Not for Bread Alone: A Business Ethos, a Management Ethic
by 松下幸之助 · 14 Jun 1984
FOR A Business Ethos, A Management Ethic Konosuke Matsushita The author is founder, and presently executive advisor, of Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, Ltd. KONOSUKE MATSUSHITA was born in 1894. the youngest of eight children of a fa rm er. Undeterred by chronic illness and meager funds, he started his business
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in the world. This volume, containing his observations and insights over the years, is testimony to the quality of experience that has helped make Mr. Matsushita the manager par excellence in Japanese, and world, industry. He says: "Eighty years have passed since I became an apprentice at the age of
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-569-21089-9 C0034 ~1800E USS8.25 Printed in Japan A Business Ethos, A Management Ethic Konosuke Matsushita PHP INSTITUTE, INC. Kyoto, Tokyo, Japan This book is based on selections from four books in Japanese by Konosuke Matsushita published by PHP Institute, Inc.: Shobai kokoroe-cho (1973), Keiei kokoroe-cho (1974), Ketsudan no
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time and skillful work to its preparation. The fust draft translation was done by Eisaku Onishi, former deputy director of the Overseas Operations Divisions of Matsushita Electric, who served for many years as my official interpreter, and it was edited by Erika Young. The fust draft was checked and the
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is eternal for those Who are full of faith and hope And greet the challenges of each new day With courage and conftdence. KONOSUKE MATSUSHITA May 1984 16 Introduction Konosuke Matsushita was born November 27, 1894, the third son and youngest of eight children of Masakusu, a rice farmer, and his wife Tokue,
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was a member of the local assembly and was employed for a time in the village government offICes. The Matsushita family held lands passed down for generations and was quite well off, and Konosuke's early childhood was happy and carefree. But in 1899, the family went through a profound crisis. The
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brothers died, and Masakusu, unable to lead his family out of destitution himself, pinned his hopes on Konosuke, who 17 NOT FOR BREAD ALONE became the Matsushita heir at the age of four. At nine, Konosuke left primary school and went alone to live in Osaka, where he became an apprentice in a
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style buildings arose one after another along the streets, and electric streetcars packed with people clanked along the main thoroughfares. Watching the streetcars, the young Matsushita found himself fascinated by the world of electricity. He made up his mind at that point to devote his career to the promising new electric
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insulating plates that came in at the end of the year, his venture turned its first profit. The following year, on March 7, 1918, the Matsushita Electric Appliance Factory was officially launched, with himself as proprietor and his wife Mumeno, and brother-inlaw, Toshio Iue, then just fIfteen (he later
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founded Sanyo Electric Company), as employees. Matsushita continued to produce the insulating plates for electric fans, and also began work on an adaptor plug for household use. In the early days of
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electricity, households were typically equipped with only a single electric outlet placed in the ceiling of the main room. Matsushita accurately foresaw the demand for his design, which allowed each household to use two electric appliances simultaneously. Then, when his next project-a shell-type
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entrepreneurship. In the bleak years following World War I, for 19 NOT FOR BREAD ALONE example, when credit was tight and most companies were retrenching, Konosuke Matsushita decided to build a new factory. This bold step served to motivate and inspire his employees, resulting in unexpected growth in production. This was a
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case of what Matsushita calls "positive management;' but he was especially innovative in his management strategy. In 1925, he registered the brand name "National;' and two years later
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sample units to retail stores. This novel approach not only succeeded, but established the National reputation for quality. (Today Matsushita Electric products are also known by the names Panasonic, Technics and Qyasar.) Konosuke Matsushita later recounted how he hit upon the name National, as follows: I was looking for a suitable name for
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something of the people. In those days, large, well-established companies considered brand names other than their own unnecessary in selling their 20 Introduction products. Matsushita was ahead of his times. He was convinced that he had an economical and convenient product in his flashlight, and he was confident that it
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and demand grew quickly enough that the price was reduced several times; in no time the National flashlight had indeed become a household item. Matsushita says that he learned the trick of broadening demand through mass production and reducing the price from reading the biography of the American pioneer in
