Kaku’s promotion and the turn to office machines (1977)

What a crisis-time promotion brought in

The core of this decision lies less in the financial crisis itself than in the way it was used to recast the shape of management. The zero-dividend figure was also the result of the profitability of businesses fanned out through diversification melting together inside the company, so that it had become impossible to see who was losing money and where. President Kaku used a divisional structure to separate that profitability out, folded the businesses with thin prospects, and concentrated resources on office machines. That he was not brought in from outside in the immediate wake of the crisis but was a figure who had remained a managing director within — and could therefore name his predecessors’ complacency by name — reveals the character of this appointment.

The 1985 tie-up with HP was a design that, rather than relying on Canon’s own sales network, loaded its core components onto a partner’s channel to capture volume. Through which business and which method of selling to turn the strength of development into cash — this question, which President Kaku brought in with the divisional structure, was carried on in the later Mitarai era as consolidated management and self-reliance, and remains a point the company returns to at every huge acquisition and reshuffle of its businesses. In that a promotion made at the bottom of a crisis prepared, early on, the later management pattern of selection and concentration, this decision is rich in implication.