Konosuke Matsushita

I just finished reading “Matsushita Leadership lessons from the 20^th century’s most remarkable entrepreneur” by John P. Kotter.  This book introduced me to Konosuke Matsushita who was arguably as the title states the entrepreneur who went from the least, his father went broke and he quit school in the third grade to work as an indentured servant, to employing more people and making more profit than any other company.

Matsushita started everything with one concept.  He was not an inventor; he took existing products and made them 30% better and 30% cheaper.  His first project was a light socket that he thought he could make better.  Eventually he grew a consumer electronics company and had many brands that I really hadn’t heard of.  He was not into self promotion and his companies never bore his name.

The book did a great job of showing the highs and lows that he had to go through to become successful.  Some of the interesting concepts I learned from the book were, he never paid himself a large salary, never sold equity in his company for financing, demanded profitability from every division.  The one that blew my mind was he once wrote a letter to the Government in Japan saying they should save enough money that the Government is run off the interest like an endowment.  What a difference to how the US Government is funding things.

This was a real interesting book.  If you are an entrepreneur or like successes stories you will love this book.