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more and more people to own one, and gradually expand his enterprise ... He provided the means for the rapid development and popularization of the automobile. Matsushita Electric's enterprise expanded to include wiring fixtures, bicycle lamps, electric heating devices, radios, dry-cell batteries, and many others. Each new product soon
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began to reach the mass market, reaffuming Matsushita's view that responsibility to society was the core of sound business procedures. On May 5, 1932 he called all his employees together and spoke
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-five year phase coincided with their own careers. He also annOlmced that May 5, 1932 would thereafter be celebrated as the most memorable day for Matsushita Electric, since it represented the beginning of its corporate mission in society. Thus, even though the company was actually founded on March 7, 1918,
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1984, the company is in the third phase of its advance toward fulftllment of the collective mISSIon. Since 1932, the company has achieved remarkable maturity. Konosuke Matsushita has sought to strengthen the sense of mission among his staff and make that attitude a creative, per22 Introduction manent element in the company ethos
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These seven principles remain today, as they have been since that time, the basic watchwords for the daily work of tens of thousands of Matsushita Electric employees. Konosuke Matsushita's thought as a businessman developed in the form of new and concrete principles and approaches. In 1933, he divided the company into three
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with the most diffiCult dilemmas since its founding. The day after Japan's surrender, 23 NOT FOR BREAD ALONE Konosuke Matsushita gathered his executive staff together, and announced his plans for the reconstruction of the company. Production, he declared, would provide the base for national rehabilitation,
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the huge industrial concerns, the zaibatsu which had dominated the Japanese economy since the prewar period. Along with the rest of Japan's large companies, Matsushita Electric was included at fIrSt among the targets of this policy (since it was not a zaibatsu, it was later exempted). All the directors
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of the company under Matsushita were purged, company assets were temporarily frozen, and all manner of problems arose, but with the united efforts of all employees, the company managed
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industrial corporations listed by Fortune magazine in its August 1983 Issue. As he strove to rebuild his business from the destruction wrought by the war, Konosuke Matsushita looked around him at the chaos into which Japanese society had fallen. He began to study how mankind could free itself from pain and suffering
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are to train and nurture potential leaders for the future capable of resolving the many problems facing Japan. Three years later, in May 1983, Matsushita launched a unique new project called the Kyoto Colloquium on Global Change. It is designed to consider the ideal patterns of society and life in
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gauge the indicators, we should be able to make a close estimate of our daily sales just on intuition. At that time, 90 percent of Matsushita Electric's sales could be estimated in that way, while the remaining 10 percent required more precise calculations. Today, of course, we need more
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become chairman of the board, a young news reporter gathering material for an article asked to see me. He opened with a curious question. "Mr. Matsushita:' he said, "your company has grown so incredibly quickly; what, III your opinion, is the secret of such successful growth?" 110 The Ideal Manager
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wise to avoid risks as much as possible. But occasions do arise when a risk is justifIed, indeed, demanded by the circumstances. In March 1923, Matsushita Electric started manufacturing battery-powered bicycle lamps. There were three types of bicycle lamps in use then: candle lamp, acetylene gas lamps, and another type
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let you give more time to your own business." Takeyama was reluctant to leave, however, and so I proposed that he become an employee of Matsushita Electric. I was pleased that he accepted. The electrothermal department recovered, and we added new items-electric heaters and kotatsu (electric footwarmers) among them-
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begin to go wrong. It is very important to consider the interests of other people, but that is easier said than done. In 1930, Matsushita Electric started selling radios, which were gaining popularity in Japan. Radios in those days were plagued with all kinds of faults, and nothing irritated me
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excited I became. I had discovered my purpose in life. At that juncture I became determined to pursue it positively. I realized then that Matsushita Electric's mission lies in manufacturing commodities that contribute to a better life, commodities in such abundance and so reasonable that no one can say
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had happened to me, that my whole outlook had crystallized into a clear objective. To commemorate the occasion, I declared it the founding day of Matsushita Electric and had a special ceremony performed. After my speech, many of the staff came up to the podium to offer their enthusiastic support.
