The pattern-file failure that froze PCs across Japan, and the internal reform that followed (2005)

Between speed and quality

At the centre of this decision was the fact that a small shortcut — skipping a verification step — can turn into a crisis on a scale capable of shaking the company’s existence. Eva Chen, president and CEO, disregarded the awkwardness of having only just taken the post: she announced remedial measures the very day she arrived in Japan, and made responsibility unmistakable by symbolically setting her own pay at ¥594. A company that had made speed the source of its competitiveness caused an accident precisely because that speed led it to treat verification lightly — and then moved at the same speed to restore trust. That, one can say, is the core of this decision.

What followed, though, is not fully explained by the swiftness of the response. The company has disclosed that it declined to punish the individual who caused the fault, choosing instead to protect an environment in which people take on innovation. Tightening the verification process without making the front line flinch from risk is far harder than it sounds, and in fact the company designated 2005 a year of “laying foundations” and undertook an organizational reform that deliberately separated research, commercialization and sales expansion into distinct processes. It would be premature to conclude that the answer to pursuing quality and speed at once had been settled; how far it was maintained through the market competition that followed remained a point requiring attention.