While Sony forges ahead with products such as the phone/wallet pictured
here, many feel their core electronics business has suffered and
question recent changes in leadership. |
Sony has decided to present a completely revamped face with its first
foreign CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and its unheralded stolid technician
of a president. It is common knowledge that they long ago ceased to come up
with attractive products in their core electronics business, and have been
clinging on with the profits from game consoles and movie software. Sony
goods have long had a place in Japanese households. In my own house it
started with one of those tape recorders with a vacuum tube amp. There is so
much general interest in Sony and, even though share prices may have risen,
when I looked around the blogging world I found that many people were
voicing fears about whether the management really can weather this crisis.
The business weblog 'Thoughts on management changes at Sony', which
maintains that "Sony's roots lie in making things", offers the following
thoughts upon reading a recent interview with the next chairman, Howard
Stringer: "By seeking to protect its image and brand as a cool entertainment
business, and minimizing the importance of making things, Sony may well lose
its strengths even more." It also contrasts Sony with Apple, revitalized by
its 'only one' production.
The US media also seem to see Sony's "true mainstay" as "making things".
'Made in Japan', by a woman studying journalism in the US, introduces the
conclusion of an editorial in The Financial Times: "If the company is to
rise again, it must avoid being sidetracked by ill-conceived diversification
and rediscover its inventive roots."
One favorable evaluation is given by a blog which deals with game console
topics, 'American corporate leadership's comeback strategy for Sony under
Stringer.' "It is not that the hardware is not selling because it is not
attractive. It is rather the opposite; the paucity of the software and
service system, which should underpin the hardware, is gravely damaging the
appeal of the hardware itself." The reason for losing to Apple's iPod is
also that the market backed away from Sony's insistence on its own music
compression and playback standards. "Sony must create its own good
circulation model for hardware, software and the service system, in other
words, their convergence strategy." "It is significant for Sony that
Stringer is based in the US and not in Tokyo. This is because the
convergence strategy upon which Sony's fortunes depend is being driven
entirely by US corporations."
I was very struck by the words of the new president, Ryoji Chubachi:
"Sony products at the moment do not draw much attention from the consumers.
We must return to the starting point of just what are the needs of the
consumers." This is strangely just too obvious. Are these words appropriate
for the next president of Sony? I cannot help but recall Akio Morita, the
founder of Sony and a man who literally took on the world.
'Sony-ne-e', written by a musician, has this to say. "What Sony has
definitely lost is nothing other than 'culture'. Simply put, Nobuyuki Idei,
the CEO, does not like music, or movies and film, as much as Morita did, and
he doesn't know about creativity or what excites people." I remember that
the previous president, Norio Ohga, who had been a vocalist, had the intent
to make exciting products.
While I was surfing the Net, a description I had read in a Time feature,
'The Most Influential Asians of the Century', sprang to mind. John Nathan
(the Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara) wrote the following anecdote. The memory of
Morita's brightness survives as part of his legacy to Sony. When Nathan
asked Ohga why he had selected Idei, Ohga replied, "The leader of Sony must
have radiance". Idei shone for a while after his appointment in 1995. The
grave misgivings about the Sony revolution this time round stem from the
total lack of radiance on the part of Stringer and the Chubachi system.
Notes: The original Time feature on Akio Morita can be found at
http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/morita1.html
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