Akio Morita, every mention
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every year anyone David Rosenthal 56Ben Gilbert 24Michael Ovitz 10David Senra 3
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Akio Morita comes up
Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) · Acquired
- ▶ 25:43 David Rosenthal It's an Akio Morita idea.
- ▶ 1:43:31 David Senra I will, I say, like, Akio Morita, and then he's like, Akio Morita.
- ▶ 1:43:43 David Senra So he did the same thing that Akio did, you know, like they, they were struggling in the early days of Sony.
- ▶ 1:43:53 David Senra And Akio's like, we have no money.
Qualcomm · Acquired
- ▶ 1:28:43 David Rosenthal Our friends Sony, I guess, uh, Akio Morita was running it.
Walmart · Acquired
- ▶ 0:57 Ben Gilbert When we did our Sony episode, we discovered that many Steve Jobs-isms really started as Accio Morita-isms.
The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories · Acquired
- ▶ 8:29 David Rosenthal So, the person on the left is Akio Morita, and the person on the right is Masaru Ibuka, and they were the co-founders of the Sony Corporation, and, ah, we told this story in about three hours, ah, earlier this year on Acquired.
- ▶ 10:51 David Rosenthal These two men and Sony changed the course of Japanese history, changed the course of world history, and, um, again, we talked about this on the episode, but, uh, Steve Jobs was, was mentioned earlier tonight, Akio Morita was the…
- ▶ 11:13 David Rosenthal It was an Apple keynote after Morita passed away where he did a tribute to him.
- ▶ 11:17 David Rosenthal And I think, uh, you know, no Morita, no Sony, no iPhone.
SONY (75 years of electronics history in 3 hours) · Acquired
- ▶ 9:05 Ben Gilbert Listeners, David and I both read a couple books to prep for this, but one of them is the excellent Made in Japan co-written by Akio Morita himself, who we're about to introduce here.
- ▶ 10:14 David Rosenthal So you referenced Akio Morita.
- ▶ 10:37 David Rosenthal I can't remember if it was Marita or somebody else in one of the books I was reading lovingly referred to him as a dreamer.
- ▶ 10:43 Ben Gilbert Yeah, it's so right that Morita, while he does have a physics background, and he's definitely a engineer, it is right to say that Ibuka is the engineer's engineer, and Akio has much more of a sort of marketing sensibility, and while he…
- ▶ 11:02 David Rosenthal You might say that Ibuka is like the Waz, and Akio and Morita is like the Jobs.
- ▶ 13:23 David Rosenthal The other engineer, of course, is Akio Morita.
- ▶ 14:49 David Rosenthal And so Akio is, he's destined, like he's born into this, that he's gonna take over the sake business.
- ▶ 14:57 Ben Gilbert And of course, it's always a little bit of a point of tension with the family where Akio is taking apart radios and like building stuff, and everyone's sort of looking at him like, boy, you sure are interested in physics for someone who is…
- ▶ 15:30 David Rosenthal But unlike his father, you know, Aki is growing up in the twenties and thirties.
- ▶ 15:38 David Rosenthal They're getting American radios for Marita.
- ▶ 16:10 David Rosenthal So, and Marita goes off to study physics and engineering instead of going right into the family business.
- ▶ 16:27 David Rosenthal Because when Pearl Harbor happens in 1941, Akio is 20 years old.
- ▶ 16:58 Ben Gilbert I think they even say either in the Sony book by John Nathan or in Akio Morita's book that his younger brothers were actively sort of training to be kamikaze pilots like that would have been his future.
- ▶ 17:14 David Rosenthal Yes, there is still quite a high price though that Morita has to pay for landing in this relatively plumb and safe assignment.
- ▶ 17:52 David Rosenthal The reaction that Marita has, he writes this, this is literally the opening
- ▶ 21:41 David Rosenthal So Morita goes back home to Nagoya.
- ▶ 22:00 David Rosenthal He's like, and you know, I think part of his vision, Marita would contribute to this too, but I think Ibuka really saw a huge opportunity after the war in that all this technology that had been focused on military and industrial use, but…
- ▶ 25:08 David Rosenthal Who reads this article, but Akio Morita who's back home in Nagoya, he reads it and he's like, Ibuka, he's created a company.
- ▶ 25:41 David Rosenthal But the bigger problem was, it's pretty unclear what the status of, uh, Marita's, um, obligations are at this point in time.