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our potential solvency. I suppose it was like a man acknowledging his crimes when humility is demanded to palliate the judges. People were implying that Matsushita Electric was indiscreet and arrogant, and I admitted as much in the announcement, which I thought was necessary to answer public criticism. Still, the
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planning departments had grown larger; and new factories and sales offICes were in the planning stage. To handle all the operations such growth required, Matsushita Electric adopted a new management structure that allowed me to delegate a lot of work to my staff. Actually the company was still small enough
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least, management lost its exclusive decision-making power. Since most company presidents did not attend the inaugural ceremonies of their union, my presence at the Matsushita Labor Union's inauguration surprised people. I had wanted to be there, because I felt a strong bond between my employees and me, and
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the country to push unionization and had been present at numerous inaugural meetings, but he had never found any top management representatives in attendance. ''At Matsushita Electric:' he continued, "I thought it was remarkable that the president himself was there to express his support of the union and to congratulate its
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benefIt society as a whole, which gives it a very high value indeed. Yet often this important asset is not correctly assessed. In October 1952 Matsushita Electric entered into a technical cooperation agreement with the Dutch company N. V. Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken, and in December that year we set up an affIliated
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company, Matsushita Electronics Corporation. These events culminated long search in the United States and Europe to fmd the most suitable partner in our new venture. I considered
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are there exceptional students and mediocre ones. Philips was asking for a higher royalty because its management considered the company a good teacher, but in Matsushita Electric's case, they had failed to consider the ability of the student. At our next meeting, I informed them that, "If you enter
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on a lower rate for technical expertise and management know-how.. The negotiations with Philips fully awakened me to the hidden value of managerial expertise. Matsushita Electronics Corporation did very well, and Philips was satisfIed; our joint venture eventually surpassed the achievement of all its other affIliated companies. 151 15.
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If the imported products were better and cheaper, we would lose our customers. Our industry, like the others, faced ruin if we could not compete. Matsushita Electric already had tough competition from other Japanese fIrms, but now we were faced with competition from many foreign companies. To meet it successfully meant
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that we had to fully automate Matsushita's production facilities, as well as raise the effIciency of its factories. When I tried to pinpoint the key factor in becoming in152 Five-
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1960, American per capita productivity was more than twice that of Japan, and the American economy was still growing steadily. I knew that only when Matsushita Electric could perform at that level of productivity would we be able to compete effectively worldwide. At the January 1960 annual meeting to discuss management
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thoughts and seek the means to recoup. Our guests spoke fust. Many complained about large losses and blamed their fmancial plight on poor leadership by Matsushita Electric. "1 inherited the business from my father;' said one company president, "but recently 1 have been steadily 155 NOT FOR BREAD ALONE in
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future while we deal with the present. In January 1977, Mr. Toshihiko Yamashita, then one of the youngest directors, took offlCe as president of Matsushita Electric. This was an appointment that symbolized our vision of the twenty-fIrSt century. Over the years, my thoughts have shifted more and more to
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would raise eyebrows, but the old selection method was no longer adequate. We were on the threshold of a new, drastically changing era, in which Matsushita Electric should take a certain lead. It was appropriate, therefore, to follow an entirely new selection system that allowed consideration of a wider 160
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This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World
by Yancey Strickler · 29 Oct 2019 · 254pp · 61,387 words
that gave me newfound confidence. Called Not for Bread Alone, it was a series of essays from the long career of a Japanese businessman named Konosuke Matsushita. Matsushita led an extraordinary life. In 1918, he started one of the first electrical companies in Japan, which he ran for more than forty years. That
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company continues to operate today under the name Panasonic. Not for Bread Alone shares philosophies and lessons from Matsushita’s long career, which is remarkable not just for its longevity but also for its broader idea of prosperity. Here’s
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Matsushita addressing his employees in 1932: “The mission of a manufacturer is to overcome poverty, to relieve society as a whole from the misery of poverty
