..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.
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...the remarkable thing about management is that a manager can go on for years making mistakes that nobody is aware of, which means that management can be a kind of a con job.
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We want to keep the company healthy and its employees happy, and we want to keep them on the job and productive.
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...I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.
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My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target. The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States.
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'While the United States has been busy creating lawyers, we have been busier creating engineers.' '
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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.
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...if you have so many lawyers, they have to find business, which sometimes they have to create. Sometimes nonsensical lawsuits are generated by lawyers. In this country (the United States everybody sues everybody.
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'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.'
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In all my years in business I can recall very few people I have wanted to fire for making mistakes.
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To gain profit is important, but you must invest to build up assets that you can cash in in the future.