Reinventing from sewing machines and typewriters into information equipment (1989)

The choice not to punish failure

The heart of this decision lies not in responding to a financial crisis but in carrying out a transformation tantamount to abandoning the founding trade — and doing so not through the dramatic instruments of acquisition or divestiture, but through the patient machinery of a stance that does not punish failure and of new businesses cultivated directly under the president. Just as the failure of the “Takeru” software vending machine gave rise to network karaoke, and the failure of a mobile printer gave rise to the home multifunction machine, Brother built a cycle that turns defeat into the seed of the next product. To the established divisions a new business is a “devourer of people and money,” and left alone it will not grow. It was precisely because the president fenced each one off and raised it with people and funds attached — Yasui’s way — that a long-established maker could replace its own mainstay.

The turn was not achieved in a single breath, however. More than a decade passed between office machines overtaking sewing machines and information and communication equipment becoming the settled mainstay, accompanied by the debt shouldered in dissolving the manufacturing/sales split and by the trial and error of a fax and multifunction business that struggled to get off the ground. Even so, what made the metamorphosis possible was a leader who would not rest on a thriving founding trade and who kept waving the flag, scooping up the failures and frustrations of the shop floor. How to keep the body heat of an organisation that tolerates failure and carries it on to the next thing — rather than reaching for scale or a flashy stroke — Brother’s transformation can be read as a case that gave that question a patient answer.