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dynamism and vitality of business and industry to generate its wealth. Only under such conditions will business and factories truly prosper.” At this same time Matsushita declared the company’s 250-year goal: “the elimination of poverty from this world.” He meant it. In 1936
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, Matsushita decided to give his employees one day off a week at a time when Japanese workers got two days off a month. It wasn’t
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until 1947 that one day off a week was official by Japanese Labor Standards Law. In 1960, Matsushita went further, announcing that the company would offer Japan’s first five-day workweek. “We need a dramatic increase in productivity if we want to
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us ample time to refresh mind and body, and greater opportunities to enrich our lives.” To produce more and to produce better, Matsushita counterintuitively proposed people work less. Matsushita implemented two days off a week in the 1960s, but it took until 1980 for most big Japanese firms to follow, and until
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1992 for Japanese government workers to have five-day workweeks. Matsushita was also a proud capitalist. “Only by making a reasonable profit—neither too much nor too little—can an enterprise expand and be of greater
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of its profits in the form of taxes. In that sense, it is a businessperson’s duty, as a citizen, to make a reasonable profit.” Matsushita named five spirits to guide the company: Spirit of service through industry Spirit of fairness Spirit of harmony and cooperation Spirit of striving for progress
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of courtesy and humility Almost eighty years later, many of Panasonic’s offices still began their days by reading these spirits aloud. The contrast between Matsushita’s way of seeing the world and the “disrupt yourself” tone of my present day couldn’t have been bigger. The words of this elderly
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emotions—which still came, of course—and to better integrate the values-driven and business-driven parts of me. I would try to imagine how Matsushita would see a situation, looking for the vantage point that would let me see which values were most at stake. More often than not, I
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and creating value in whatever ways its mission called for. This would bring every organization closer to the “spirit of coexistence and co-prosperity” that Konosuke Matsushita said companies and societies should share. “Every company, no matter how small, ought to have clear-cut goals apart from the pursuit of profit, purposes
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People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman Phil Knight, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker Konosuke Matsushita, Not for Bread Alone Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Financial Independence Retire Early Chris Martenson and Adam Taggart, Prosper
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York Times (“Delay, Deny, Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis,” November 14, 2018). “Only under such conditions will business and factories truly prosper”: Konosuke Matsushita quotes are from the book Not for Bread Alone. have five-day workweeks: Details on Panasonic’s change to a five-day workweek come from
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people. piece of paper: For a guided experience to create your own Bento, visit: https://www.ystrickler.com/bento. “secular mission to the world”: From Konosuke Matsushita’s book Not for Bread Alone. the second floor: The idea that banks would be on the second floor in 2050 is inspired by a
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York City), 45–47, 213 Maslow, Abraham, 111–16, 119, 124, 141, 166, 175 Mason, Andrew, 96–97 mastery, xv, 119, 143, 145, 217, 238 Matsushita, Konosuke, 101–3, 212 Maximizing Class, 75, 80, 165 explanation of, 61–67, 255 influence of, 77–78 values of, 213–18 Mazzucato, Mariana, 78, 81
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, 114, 135, 188, 213–14, 271 New York Times, 60–61, 63, 91, 95–96, 105, 167, 180, 255 Nike, 186 Not For Bread Alone (Matsushita), 101–3 Noujaim, Jehane, 13 Now Me, 196, 218 examples of, 138, 167–69, 172–75, 197–99, 204–5, 211 explanation of, 131–33
The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite
by Duff McDonald · 24 Apr 2017 · 827pp · 239,762 words
him in December 1980 that he didn’t think he deserved the honor of such a distinction. But Hotta offered to talk to his friend Konosuke Matsushita, the wealthiest man in Japan, to see if he would accept such an honor. That conversation took place in January 1981, and
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Matsushita accepted. In November 1981, McArthur visited Matsushita in Japan to pick up the check, and the Matsushita Chair of Leadership was born. Earlier that year, Bower had also been instrumental in defending the case method
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Kanter, Kotter sees no problem in enjoying a company’s largesse while simultaneously promoting it. In 2006, while serving as the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at HBS, he wrote a book, Matsushita Leadership, in praise of the company’s founder.) There is Dr. Harry Levinson’s Levinson Institute. Clayton Christensen’s nonprofit
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, 132, 142, 184, 199–212, 246, 254, 288, 289, 436, 458; Bok and, 337–40; case method and, 202–3, 206; Fellowship Program, 208–9; Matsushita Chair and, 205–6; McArthur and, 339–40 Bower-Gordon Award, 458 Bowes, Bill, 323 Bowling Alone (Putnam), 56 Bradshaw, Thornton, 105–6 Brandeis, Louis
