In Sankei newspaper on the 9th of November, I found the article about Steve Jobs. The reason I chosen this article is that the explanation of this article is very interesting for me. This article is written by Noguchi Yukio, who is one of famous economist.
According to his idea, Jobs looks like Levi Strauss, who sold a lot of blue jeans during the "Gold Rush" in California in the 1880s. In this term, many mining workers tried to find gold, but soon after that, they collapsed rapidly. But Strauss made tough and strong jeans for such workers instead of mining, and he succeeded. It is same with Jobs that he made the products that are demanded by a lot of people instead of doing same activity.
There is the possibility that same situation in IT industrial world. Do Japanese companies follow the way of whether mining worker or Jobs? This is Noguchi’s warning against Japanese company.
In my view, Japan will follow the same way of mining workers under today’s situation of Japanese companies. Japanese product makers just make similar products to Apple. Of course the quality might be higher than Apple’s, as the experts of electronics. But generally speaking as laymen like me, Apple’s products look better than Japanese ones.
Japan has to try to find new potential demand instead of making similar products which were already made by others. It must be difficult, but Japan cannot win in the world market unless it changes the present way.Motoki
I love the title of this blog! I guess what Noguchi is saying is that Jobs was an innovator - he "re-invented the wheel" as the expression goes, by introducing something completely new, something that was good, something that people needed, and marketed it in a way to make people crave it. He also sold it at a reasonable price.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, Japanese are not innovators by nature, so they have to work hard to be on the cutting edge. However, couldn't you say that Toyota was a leader in hybrid and electric vehicles? They seemed to lead ahead of other companies. Further, isn't Nissan a cutting edge automobile company?
Please don't be too critical about Japan as there are some bright lights among the masses.
Ms. MacGregor
Ｉ think in some aspects, Japan is still the leading country in electronics. Camera industry is an good example. Companies like Canon, Nikon, Pentax, or Olympus are all Japanese companies.
ReplyDeleteSotaro
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ReplyDeleteOf course I know there are many leading companies in Japan like Toyota. But Apple made totally new item like i pad, which are different from PC or phone. I would like Japanese companies to make such new items not only improve their quality of products. And I would like to try after graduating.
ReplyDeleteMotoki