“If you trust your colleague today, he may be your competitor tomorrow, because people frequently move from one company to another.”

(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.

It has run consistently about 6 percent of sales at Sony – and in service.

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.

Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want.

Executives of the company must have the necessary qualities to direct the personnel by showing them the way to do things.

Curiosity is the key to creativity.

You can be totally rational with a machine.

Employees are not guilty; why should they suffer?

I feel it is my fault because I made the decision to hire him.

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.

I often say to my assistants, “Never trust anybody,” but what I mean is that you should never trust someone else to do a job exactly the way you would want it done.

There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies.

We want everybody to have the best facilities in which to work, but we do not believe in posh and impressive private offices.

If management take the risk of hiring them, we have to take the responsibility for them.

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.

We don’t believe in market research for a new product unknown to the public. So we never do any.