ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS

TEAM ORIENTED

KONOSUKE Matsushita is the one entrepreneurship that practice team oriented in him business. He was born into a well-off landowning family in the Japanese village of Wasa, on November 27, 1894. He grew into a nervous, rather sickly young adult with an un-promising future. At a time when you had to be well educated, charismatic, even rich, to succeed, he seemed destined for a life of struggle meant that Matsushita's education was cut short. When he at age of nine, he took a job as an apprentice in a bicycle shop to help the family survive.

One of the traits that followed Matsushita throughout his career was a willingness to take risks. He did that when he quit his bicycle shop job to accept employment at Osaka Electric Light Company, when he was 16. Matsushita was quickly promoted and eventually became an inspector, which job Matsushita considered that was a respectable job at which many might have stayed until retirement. Nevertheless, while working at Osaka Light, he had managed to create a new type of light socket, one that was better than anything available at the time. Matsushita showed the invention to his boss, who was unimpressed.

Matsushita had no money and no real business experience, but he did have driven and ambition. Therefore, in 1917, at the age of 23, Konosuke Matsushita began the Panasonic’s journey. He decided to manufacture the device himself. With the help of his wife and three eager assistants, Matsushita began his business. The combined education of the five amounted to less than a high school education, and none had any experience in manufacturing an electric plug. However, they had ambition. In a cramped two-room tenement house, they worked long hours, seven days a week. After several very lean months, they had completed a few samples of the new product.

Wholesalers generally rejected his new style electric plug. They told him it was acceptable, even innovative, but that he needed far more than one single item for the large wholesalers and retailers to be interested in his company. He persevered, and gradually people began to buy the plug, when they saw that it was better in quality and almost 50% lower in price. Matsushita kept his business afloat by taking on contracts for other items, such as insulator plates.