I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.
Management of an industrial company must be giving targets to the engineers constantly; that may be the most important job management has in dealing with its engineers.
Of course we have to make a profit, but we have to make a profit over the long haul, not just the short term, and that means we must keep investing in research and development - it has run consistently about 6 percent of sales at Sony - and in service.
If we face recession, we should not lay off employees; the company should sacrifice a profit. It's management's risk and management's responsibility. Employees are not guilty; why should they suffer?
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.
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.
The "patron saint" of Japanese quality control, ironically, is an American named W. Edwards Deming, who was virtually unknown in his own country until his ideas of quality control began to make such a big impact on Japanese companies.