On money, culture, and sucking
Found an interesting article this morning that I found fascinating, though not as much for ex-Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamaushi’s bold refusal of Steve Ballmer’s attemp to buy his company (which was the lead at The Inquirer) than I did for his startling non-PC-ness. He was shockingly — refreshingly! — direct in his statements about rival companies, America and American corporations, and even people he works with. Reading the article, in these days of corporate mega-mergers I couldn’t imagine any American CEOs ever being as frank as this person.
And therein lies the problem. I remember Nintendo as a runaway success back in Junior High. All the cool kids had one and talked about the games and how to beat them at lunch the way workers used to talk about last night’s tv programs around the water cooler. Now that I have a sense of the man pulling the strings, I can see why it was such a success; he knows how to take risks. American corporate culture now is all about playing it safe. There has to be a clear profit on every quarterly earnings report, or else there must be a clear plan to get back to profit. Anything else is failure, and it’s lead to a definite decline of creativity in media and entertainment here.
At one point, Yamaushi talks about Capcom’s CEO breaking his word on an agreement they made, and it’s clear from his disgust how Japanese culture views that kind of thing. It makes me think about our culture, and how the old fashioned gentlemen’s agreement is truly a thing of the past. Business isn’t about people and working together anymore, it’s about lawyers and CYA (aka Cover Your Ass for the uninitiated). I used to really admire Japanese culture for their sense of honor, and I suppose I still do, but I wonder now if corporate business is going to bring mediocrity to Japanese culture the way it has to American culture. And that’s sad.
It’s funny how money changes things.
Edit: And in a not-so-bizarre twist of fate, the article referenced in this post has turned out to be a fake. C’est la vie.