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, 402; industrial research and, 81, 82; influence at other institutions, 234–36; James J. Hill Professorship, 43, 67; John and Natty McArthur University Professor, 495; Konosuke Matsushita Professor, 409; lack of math skills; lack of real business experience, 350–51, 459, 498; Mayo’s theories and, 212; McArthur’s changes, 459; for
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, 2, 6, 8, 65, 133–34, 143, 180, 197, 308–18, 339, 396, 398, 473, 486–87, 503, 577; HBS recruiting for, 196; HBS’s Matsushita Chair, 206; Hill on, 557–58; Hoopes book and, 114, 315; industrial paradigm, 197; Kellerman book and, 197, 310, 314; Mintzberg on, 486–87, 488
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), 25, 121, 124, 244; Sloan School of Management, 80, 309, 392, 394 Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital, The (Finkel), 127 Matsushita, Konosuke, 206; HBS endowed chair, 205–6 Matsushita Leadership (Kotter), 409 Matthews, John, 436 May, George O., 26 Mayers, Frank, 169 Mayo, Anthony, 350 Mayo, Elton, 37, 76–90, 111
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; board memberships, 341; on Bok report, 340; campus renovations, 458–59; HBR editorship, 299, 301; hiring Jensen, 370, 378, 455; impact on HBS, 454–56; Matsushita Chair and, 205–6; POM group and, 456; Porter and, 414; Shad’s endowment and, 431; teaching entrepreneurship, 327–28; University Professorship to honor, 495
The Wealth Ladder: Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life
by Nick Maggiulli · 22 Jul 2025
chapter on earning up the Wealth Ladder. Chapter 2 Earning up the Wealth Ladder You may have not heard of Kōnosuke Matsushita, but he is one of the greatest businessmen in history. Matsushita was born in 1894, the youngest of eight children, and grew up in a farm community south of Osaka, Japan
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and was promoted multiple times within a few years. By age twenty-two, he was an inspector, the highest paid position available to him. Though Matsushita had reached the top job at his company, he still wanted to do more with electricity. So he designed an improved electrical socket and pitched
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, they didn’t believe in its potential. Seeing no future with the company, Matsushita left and founded his own company. He named it Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works, which would later become Panasonic.[1] During the first few years, Matsushita ran every aspect of the company, including designing the products and doing most
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of his primary insights was creating autonomous divisions within Panasonic. These divisions gave employees and managers more ownership over their business lines. As a result, Matsushita eliminated the layers of corporate bureaucracy that had held him back earlier in his career. Many other Japanese companies eventually copied
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nickname “the God of Management.” At the time of his death in 1989, Panasonic was the largest consumer electronics company in the world.[2] Kōnosuke Matsushita’s story perfectly illustrates how we must shift our strategies to continue progressing in our careers. In other words, what we do for money at
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forty to fifty dollars. Since then, my skills and earnings potential have increased significantly. Today, collecting cans isn’t worth the time and effort anymore. Matsushita had a similar revelation as he transitioned throughout his career. As he went from a job to starting his own company to scaling that company
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inspector, he wouldn’t have advanced much further than that. If he had never started delegating within his company, his business wouldn’t have grown. Matsushita had to shift his focus throughout his career to continue progressing and earning more. This same thinking also applies to how we should make career
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explains why it’s easier to pursue higher-level strategies once you’ve already made some progress up the Wealth Ladder. This is exactly what Kōnosuke Matsushita did. And you can do the same too. Once you have some money saved, you’ll have more options at your disposal, and you can
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. For some, that will mean getting promoted at their current employer. For others, it will require going out on their own and starting a business. Kōnosuke Matsushita did both, but only when the timing was right for him. You should do the same. After all, there is no hard rule that says
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of Management’ Explained How to Practice the Spirit of Capitalism,” The Liberty Web, February 3, 2015, https://eng.the-liberty.com/2015/5649/; Karl Schoenberger, “Konosuke Matsushita; Japan Industrialist, Billionaire,” Los Angeles Times, April 28, 1989, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-04-28-mn-1905-story.html. BACK TO
Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency
by James Andrew Miller · 8 Aug 2016 · 790pp · 253,035 words
John Logan Eva Longoria Jennifer Lopez Jon Lovitz David Lynch Larry Lyttle Ali MacGraw Madonna Albert Magnoli Frank Mancuso Michael Mann Ricky Martin Steve Martin Konosuke Matsushita Elaine May Melissa McCarthy Mark McCormack Guy McElwaine Don McGuire Chris Meledandri John Mellencamp Sue Mengers Burgess Meredith Barry Meyer Ellen Meyer Kelly Meyer Al
