Quotes from Akio Morita

Curiosity is the key to creativity.

If we do our best and make efforts, a peaceful and great future will become ours without fail. Whether we succeed or not depends on the strength of our resolve and the amount of our endeavor.

We treat employees as a member of the family. If management take the risk of hiring them, we have to take the responsibility for them.

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.

No matter how good or successful you are or how clever or crafty, your business and its future are in the hands of the people you hire. To put it a bit more dramatically, the fate of your business is actually in the hands of the youngest recruit on the staff.

curiosity is the key to creativity

By then the trade problems between Japan and the United States were a central topic of conservation. In fact, many nasty things were being said about Japan in the United States because of the bilateral trade imbalance between Japan and the U.S. Some people were accusing Japan of sending a torrent of merchandise to the U.S., which was forcing Americans out of jobs.

I have always believed that a trademark is the life of an enterprise and that it must be protected boldly. A trademark and a company name are not just clever gimmicks-they carry responsibility and guarantee the quality of the product. If someone tries to get a free ride on the reputation and the ability of another who has worked to build up public trust, it is nothing short of thievery. We were not flattered by this theft of our name.

If you go through life convinced that your way is always best, all the new ideas in the world will pass you by.

There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies.

There are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business.

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.

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.

Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want.

I often say to my assistants, "Never trust anybody," but what I mean is that you should never trust someone else to do a job exactly the way you would want it done.

Don't be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don't make the same mistake twice.

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

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

Japanese attitudes toward work seem to be critically different from American attitudes.

I believe people work for satisfaction.

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

(Japanese Government believes that if you have a big laboratory with all the latest equipment and good funding it will automatically lead to creativity. It doesn't work that way.

Japanese people tend to be much better adjusted to the notion of work, any kind of work, as honorable.

The public does not know what is possible. We do.