On April 3, Hirai-san and I visited the grave of Sony co-founder Akio Morita in Tokyo to pay our respects.

Regrettably, I never had the opportunity to speak with Sony's other co-founder, Ibuka-san, but I was fortunate enough to encounter Morita-san on two separate occasions. The first was when I worked in the Investor Relations Department, my first assignment after joining Sony. In this role, I supported Morita-san, who was then a member of the Listed Company Advisory Committee at the New York Stock Exchange. When I actually met him in person one day, he reached out to me and heartily said "Ah, so you must be the Yoshida I've been hearing about." The second time was in September of 1993, while I was placed in New York City.

This picture, taken at a golf club during a party, is the only photo of the two of us side by side.

The words that Morita-san said to us in New York that day have stayed with me. He told us, "Sony has learned many things from the US over the years. Many Japanese companies out there may be thinking that they have now surpassed the US, but Sony must remain humble and continue learning from America." To be perfectly honest, I did not fully grasp the larger meaning behind what he was saying at the time, but I could feel the powerful sense of urgency in Morita-san's words.

During a management meeting held on November 19 of that same year, Morita-san also said the following: "Our company has brought about major innovations to both tape recorders and transistor radios, but looking closely, it becomes clear that we originally found those seeds in the US." "We have convinced ourselves that Japanese industrialists are now the best in the world, but we must work to rid ourselves of this false notion." Only eleven days later, on November 30, 1993, Morita-san suffered a stroke, and left behind his role in Sony management until he passed away in 1999.

What exactly was this sense of urgency that Morita-san felt back in 1993? While I cannot definitively say that Morita-san had seen a glimpse of the future, looking back now I believe he was referring to the internet. The founding of Amazon and the arrival of the web browser Netscape both came in 1994, the year after Morita-san's speeches.

At previous internal meetings, I have said that "Sony began with transistor receivers and television sets, then entered the age of packaged media and had hegemony by providing 'time shift' value to our customers by enabling them to enjoy their favorite content anytime and anywhere. But then we struggled as we entered the network (internet) era."

We did still manage to achieve a record level of profit in 1997, and it wasn't until the start of the 21st century that the internet began to have a profound influence on Sony's management.

A quarter century has passed since I last met with Morita-san. As I stood before his grave and informed him of my appointment as President and CEO, I felt anew the weight and importance of continuing to guide this vessel we call Sony with an eye towards the long-term.