My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target. The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States.
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.
(Japanese Government believes that if you have a big laboratory with all the latest equipment and good funding it will automatically lead to creativity. It doesn't work that way.
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.
In the long run, no matter how good or successful you are or how clever or crafty, your business and its future are in the hands of the people you hire.
Americans make money by playing `money games,' namely mergers, acquisitions, by simply moving money back and forth ... instead of creating and producing goods with some actual value.
I believe it is a big mistake to think that money is the only way to compensate a person for his work. People need money, but they also want to be happy in their work and proud of it.
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.
There are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business.
From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people's inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.