- ▶ 26:12 Ben Gilbert So even though Akio's like, hey, remember when it was sort of you
- ▶ 26:32 Ben Gilbert They're thick as thieves, you know, forever after this, but it is sort of interesting to me that Akiyo Morita was not one of the first 15, 20 people at the company.
- ▶ 26:53 David Rosenthal Thought about Merida, but once Merida writes him, he's like,
- ▶ 27:24 David Rosenthal Okay, so what does Marina do?
- ▶ 28:31 David Rosenthal The strategy works for Marita.
- ▶ 28:49 David Rosenthal Marita and Abuka, they want to join up.
- ▶ 29:20 Ben Gilbert You can tell that this is very important to Ibuka because Ibuka goes to the family dinner with Akio.
- ▶ 29:34 David Rosenthal Akio's father's blessing for him to become partners with Ibuka in this new venture.
- ▶ 31:33 David Rosenthal So Ibuka comes back and is like, Akio, well, I've seen the future.
- ▶ 31:39 David Rosenthal And Marita understands a little bit about these business dynamics.
- ▶ 32:24 David Rosenthal So, through some of the family connections, both from Morita and Ibuka's father-in-law had been a minister in the government before the war, they start making these tape recorders, and there are all sorts of stories about how they do it,…
- ▶ 34:42 David Rosenthal In 1952, Ibuka hears that the world famous renowned institution that everybody respects, and especially nobody more than Ibuka and Morita
- ▶ 36:29 David Rosenthal And Marita's like, okay.
- ▶ 36:30 David Rosenthal So Marita goes off to New York.
- ▶ 36:54 David Rosenthal And Ibuka and Radar are like, we're going to make miniature radios with the transistor.
- ▶ 37:16 Ben Gilbert And Ibuka and, and Marita are like, uh, well, no, the hearing aid market in Japan will not be a viable one for us.
- ▶ 41:46 David Rosenthal So he and Marita really want this to be the narrative.
- ▶ 43:01 David Rosenthal So Marita comes back over to the U S and starts talking with distributors about, Hey, we've got this amazing
- ▶ 43:47 Ben Gilbert Marita's like, am I, sorry, what, how, how many we, what, uh, uh, how on earth are we gonna make that many?
- ▶ 44:12 David Rosenthal We want to put our brand name on it, and I think Marita would later say that this was the single, like, biggest and best business decision of his career.
- ▶ 45:41 David Rosenthal So ultimately what that leads to is a couple of years later, Marita and Sony decide we need to establish our own corporation in America so that we don't have to work with distributors.
- ▶ 45:59 David Rosenthal So they start the Sony Corporation of America in 1960 and Marita actually moves to New York City.
- ▶ 47:40 Ben Gilbert I think the most telling quote of all is when Akio Morita passes away many, many years later in 1999, I believe, somewhere around there.
- ▶ 48:10 Ben Gilbert No, the state that Japan was in when they started Sony and how massive and impressive and successful they grew it to over the course of Akio's whole life.
- ▶ 51:08 David Rosenthal Marita hears about this and hears that a CBS executive named Harvey Shine is over to handle this matter for CBS.
- ▶ 51:40 David Rosenthal Marita is true to his word.
- ▶ 53:03 David Rosenthal Now, the other smart thing he does, which probably has a lot to do with CBS Sony records success is Marita puts his young protege in charge of running it in Japan.
- ▶ 53:25 David Rosenthal Who would succeed Morita as CEO of Sony.
- ▶ 53:29 David Rosenthal So Oga, he was not a founder of Sony, but Ibuka, Morita, and Oga were really the triumvirate for a long time.
- ▶ 54:04 David Rosenthal And that led to Marita saying like, Hey, this guy is like incredibly talented at business and engineering and products.
- ▶ 58:24 David Rosenthal Marita and Ibuka get together and they're like, you know,
- ▶ 1:04:23 David Rosenthal And so Marita is, he's pumped about this.
- ▶ 1:11:22 Ben Gilbert This is Marita's folly.
- ▶ 1:12:19 Ben Gilbert And you have Marita going, no, it's going to be low power because we're going to make these amazing low power headphones.
- ▶ 1:12:28 Ben Gilbert This was a consumer behavior that did not exist in the world that Akiyo Merida just said, everybody, trust me, let's invest in this and like completely changed human history forever and the way that humans walk around out in the world.