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, including my dog’s.” And that was the last I heard of him. SANDY CLIMAN: Mike regularly cited The Art of War. While he and Matsushita’s number two, Hirata, related well to each other, to succeed we needed to make Mike fully conversant in Japanese culture. To start that process
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outside of the norm, though: When Michael was heading to Japan for one of the first big—and secret—meetings with Matsushita, he wanted coverage of all of the writings of Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of the company—what we know as Panasonic. So I had to read all of his books and
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all of his key writings, and provide Michael with a full rundown on what drove Matsushita-san, what he believed, and how he
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back to me and said, “I found one company that makes more sense than anybody else.” I asked him, “What is it?” And he said, “Matsushita Electric. They own Panasonic.” One number stood out at me when I read the annual report: they had $12 billion in cash. And I said
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, “Great, give me everything there is to read.” We bought every book on Matsushita Electric, including the seven books of the writings of the chairman, Mr. Matsushita. I read them all. And when they had appendixes and other references, we got them as well. Then I
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to go to the UCLA archives and look at the English-language Japanese newspaper, which I had seen from being over there. We discovered that Matsushita was called by Japanese businessmen a Japanese word that meant “copycat” because everything that Sony did, they copied. And Sony had already bought Columbia. A
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report back to the people at JVC, who had made an investment there. And lo and behold, JVC was 50 percent owned and controlled by Matsushita, so being a good agent, I started to figure out a way to get on that guy’s radar screen. I got Sandy into a
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overplay my hand, I agreed to a meeting for fifteen minutes. SANDY CLIMAN: The first contact from Japan on the Matsushita Electric deal did not come from Matsushita directly, but rather from Matsushita affiliate JVC. JVC legal adviser Peter Dekom helped bring together CAA with the JVC head of audiovisual, Isamu Tomitsuka. For
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to use chopsticks better than many Japanese. I knew the history of sake. SANDY CLIMAN: After several strategy discussions, the JVC team reported back to Matsushita management. Like scouts who are replaced by soldiers, Matsushita took over discussions with us, and JVC was out of the picture, never to be seen again
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. Matsushita contacted Ovitz in the fall of 1989 and hired him as a consultant. Ovitz then assembled a team that included New York law firm Simpson
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Thacher & Bartlett to represent Matsushita in the United States, as well as Herbert Allen of the Allen & Company investment firm and public relations firm Adams and Rinehart. For its initial
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meeting with Ovitz, Matsushita sent executive vice president Masahiko Hirata; the firm’s decision to send a senior executive showed Ovitz that it was serious about acquiring a Hollywood
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studio. Ovitz persuaded Matsushita to consider MCA in the spring of 1990. MICHAEL OVITZ: This kid wrote to the JVC guys and then JVC asked for a meeting with
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me, and again, I kept saying no. Then finally the number two guy at Matsushita reached out for a meeting with me and I said it was a pleasure to meet him. I wrote a letter to him, on my
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letterhead, “Heard a lot about Matsushita. I’m a big fan. I’m an audiophile.” Which was true; I’ve loved electronic equipment because my whole life I’ve loved music
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had coming out, and some of the guys in the room from the company didn’t even know about it yet. SANDY CLIMAN: The core Matsushita working team was extremely small—Masao Ohashi, who had a background in industrial products; Atsuro Uede, who was a distinguished painter in his spare time
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for eleven hours. During those eleven hours, I would write and rewrite the speeches Mike would give during the next several days of meetings with Matsushita. I would handwrite everything on a legal pad and hand it to Mike as he got off the plane in Osaka. MICHAEL OVITZ: On my
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do business. They wanted a handshake. I never signed anything with them. ATSURO UEDE, Executive: CAA evaluated MCA and other companies for the purpose of Matsushita and advised us on the expected feeling of Mr. Wasserman, how MCA should be operated after merger, who were key persons in MCA, and played
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an important role to arrange first meeting between tops of MCA and Matsushita. He [Ovitz] never said he wanted the job. He mentioned that he was taking care of CAA. He didn’t want to run the company
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. SANDY CLIMAN: Mike was focused on MCA as a target, first with Sony and then with Matsushita. It might have been a desire to emulate Lew Wasserman, it might have been inspired by his early days as a Universal Studios tour guide
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, or it may simply have been a desire to develop the massive real estate assets in Universal City. With Matsushita, we evaluated both Paramount and MCA/Universal. Paramount had not yet been acquired by Viacom and it was a smaller target—much more of a
