On June 7, Sony's official website released an obituary that former Sony chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) Nobuyuki Izui died of liver failure in Tokyo on June 2, 2022, at the age of 84 (1937-2022).
As a former CEO of Sony, Nobuyuki Izui also enjoys a high reputation internationally, and many people call him a rare "international talent" for Japanese companies, "unlike japanese Japanese entrepreneurs", and few Japanese entrepreneurs can get similar international praise. Sony's current CEO Kenichiro Yoshida also issued a statement expressing condolences. "In the seven years that I served as CEO from 1998, Nobuyuki Izui has made a huge contribution to Sony's emergence as a global company," he said. In particular, during his tenure as CEO, he accurately predicted the Internet era that would follow and actively promoted Sony's digital transformation, which has benefited me a lot to this day. ”
However, the evaluation of Nobuyuki Izui during his lifetime was highly controversial. In 1997, Nobuyuki Izui was selected by BusinessWeek as one of the "World's Top Businessmen", and soon after in 2004, he was again named "the worst manager in the world" by the magazine.
What kind of person is Nobuyuki Izui, and why is he evaluated by polarization? What does Kenichiro Yoshida mean when he says that "he accurately predicted the Internet era"?
Let's start with his youth.
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Nobuyuki Izui was born in Tokyo on November 22, 1937, his father was the famous Professor of Economics at Waseda University in Japan, Moriyuki Ioi himself studied in the school's Department of Political Economy, and graduated in 1960.
The year he graduated, Nobuyuki Izui joined Sony.
The young man who joined Sony was greatly valued, and in 1962, Nobuyuki Izui was sent to study at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Geneva, Switzerland, and traveled to Switzerland twice to complete work tasks, accumulating a wealth of experience. In 1968, Nobuyuki Izui was transferred to France to form Sony FRANCE, and returned to Japan nearly five years later. Since then, Nobuyuki Izui has served as the director of Sony's audiovisual business, and in 1989, he became a director of Sony, and was promoted to managing director in the same year.
As Nobuyuki Izui's position became more and more important, he began to think deeply about Sony's future development direction. With the theme of "Sony's Future", he wrote a report to present to norio Kawa, the head of Sony at the time.
Years later, the elderly Nobuyuki Izui recalled: "I felt the development of the Internet in the United States in 1994, and I reported to Sony that if Sony did not change, the company might not be able to do it." ”
In the ancient history of the earth, meteorites once fell from the sky, dinosaurs went extinct, and then mammals appeared, and new history slowly unfolded. In the eyes of Nobuyuki Izumi, the Internet is another "huge meteorite" that fell on the earth.
Between 1993 and 1994, Nobuyuki Dei submitted three reports to Nobuo Oga on "The Future of Sony", in which he elaborated on this thinking in depth. Nobuyuki Izui believes that the era of computer networks is coming, and next, it will bring huge challenges to the electrical giant Sony that cannot be ignored. In the Internet era, the audio and video products such as tape drives, TVs, and cameras that Sony is good at manufacturing will gradually lose competitiveness and will not be able to maintain the high profitability of hardware as in the past. Nobuyuki Izui believes that Sony must actively promote digital transformation, and the company's audio-visual products must integrate computer technology and continuously expand revenue sources.
The early work experience of being stationed in Europe and expanding the international market is quite valuable, which makes it easier for Nobuyuki Ioi to have an international vision and a far-sighted way of thinking, and it is easier to seize the opportunity and grasp the pulse of the times.
At that time, Sony's head of the company, Norio Kawa, saw this and appointed Nobuyuki Izui as his successor, hoping that he would achieve the goal of "letting Sony continue to shine".
In April 1995, Nobuyuki Izui was appointed President of Sony, and three years later, he was again named CEO of Sony.
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Taking over Sony was not an easy task for Nobuyuki Izui. Sony is already in debt of 1.9 trillion yen due to the previous acquisition of Columbia Pictures, and the huge debt crisis has almost brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy, with a chance of survival of less than 50%.
Nobuyuki Izui must make a change.
The following year, sony celebrated its 50th anniversary. Combining his experience in Sony's advertising department, Nobuyuki Izui took the first step of change to the publicity side. He decided to abandon the original slogans such as "It's A Sony" and launched a new slogan of "Digital Dream Kids".
"Digital Dream Kids" is translated as "Digital Dream Kid", and in explaining the meaning of the slogan, Nobuyuki Dei recalled the deeds of Former Sony business leaders Such as Infuka Dai, Akio Morita, Norio Oga, and others, saying: "Mr. Inobuchi is a transistor child, Mr. Morita is a Walkman child, Mr. Ohga is a CD child, and we must be a digital dream child." ”
Driven by Nobuyuki Izui, Sony's digital transformation was officially launched.
Nobuyuki Izui hopes that Sony can integrate audio-visual products and IT technology to embrace the Internet era in an all-round way. Sony once again reached a cooperative relationship with Intel and Microsoft, and in 1996 launched its own VAIO personal computer, increasing investment in the PlayStation game business. Not only that, But Nobuyuki Izui has also explored Sony's film, television, music, etc., integrating audio-visual products with IT technology, and entering financial services such as banks.