- ▶ 1:12:44 David Rosenthal And amazing that it was Merida who did like, this is the kind of stuff that Ibuka usually does.
- ▶ 1:12:50 David Rosenthal The sentiment on the board and in the company against Merida, Merida at this point is
- ▶ 1:13:15 Ben Gilbert But it is one of these things, the way Marita phrases it in the book is this quote that is Steve Jobs before Steve Jobs, and I think I'm gonna make that .11 times in this episode because it's not that Steve Jobs is a ripoff of Akio Marita,…
- ▶ 1:13:45 Ben Gilbert Are actually Akio's version of them.
- ▶ 1:14:16 Ben Gilbert These are all Marina isms.
- ▶ 1:15:17 Ben Gilbert And I think Scully even met right around this time, Scully and Steve, with Akio Morita, and he says, I remember Morita gave Steve and me one of the first Sony Walkmans.
- ▶ 1:15:43 Ben Gilbert And this whole thing comes totally full circle when Merida eventually passes away.
- ▶ 1:15:49 Ben Gilbert Steve Jobs in 99 is giving the Macworld keynote, and he starts the keynote by putting up a picture of Akio Merida, who they used in the Think Different campaign, and says, and this is a quote from Steve on stage, while he was leading Sony,…
- ▶ 1:16:21 David Rosenthal I didn't realize they used Marita in the think different campaign.
- ▶ 1:22:40 David Rosenthal The reason this comes about is that in one of Marita's trips pretty early, I think trips through the U S he goes to Chicago and he notices the Prudential building and the Prudential building is very, very impressive building on the skyline…
- ▶ 1:22:58 David Rosenthal And so he asks somebody, oh, what, what building is that?
- ▶ 1:23:04 David Rosenthal And Marita supposedly thinks to himself,
- ▶ 1:30:53 David Rosenthal Basically, Marita is like, we're good for any price.
- ▶ 1:33:30 Ben Gilbert Marita and Oga are pretty convinced that to continue being a successful growing electronics company, they need to own the content that ends up on those devices, or at least have some leverage and ability to design more custom experiences…
- ▶ 1:35:02 David Rosenthal Supposedly the real driving factor behind it was Betamax that Morita felt like that was such a defeat for the company and like a point where they realized they had no leverage in this industry and they felt that
- ▶ 1:39:19 David Rosenthal You know, the original triumvirate of, uh, so Marita has a stroke in 1993 that leaves him pretty incapacitated.
- ▶ 2:35:38 David Rosenthal Like what would Ibuka and Morita be thinking about the current state of the company?
- ▶ 2:43:57 Ben Gilbert Cause famously, Akio Morita's goal with Sony was to transform made in Japan on a product from, oh, this is of low quality to, oh, this is of high quality.
- ▶ 2:44:26 Ben Gilbert I'm certain that's very high quality and durable, and I felt that way about Sony a lot, so sort of mission accomplished for Marita and, and friends.
CAA (with Michael Ovitz) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:24:20 Michael Ovitz And I got involved in the sale of CBS records to Sony and built a relationship with Noria Oga, who was the number two at Sony, who ultimately introduced me to Akio Morita.
- ▶ 1:24:37 Michael Ovitz And I became Morita's and Oga's consultant.
- ▶ 1:24:41 Michael Ovitz We sold, we consulted on the sale of CBS records, and then Mr.
- ▶ 1:25:09 Michael Ovitz So he wanted to own a studio, so I started calling different entities that I thought made sense and brought Morita into meetings, and the first entity I called was Kirk Kerkorian, who owned MGM, and I had a meeting at my home one morning,…
- ▶ 1:25:43 Michael Ovitz And Mr.
- ▶ 1:25:56 Michael Ovitz And halfway into the meeting, Morita opened the box and he pulled it out.
- ▶ 1:26:11 Michael Ovitz And Kirk was blown away by the fact that when Morita would take video of us in the room with natural light and play it back through our TV set, Kirk went nuts.
- ▶ 1:26:31 Michael Ovitz So Morita just kept talking, and then Kirk said, how do you wanna, how would you pay for this?
- ▶ 1:26:42 Michael Ovitz And, uh, Morita said, you know, we would finance it through Sony, and we have the cash, and et cetera, et cetera.
- ▶ 1:27:01 Michael Ovitz Morita packed it up, put it under his arm, and left.