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in the room to report back to him or to talk on his behalf. SANDY CLIMAN: Much of the Matsushita negotiation with MCA was done before Lew and Sid ever met the Matsushita executives. Their first meeting together was at Sid’s apartment at the Trump Tower in New York, where Mike
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made the introduction. Mike had indicated that Matsushita would offer a price in the low $70s for each share of MCA stock. When the offer price came in the $60s, Lew and Sid
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he said, because they never talked. He told them exactly how great this was going to be. Ovitz, along with investment banker Felix Rohatyn and Matsushita executive Keiya Toyonaga, negotiated a deal to sell MCA shares for $66, for a total of $6.59 billion. Ovitz and CAA earned $46 million
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, but losses are taken immediately. When there’s a big loss, it goes right to the bottom line. MICHAEL OVITZ: I still was retained by Matsushita, but I did say to Lew and Sid that it would be really important for them to either use me or get their own expert
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on Asia and how to handle the Japanese. They decided not to use me and Matsushita was in a state of shock that they weren’t talking to me. But I had the relationship with
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Matsushita, not them. As it turned out, they had a series of issues with the Japanese that arose out of their inexperience. The Japanese left them
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that the top man is protected. But this is not a culture that you hammer; they didn’t understand that. SANDY CLIMAN: On the first Matsushita deal, the fee was staggering. I went down to the accounting office at 1888 and personally typed the invoice on an IBM Selectric typewriter—$45
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unaccountable expenses for a total of $46 million, the highest fee paid to any investment adviser in America that year. I faxed the invoice to Matsushita, and when the money was wired in, Bob Goldman had to quickly figure out how to move it into bonds so we did not have
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1995, Michael Ovitz and Herb Allen dispatched Edgar Bronfman Jr. on a secret mission to Osaka, Japan. He was to meet with top executives at Matsushita Corporation, whose management had sent out feelers to Ovitz expressing frustration in dealings with Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg and wanted to explore selling the
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to get serious pretty quickly. I knew I wanted to divest in DuPont; I thought it was going nowhere and it did indeed go nowhere. Matsushita came in, so it looked like I sold DuPont to buy MCA, but it wasn’t planned that way. CHARLES BRONFMAN, Executive: When you have
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purchase of Universal, and I was against the sale of DuPont to pay for it. But I didn’t want to start a family war. Matsushita had given us very clear instructions; we were not allowed to talk to Lew and Sid. I felt badly because they were getting bashed with
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, Sid started to realize that things were what they were and he moved from me as the enemy at that moment to Matsushita. Now he’s yelling at me about Matsushita, how horrible they are, how they’ve made his life misery. Then he tells me a story about how he and
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Osaka but they refused to see him, and they just had to fly back. Then he said, “I wrote a letter to the chairman of Matsushita,” and he’s screaming, “How could they not see Lew Wasserman?!” Now during the negotiations I had heard about this letter—I had never seen
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it—but I know that Matsushita thought it was the ugliest, angriest letter they’d ever seen in their lives. Anyway, so Sid’s banging on the table and he says
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me, smiled, and said, “I suppose you are.” I never negotiated with Mike about coming to run MCA until we had a signed deal with Matsushita. But it was always part of the gestalt that we should buy something and he should run it. He talked to me about TimeWarner too
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clients; when you have a ton of clients, it’s really easy to sign clients. At the end of the day, clients, whether they’re Matsushita or Spielberg, were our business. But when I am selfless and let Jay Moloney in on every single thing that Spielberg is doing, there’s
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’s not going to raise all boats. I give Mike and Ronnie a lot of credit. Even when they had all those consulting fees from Matsushita and others coming in, they made sure to share it with everyone. There was a feeling that everyone was going to be elevated financially. Now
Gambling Man
by Lionel Barber · 3 Oct 2024 · 424pp · 123,730 words
Sasaki belongs among the elite founders of the Japanese consumer electronics industry, a giant who stands alongside Akio Morita, pioneer of the Sony Walkman, and Konosuke Matsushita, founder of Panasonic. His reputation as a world-class engineer was first established during the war. His expertise was radar technology, a skill he acquired
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an exciting new product: the prototype of a talking electronic translator. Masa had written to 50 Japanese home appliance manufacturers; but the response was crushing. Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic) in Osaka turned him away at the entrance, and Sanyo Electric didn’t even bother to listen to his sales pitch. Sharp