Sony's diversification has achieved quite remarkable results. At that time, shortly after the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble, the social economy was almost completely stagnant, and most companies were sluggish, but Sony was unique in it, with record financial reports and maintaining global sales revenue and profit growth.
At the end of March 1997, Sony achieved the best performance in the company's history.
Total sales: JPY 5,663.1 billion (up 23.3% from the previous year); Total operating profit: JPY 373 billion (up 57.4% from the previous year); Total pre-tax profit: JPY 312.4 billion (up 126.1% from the previous year); Net profit for the current period: JPY 139.5 billion (up 157.1% from the previous year).
Sony did not stop there, and at the end of March 1998, the earnings report reached a new high. In 2000, Sony's valuation was 7 times that of Apple.
With his outstanding business performance, Nobuyuki Izui opened a new "Sony era of Izui".
However, this new era lasted only a few short years.
Although Nobuyuki Izui seized the opportunities of the Internet and digitalization and made a lot of advanced planning for the game and entertainment business, huge challenges followed.
The Internet bubble burst, strong competitors made Sony unable to break through the siege in a short period of time, when the flat-screen TV set off a boom, Sony did not seize the opportunity at the first time, which made Sony's performance myth collapse quickly.
In April 2003, Sony announced the company's financial year 2002 results. Sales in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2002 fell 12 percent, with a quarterly net loss of 111.1 billion yen ($926 million), triggering a sharp drop in the stock price. In February of the following year, Sony's operating profit fell by 30% to the lowest point in nine years, which triggered the "Sony shock" of the Nikkei plunge.
Sony's poor performance in performance has caused many people to question Nobuyuki Izui. Some people think that his layout in IT is "not doing the right thing", and some people think that he is "the worst manager ever".
In order to change the status quo, Nobuyuki Izui had to announce the "Company Transformation Plan" in May 2004, planning to invest 1 trillion yen over the next three years to develop high-speed network services, chips, and other technologies to lead Sony to transform again. Nobuyuki Izui promised to complete the restructuring of the business in the shortest possible time and ensure that by fiscal 2006, the operating profit would reach at least 10%.
However, the disappointment of the public made it difficult for Dei to do so, and the "company transformation plan" lasted for just one year and was stopped. In March 2005, under pressure from shareholders, Nobuyuki Izui resigned and handed over management to The head of Sony in the United States, Howard Stringer, the first foreign CEO in Sony's history.
The curtain fell, Nobuyuki Izui withdrew from the board, and Sony's "Era of Nobuyuki Izui" ended.
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As a controversial leader in Sony's history, Nobuyuki Izui led Sony for only seven short years.
Looking back on the changes in the past seven years, at the time when the Internet has changed the world and the old and new eras have alternated, Nobuyuki Izui first clearly proposed the development direction with the Internet as the core, led Sony's transformation from an electrical appliance company to a platform company, and led Sony's digital reform, which is still in progress today. Even Sony's current CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida, believes that this has benefited him a lot so far.
Objectively speaking, however, Nobuyuki Izui's forward-looking strategy to pursue his digital dreams was anachronistic, and in the circumstances of the time, this plan could not make a significant contribution to Sony's overall profits.
At the same time, there are other problems.
In his book " The Management of Life " , Nobuyuki Iwai analyzed the reality of the decline of Japanese manufacturing. In recent years, The "counterfeiting" of Japanese manufacturing has been frequent, the "quality myth" has long fallen off the altar, and the decline of Japan's manufacturing industry has become a foregone conclusion. Nobuyuki Dei also sadly said that Japan's manufacturing industry lost to China.
The reason is that Nobuyuki Izui believes that Japan cannot get rid of the post-war revival of the manufacturing myth, and still indulges in the glory brought about by technological progress and cannot see the opportunities brought by IT technology. More importantly, Japanese companies have a big problem of "bureaucratic dependence".
Before leaving office in 2004, Nobuyuki Izumi poured bitter water on people: "Sony must change, this is a fact. However, all the cadres feel that the reason for not being able to change is all on me. Admittedly, I am the CEO, and the ultimate responsibility lies with me. But they blatantly regard my existence as a tool for their inaction. They always declare that 'because Mr. Izui is present, it can't be done', which is actually an excuse for not implementing reforms. ”
"Bureaucratic dependence" exists within companies, but also in Japanese government departments. In the book, Nobuyuki Izui writes that no matter what new things are done, companies rely on the judgment of officials. Without clear judgment instructions from government departments, businesses cannot make any new challenges. Obviously, there are serious problems with such enterprises.
For a business, no matter how big or small, there are different visions and social contributions that they want to make. How to achieve this social contribution requires generations of thinking.
With the death of Nobuyuki Izui, all the controversy settled. Can today's Sony write a performance myth again? It deserves our continued attention.
The image comes from the Internet
EDIT: Ripples
Art Design: Jasmine Lee