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Ibuka served as president of Sony from 1950 to 1971, and then served as chairman of Sony from 1971 until he retired in 1976. [13] Ibuka was awarded the Medal of Honor with Blue Ribbon in 1960, and was decorated with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1978 and with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun in 1986. [2]
May 16, 2024 · Masaru Ibuka, the visionary co-founder and longtime president of Sony Corporation, played a pivotal role in shaping the company into a global leader in consumer electronics.
In March 1952, Ibuka decided to visit the United States for a three-month inspection tour. At that time, tape recorder sales in Japan were limited to the educational market, centering around schools. Ibuka keenly wanted to widen this market -- he hoped to see for himself how American consumers used tape recorders.
The Founding Prospectus. Sony's distinctive style of personnel management derives from the founding prospectus Masaru Ibuka penned for Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering), Sony's former name.
- Masaru Ibuka
- Dubbed “Student Inventor of Genius”
- Bought Rights to Transistor
- Attributed Success to U.S. Military Orientation
- Periodicals
- Online
As co-founder and longtime president of the Sony Corporation, Japanese executive Masaru Ibuka (1908-1997) conceived of and brought to fruition several of the most popular and fundamentally influential consumer electronics innovations of the twentieth century. The public face of Sony for decades was its chairman and marketing wizard, Akio Morita, bu...
Born on April 11, 1908, in Nikko, Japan, in Tochigi Prefecture, Ibuka was interested in radio from the time he was young, and was an avid “ham” or amateur radio operator. His father was a beer brewer, and it was expected that young Ibuka would take over the family business. Ibuka attended Waseda High School and Waseda University, where he studied c...
Ibuka visited the United States in 1952, hoping to explore new recording technologies. While there, he encountered a then-obscure device called a transistor, a miniature semiconductor that could be used to amplify electronic signals. The transistor's U.S. manufacturer, Western Electric, marketed it primarily for use in military applications and hea...
Ibuka's consistent record of innovation flew in the face of conventional wisdom, which held that while Japanese manufacturers were efficient at developing existing ideas to perfection, they generally lacked creativity. Ibuka pointed to Sony's consumer orientation as an explanation. “The American electronics industry is spoiled by the emphasis on mi...
Daily Mail(London, England), October 4, 1999. Fortune, February 24, 1992. Fresno Bee, December 20, 1997. Guardian(London, England), December 20, 1997. Independent(London, England), December 22, 1997. New York Times, December 20, 1997. Times(London, England), December 29, 1997.
Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007, http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC(December 6, 2007).
Ibuka had prepared a founding prospectus for the new company and had left it with Tachikawa. Since Ibuka was so involved with preparations for the inauguration, he completely forgot to ask for the prospectus. When he saw it later, Ibuka reaffirmed the significance of this document.
Masaru Ibuka was the co founder of Sony (initially Tokyo telecommunications engineering corperation). He and Akio Morita founded the company in 1946 and was instrumental in securing the licensing of transistor technology from Bell Labs.