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located near the Japanese parliament. He placed on the table a piece of paper outlining a rough loan agreement between himself and a certain Manabu Matsushita, the Japanese alias for Park An-nam, a Korean academic and business adviser in Tokyo whom he had met several months earlier. ‘I will help
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monopoly rather than an open standard for software developers and hardware manufacturers.16 After a tense late-night meeting with Nishi, at one point involving Matsushita playing peacemaker, the two rivals called a truce. Microsoft agreed to lower the licence fee for PC manufacturers and to make hardware specifications available to
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Macau, 95 Malone, John, 240 Management Research Institute (MRI), 52, 53, 54 Manchester City football club, 266 Mannesmann, 180 Marks, Michael, 320 Marsalek, Jan, 306 Matsushita, Konosuke, 34 Matsushita, Manabu (Park An-nam), 62–3 May, Theresa, 252 McBride, John, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120 McDonald’s Japan, 24, 25 media
Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making for an Unknowable Future
by Mervyn King and John Kay · 5 Mar 2020 · 807pp · 154,435 words
management is supposedly seeing the big picture but, in dysfunctional cases, is not in touch with the details.’ 4 Mintzberg continues with a quotation from Konosuke Matsushita, founder of Panasonic Corp., asserting that ‘Big things and little things are my job. Middle level arrangements can be delegated.’ So, Mintzberg summarises, ‘In other
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point theorems, 254 ; fractal geometry, 238–9 ; ‘grand auction’ of Arrow and Debreu, 343–5 ; and historical narratives, 188 ; small world applications of, 175–6 Matsushita, Konosuke, 410 Mauss, Marcel, The Gift (1925), 190–1 Max Planck Institute, Berlin, 152 maximising behaviour, xiv , 258 , 381–2 ; ‘ambiguity aversion’ concept, 135 ; and evolutionary
When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures
by Richard D. Lewis · 1 Jan 1996
. In the business world, a series of individuals have also demonstrated outstanding abilities and success in leadership—Ford, Rockefeller, Agneli, Berlusconi, Barnevik, Gyllenhammer, Iacocca, Geneen, Matsushita and Morita are some of them. It is now common for leadership and authority also to be vested in boards of directors or management committees
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mind. In the modern era, business leaders have occasionally shown the charismatic and visionary leadership that attracts loyal followers; examples are Henry Ford, Akio Morita, Konosuke Matsushita and Richard Branson. Religion has also played a major role in mass-motivation throughout the historical era. Twenty-First Century Aspirations If you consider the
Hello, Habits
by Fumio Sasaki · 6 Nov 2020 · 195pp · 60,471 words
back on costs. This didn’t go well. When its executives gathered and discussed what they should and shouldn’t do, the company’s founder Konosuke Matsushita is said to have said: “All right. Then we will change our objective and aim for a reduction by half instead of 10 percent.” An
Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley
by Atsuo Inoue · 18 Nov 2021 · 295pp · 89,441 words
. There was one and only one thing he could do, he decided. He would come up with inventions, patent the ideas, then sell them on. Matsushita Konosuke, the ‘God of Management’ and founder of Panasonic, had got his start at a small factory. Another business forebear Son looked up to, his first
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intent to develop a talking electronic translator, making plans to visit the 10 or so who replied in person, amongst which were Canon, Omron, Casio, Matsushita Electric Industrial (now Panasonic) and Sharp. He took advantage of the summer holidays and travelled back to Japan with Mozer in tow. Son’s younger
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have the technology to make the translator smaller, lighter and more affordable from a manufacturing perspective. At this point in time Sharp, Casio, Sony and Matsushita all possessed considerable technological prowess due to the success of their calculators, and Son strongly believed that one of these companies would be capable of
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. He would have to take on Nishi head-on whilst bedridden. The first time Nishi and Son had met was the summer of 1977 at Matsushita Electric Industrial in Osaka, whilst Son was still studying at Berkeley. Introducing the two to each other was Maeda Hirokazu
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, Matsushita’s Head of Technology R&D, who for whatever reason did so in English. Son was at Matsushita as, having concluded his deal with Sharp for the pocket translator, he was going to be signing
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step of the way. He was absolutely going to knock the living daylights out of MSX. Nishi was just as adamant too, at which point Matsushita’s senior manager had to step in to mediate between the two. Son’s quarrel wasn’t with Nishi in particular – it was about future
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advertising research institutes. The heretofore unknown SoftBank were now a fixture in terms of brand awareness amongst general consumers, defeating well-known names such as Matsushita Denki, Sony and Suntory to take the crown. Every month 2,000 companies across Japan ran television adverts but it was SoftBank who had taken
The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times
by Giovanni Arrighi · 15 Mar 2010 · 7,371pp · 186,208 words