My name is Evan Carmichael and I believe that the fastest and most effective way to build a business is to model the strategies of people who have already successfully accomplished what you’re trying to do. I call it Modeling the Masters. My last post was: Top 3 Lessons from Simon Fuller (American Idol Founder)

Today I’m going to focus on how you can model the success of Akio Morita, the man who took a small bombed-out department store in Tokyo and turned into the world's most successful consumer electronics company, Sony.

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“It had to be something different, something that nobody else was making." - Akio Morita

Akio Morita (January 26, 1921 - October 3, 1999) was a Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony Corporation along with Masaru Ibuka. Ibuka was 38 years old and Morita was 25 when they started the company.

Founded just after World War II and based in Nagoya, Japan, the company was established with initial capital of just $350 in a bombed-out shop that had been abandoned. Japan at the time was known for making low quality products and Morita was determined to reverse that stigma. He is often cited as the man who increased the value of the words "Made in Japan."

Supported by innovative product launches like the Walkman, Sony became the first Japanese company to ever be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has revenues in the trillions of dollars.

Morita helped put his country back on the map, while building his own reputation across the world. In 1998, a Harris survey revealed that Sony was ranked the number one brand name by American consumers, ahead of Coca-Cola and General Electric.

Action Item #1: Trust Your Gut

There's never enough information to make a decision that you can be 100% sure of. By the time the information becomes fully available it will be too late - either someone else would have scooped the idea from you or the window of opportunity will have closed. As entrepreneurs we have to trust our gut when making decisions using the best information that we have available.

In 1978 Sony developed a prototype portable product that would allow people to listen to cassette tapes while they were on long flights. The project was put on hold as market research indicated that no consumer would buy a tape recorder that did not have the capacity to record and that earphones would hold the product back as they were seen to be irritating and potentially associated with hearing loss.

Despite the advice given to him by his marketing department, Morita chose instead to trust his gut. He told Sony staff that they were going to create a worldwide culture of headphone wearers and in 1979 Sony released the Walkman. It went on to sell over 330 million units. Morita then gave the following advice for business owners: “Carefully watch how people live, get an intuitive sense as to what they might want and then go with it. Don’t do market research.”

Action Item #2: Find A Good Company Name and Product Name

The names you choose for your company and products are what people remember you by. If they're too hard to pronounce, difficult to spell, or not easy to recall then you lose out on the opportunity of having customers talk about you to their friends and coming back as repeat buyers.

Sony's original company name was Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha. Long and difficult to remember in English, the company decided it would need to change its name to better serve the North American market. Trying to find a new name, Morita found that ‘sonus’ is the Latin word for sound. He thought its meaning was appropriate considering their industry. However, he didn't think that it was catchy enough. Morita decided to combine ‘sonus’ with ‘Sonny,’ a nickname that had become popular amongst American kids. Morita thought ‘Sonny’ would help portray the image of the company as a youthful one, with lots of energy and a bright future ahead. With that, the Sony Corporation was formed.

Similarly, when Sony first released the Walkman, Sony’s U.S. division considered the name ‘Walkman’ to be improper English, and changed the product to the ‘Soundabout’ for the American market. Other divisions also began using different names until Morita put his foot down and insisted that everyone use the same name. "Walkman" became such a success that it's listed as a word in almost every major dictionary.

Action Item #3: Look After Your People

If you're building a company beyond yourself you'll quickly realize how important it is to have the right people in place and to look after them. Money is important to them but don't forget that people want to feel appreciated, challenged, and be a part of a team that's working on important problems. Here's Akio Morita's advice:

“The most important mission for a manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees, to create a family-like feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate. We will try to create conditions where persons could come together in a spirit of teamwork, and exercise to their heart’s desire their technological capacity.”

“I believe people work for satisfaction. 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.”

True Story

Akio Morita was born into a family that had been in the sake brewing business for over fifteen generations. From his childhood, it had always been assumed that Morita would continue the family tradition of making sake. He had begun being groomed to take over the family business by the age of ten, at which time his father even made him attend all of the company’s board meetings. In just a few years, Morita had become an expert at everything from monitoring the brewing process, to evaluating the quality of the sake that their factories were producing, to managing their workers.

But, while Morita was learning the ins and outs of the family business, so too did he discover that his true interest was not in sake after all. Morita realized that he was not destined to keep the family tradition alive, much to the disappointment of his father, and followed his true passion for mathematics and physics which led him to founding Sony.

Have you had to trust your gut to make an important business decision? How did you come up with your company or product name? What part of Akio Morita's message impacted you the most? As always, I’ve love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!

Evan Carmichael

To learn more check out my list of Akio Morita articles or my website, EvanCarmichael.com.