Driver of your business growth: Philosophy “Be always creative”

This time, Inamori* spoke about the above motto in Kyocera philosophy.

What Inamori said is quoted with “”.

“ ’Basically, you must work hard for the responsibilities given to you as your vocation, but that is not enough. While working hard, you must keep asking whether this is good enough or not or otherwise why you have to do this in this way. Then you must make improvements on your daily work and improve as well as refine your workflow every day.

You should never unconsciously repeat the same thing as you did yesterday. Continuous improvement and refining your outputs will lead to creative work and will allow you to accumulate unique know-how or technologies. By repeating these steps, at the end of the day, you will make great progress. “

Inamori said, “This is the attitude which has driven the growth of Kyocera as of today.”

Therefore, I think this item is the key to the company’s growth. The following points are also quite important to do creative work every day.

Let me elaborate one by one.

1 Daily improvements (never seeking the answer nor templates)

“ Perhaps due to my engineering background, I don’t like doing the same thing over and over. That’s totally inefficient. So, I have always been making an effort to accumulate ideas every day, saying “Today’s output is better than that of yesterday, tomorrow’s output must be better than that of today, and the output made day after tomorrow is better than that of tomorrow”. At the same time, I have asked everything, “Why is it like this?” and “Could we do better?”

I have also encouraged my employees to be creative and for instance encouraged them as follows: “When it even comes to something like cleaning, you should be able to think of various ways to clean the floor, such as sweeping from this side today, sweeping from that side tomorrow, or using a mop to make it even cleaner. Instead of just repeating the same thing day after day, you should think about how to clean more efficiently and effectively and keep making every single effort to deliver a better outcome. You must be proactive in trying better approaches. “

→ This is the most important attitude for progress and development. When talking about macroeconomics and politics, we must think about society where we can keep improvements. Ironically, “seeking better things” can be interpreted as “denial of the status quo,” so creators may be seen as rebels by those in power. Then people become reluctant to make progress and development, and they eventually end up repeating the same thing every day. In such an environment, progress and development cannot be expected.

From my limited perspective, in a hierarchical society, such as in the Western world, no matter how much ingenuity you put in, it is difficult to change your current situation, like a social class. Therefore, we can hardly find this kind of progress and development under such a society. I don’t think Japan has much of a historical background or environment like this. Therefore, I think that Japanese companies have advantages in making progress and development, and therefore, we should continue to make efforts every day.

As for another example, Aikido master Yamaguchi says, “You should not seek answers and formats, but always think about why.” When a manual is made that says this is how it should be done, people naturally repeat that manual. Then, humans stop thinking. I think it is important to take different approaches every day and to keep improving.

2 Humbly seek wisdom from those around you

“ (Matsushita) Konosuke, the founder of Panasonic, used the phrase ‘I’m not well educated’ as an introductory phrase. He was always humble and eager to learn from those around him. In other words, he gradually gained wisdom by ‘learning by listening’ and used what he listened as a base of creative works. This attitude is the source of how he built the world-renowned Matsushita (Panasonic) Group, even though he had no academic background. “

→ If we believe that my idea or approach is always right, we won’t be able to listen to other people’s opinions. So, the humble attitude is quite important. Progress and development always start with listening to the opinions and stories of those around you, thinking that what they say is right and that you might be wrong. I will keep this attitude in my work.

3 Keep changing

“ In cleaning I mentioned earlier, if you continue to be creative, you might start thinking about what you can do more efficiently than a mop and clean the place, and say something like this: “President, could you buy me a new vacuum cleaner? It’s much more efficient than a mop or a broom, so I think I can clean it by myself. If you do that, it might seem like you bought an expensive vacuum cleaner temporarily, but if you think about a year ahead, you can reduce expenses such as labor costs, so the cost should actually be lower.

” If this goes beyond that, he/she might propose to start a company, by saying “I want to hire employees and start a building cleaning business, and can I do that?” Since he/she has acquired so-called know-how of cleaning through the various innovations he/she has made up to now, it shouldn’t be difficult to start a building maintenance business. “

→ Under the such companies, lack of human resources has not been a serious issue as of today simply because they have successfully minimized labor costs. This attitude also helps your products/ service diversifications, while avoiding lack of synergies with existing core businesses. As the new business has naturally been developed in your company, this would definitely create synergies with existing business lines.

* Mr. Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera, KDDI (one of the top tele communication companies in Japan) and the top of revitalization project of JAL. As a well-known Japanese entrepreneur, he has been sharing his experiences and management know-how with managements of small to middle companies in Japan.

Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com

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