Stories from a real-life comic book hero
By Peter Marsh
Published: October 31 2010 22:14 | Last updated: October 31 2010 22:14
Schoolchildren in the Japanese city of Kyoto have been grappling recently with an unorthodox addition to their reading: a manga-style comic book that tells the story of Shigenobu Nagamori, an extrovert Japanese electronics entrepreneur whose company has grown from humble beginnings to become one of the world’s biggest makers of electric motors.
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The chief executive of Nidec – who started his company in 1973 and remains chief executive – is depicted on the cover of the book (pictured below) as something akin to a Japanese version of Superman, described in garish kanji characters as “the man who is hotter than the sun”.
A 90-minute conversation with Mr Nagamori in his office on the 20th floor of Nidec’s Kyoto headquarters is a frenetic affair. Speaking in his characteristic high-speed staccato, at such a pace that the translator struggles to keep up, the former engineer explains why it is important to convey stories such as his to young people as a way of stimulating the formation of new companies.
“I believe if you want to be an engineer, money’s not the only thing. Engineers are often pursuing a dream about inventing new products that will benefit other people. I think you’ve got to put this dream to people, and that’s the way to motivate them.”
In Mr Nagamori’s case, his dream was using what was in the 1970s a novel concept – an electronically controlled, or brushless, design – to change the operation of conventional motors.
Brushless motors can reduce the energy consumption of electric motors by up to a third and promise to make a big impact on cutting the world’s total power needs.
“Fifty years ago, what we call the ‘rice’ of industry – the most mainstream product that drives everything else – was steel and 25 years ago it was semiconductors. But today it’s the electric motor,” proclaims Mr Nagamori, a lean and fit-looking 66-year-old.
“Look inside a car, and it’s got about 80 motors. In a few years’ time – especially with the emergence of electric vehicles – you will probably see 160 motors in each car. In 1973, when I started my company, the average American household contained 60 motors, [while today] it’s close to 150.”
Mr Nagamori is well known in Japan for making outspoken comments and indulging in slightly eccentric practices: he insists on being the “number one” in everything he does, for instance, when travelling by jet or in the bullet train. When Nidec built its new headquarters in 2003, Mr Nagamori demanded it was the tallest building by far in his home city.
One of his favoured management tenets is to make all new graduates who start at Nidec spend a good part of their first year cleaning out the company toilets. “It’s to convey the idea that life in companies isn’t always easy,” Mr Nagamori explains. With a stake of 14 per cent in Nidec, he is ranked by Forbes magazine as Japan’s 13th wealthiest person.
Mr Nagamori’s background was far from propitious. Growing up in a tiny three-room house on the edge of Kyoto with six brothers and sisters, he says he learnt important lessons from his parents.
He used to help his father – a farmer who eked out a living growing vegetables – to sell the produce in markets in the centre of the city. The youthful Mr Nagamori could never understand why the older man refused to sell his remaining stock at a discount at the end of the day, preferring to throw it in the river as the two of them walked home.
“But my father told me that if you’ve developed something with your whole heart and brain, it’s something special ... He told me that if you wanted to make a success of your life, you should value what you do, recognise the worth of your products, and do your utmost to keep the prices as high as you can achieve.”
After gaining a scholarship to study electronics engineering at university, Mr Nagamori worked for two Japanese engineering companies before deciding to start Nidec in 1973. The oil shock of that year, he says, gave him the chance to make a success out of his new “brushless” designs.
“Energy costs went up a lot. I reasoned that energy was becoming a commodity that people would value.”
But his mother initially tried to talk him out of this idea, arguing that by taking a gamble he might lose everything. “[Then] she asked me: ‘Are you ready to work twice as hard as everyone else? If other people work eight hours a day, are you going to work 16 hours?’”
The CV
Born: 1944 in Kyoto
Education: 1963-67 Studied electronics engineering at Tokyo Polytechnic University.
Career: 1967-70 Worked as an engineer at TEAC, the audio equipment-maker, in Tokyo.
1970-73 Joined Yamashina Seiki, a precision engineering company in Kyoto that was setting up an electric motor division.
1973 Set up Nidec, where he is chairman and chief executive, with funds of Y20m that he had saved up through selling shares in TEAC.
Hobbies: Calligraphy
After Mr Nagamori assured her on this point, his mother quietened down, and gave the venture her blessing, he recalls. With a hint of melodrama, he goes on: “At the end of the day, if I’m tempted to slacken off, I can look out [of his 20th floor office] and see my mother’s grave. I say to her on these occasions: ‘I made you that promise, [and] I am still working.’”
The stories of Mr Nagamori’s childhood are laid out – in a series of graphic pictures and with a fast-paced dialogue – in the Nidec-published manga book. It seems the 5,000 children aged 10 to 15 who have received the publications have been impressed.
“We’ve had a very enthusiastic response [to the books],” says Mr Nagamori. “Children read [them], and take them home to their families. And they then have a discussion, which I think is a good idea, because you have to get the mothers and fathers involved as well.”
He hopes his life story might trigger the impulse in a young person to do something similar.
“It’s necessary to say that this [setting up a company] is a worthwhile goal for a young person, as distinct from them going to work for a company that is already established.”
This year, Nidec is expected to have sales of nearly $8bn, two-thirds of which is likely to come from electric motors, the rest from other devices the company makes, such as electronic components. It has almost 100,000 employees, most of them in Asian countries outside Japan, including China, Thailand and Vietnam, where the company has most of its factories.
Nearly all the 1.2bn motors Nidec is likely to make this year are small units that fit into devices such as hard disk drives; most of the world’s desktop computers plus mobile gadgets such as the Apple iPod have inside them at least one Nidec motor.
But, helped by a series of acquisitions, including the purchase in the summer of the motor division of Emerson, the big US engineering group, the company is also branching out into bigger motors of the type found in domestic appliances, cars and factory machinery.
Mr Nagamori has given no hint of any ideas about retirement: he has set out plans to keep expanding the company partly on the basis of more acquisitions, with his goal being to reach sales of Y10,000bn (about $110bn at today’s exchange rates) by 2030, when he would be in his mid-80s.
In keeping with Mr Nagamori’s long-term way of planning, he is willing to be patient. He says he started talking to David Farr, the chief executive of Emerson, about buying the company’s motor division some 10 years ago. “He [Mr Farr] said he doubted Nidec had the capability to make this purchase in the near future. He suspected that it might be a bit too much of a risk for Nidec,” Mr Nagamori recalls.
After being initially “a little bit angry” at this response, Mr Nagamori says he resolved to wait for Mr Farr to change his mind – which he eventually did, with a deal to sell the division for an undisclosed sum being finally agreed in a meeting between the two men four months ago. Emerson declined to comment on the circumstances behind the deal.
Asked about his extrovert style, which is in marked contrast to the conservative approach of most Japanese business leaders, he says that much of this has come about from Nidec’s exposure to foreign businesses, many of them based in the US. “I’ve always loved the US; I like the approach to communications.”
Ike Takeda, chief executive of Nichicon, another Kyoto-based electronics manufacturer, and a friend of Mr Nagamori, says that in a few years’ time the Nidec man’s approach may not seem so unusual.
“More Japanese business people have had the experience of operating on a global basis and are becoming more outgoing – which is, I think, good thing for Japan as a whole,” Mr Takeda says.
Mr Nagamori says he spends little time worrying whether his approach fits in with the prevailing trends in Japanese business circles.
“I tend to say what I mean. And people, of course, know me. When they hear me say something, they say: ‘He’s just being Nagamori’ ... Perhaps I am treated as an exception.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
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