IP: Akio Morita, Key to Japan's Rise as Co-Founder of Sony, Dies at 78

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

October 3, 1999
Akio Morita, Key to Japan's Rise as Co-Founder of Sony, Dies at 78

By ANDREW POLLACK


Akio Morita, the co-founder of the Sony Corporation who personified Japan's rise from postwar rubble to industrial 
riches and became the unofficial ambassador of its business community to the world, died today in Tokyo. He was 78. 

He died of pneumonia, the company said. He had been in failing health since a stroke in 1993. 
More than anyone else, it was Morita and his Sony colleagues who changed the world's image of the term "Made in Japan" 
from one of paper parasols and shoddy imitations to one of high technology and high reliability in miniature packages. 

Founded in a bombed-out Tokyo department store after World War II, Sony became indisputably one of the world's most 
innovative companies, famous for products like the pocket-sized transistor radio, the videocassette recorder, the 
Walkman and the compact disk. 

And Morita, whose contribution was greater in marketing than in technology, made the Sony brand into one of the best 
known and respected in the world. A Harris poll last year showed Sony as the No. 1 brand name among American consumers, 
ahead of American companies like General Electric and Coca-Cola. 

A tireless traveler who moved his family to New York in 1963 for a year to learn American ways, Morita also spearheaded 
the internationalization of Japanese business. Sony was the first Japanese company to sell its stock on the New York 
Stock Exchange, in 1970, one of the first to build a factory in the United States, in 1972, and still one of the only 
ones to have even a couple of Westerners on its board. 

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/100399obit-morita.html