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John P. Kotter is The Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at The Harvard Business
School. He is a Graduate of MIT and Harvard and has been on the Business School Faculty
since 1972. In 1980, at the Age of Thirty Three, he was voted tenure and a full
Professorship, making him one of the youngest people in the history of the University to be
so honored.

Professor Kotter is the Author of the General Managers (1982),Power

and Influence; Beyond Formal Authority(1985),A Force For Change; How leadership differ
from management (1990)Corporate Culture and Performance (1992,with Jim Heskett), The
New Rules : How to succeed in today’s post corporate world (1995), and leading changes
(1996),he also created two highly acclaimed executive video’s one on leadership (1991)
and one on corporate Culture (1993),as well as en educational CD- ROM on initiating
change (1997).his article written over the past twenty years for the Harvard Business
review have sold a million and half reprints.
 The many honors won by professor Kotter include an Exxon award for
innovation in graduate business school curriculum design, a Johnson, Smith & Kinsey
award for new perspective in business leadership, and a McKinsey award for best business
review articles.

Professor Kotter has taught in both MBA and Executive programs at Harvard and is a
frequent speaker at top management meeting around the world.

SUMMARY

By many standards he didn’t look like a great leader. A picture of

Konosuke Matsushita shows an unsmiling young man whose ear stick out, who is neither
more than five feet five inches tall nor weighted more than 135 pounds. He didn’t excel at
public speaking and in his later years grew increasingly frail. He rarely displayed speed of
light intellectual skills or warmed an audience with hilarious on ecolotes, nevertheless he
did what all great leaders do motivate large groups of individuals to improve the human
condition through the Matsushita Electric Industry (MEI) $ 65 billion a year group with
brands like National, Panasonic, etc.

Konosuke Matsushita was born in a village called Wasamura, two

hundred and forty miles to the south of Osaka city November 27, 1894. He was the Final
Sibling of a ten member Family of middle class Stature. Konosuke Matsushita’s father
owned 150 acres of land worked by seven tenant farmers. In his early years life was
peaceful and carefree for Konosuke Matsushita till 1899 when the family economic
fortunes collapsed. The ten member family was forced to move into a small slum
apartment nearby Wakayama, at the age of nine he was send to Osaka city to work
sixteen hours a day and live with his employer but casualties affected the family, and
within a year from October 1900 to August 1901, Konosuke Matsushita lost three of his
siblings due to infectious diseases.

Konosuke Matsushita at the age of nine started working as an

apprentice in Osaka. His initial duties were that of a household servant, and then he
started working on the polishing of the product Hibachi for which he was paid 5 sen twice
a month with free food and stay. After working for 3 months he joined a bicycle shop,
wherein he worked as an unskilled labour. In 1906 Konosuke Matsushita lost two more of
his siblings and his father as well the family was reduced to five. He worked at the Bicycle
shop till the age of 15. Somewhere in 1910 Konosuke Matsushita approached a Brother in
law and asked help in obtaining job with an electric light company .This landed him in the
Osaka Electric light Co. His job was to assist senior employees in the wiring of businesses
and homes for lightning. Konosuke Matsushita’s job was to pull a two - wheeled cult loaded
with tools and fixtures, provided help when asked, and generally be a good servant. His
salary was one Yen per month, he attended night classes at Kansui Commercial and
Industrial school but after two years he quit. By the time he was sixteen, Konosuke
Matsushita’s was managing and directing other people, and became a Foreman at the age
of nineteen. In 1913, three years after he joined the electric company he lost his mother
and a sister, the family of ten was now down to three, Konosuke Matsushita and his two
sisters.

In May 1915 Konosuke Matsushita got married to a young woman

Mumeno Iue who worked as a domestic servant at a merchant family in Kyomachibori. At
the time of marriage Konosuke Matsushita was twenty seven and his wife nineteen years
old. In 1917 Konosuke Matsushita designed a light socket superior to the one made by his
company, but his boss refused to accept it. Disheartened by it he quit the job and decided
to manufacture his own sockets and market it through another company. Konosuke
Matsushita began his business with savings of one hundred yen and four assistants. The
first was his wife Mumeno, second was Isaburo Hayashi, a former co-worker and friend,
third was Nobustro Moriter another co-worker and last Zoshio Iue, his wife’s brother. With
no revenues and very limited financing, they scrambled to manufacture, assistance finally
came from a friend. Samples were manufacture but received poor reception from the
wholesalers. To add to the misery Hayashi and Morita left to take job elsewhere. But they
didn’t give up. Finally they got an order of one thousand insulation plates to which
Konosuke Matsushita agreed without hesitation, the first order was completed in time and
the purchaser did like the quality hence a second order of two thousand plates was placed.
Konosuke Matsushita started producing electrical attachment plug in addition to the above
two products after moving to a bigger facility Konosuke Matsushita produced two way
sockets. The exclusive rights to market it was sold to a wholesaler named Yoshida for a
3000 Yen loan to Finance increased production capacity. But miseries continued and in
1919 twenty eight year old sister Ai passed away and two years later Iwa died. The family
of ten was reduced to one. He was the only survivor.

Matsushita Electric Industry (MEI) expanded in 1919, 1920, 1921 facing

increasing competition from new entrance in the electrical products. Matsushita initially
would himself design the products, his main focus was customer satisfaction .He believed
that if the customers was satisfied with his product he would come back again. He
intended to build a relationship with the customer. By 1922, the firm was introducing one
or two products every month, better but cheaper was the usual strategy. In 1922, he
invented battery – powered bicycle lamps. To distribute it he developed a new marketing
strategy for not asking for money from retailers until the product was sold. Within weeks
sales Skyrocketed. The focus now shifted on mass production and mass marketing. The
lamps were sold under the brand name “National”.

Konosuke Matsushita had a girl born in 1920 and then in 1926 a boy
was born to Mumeno. But unfortunately the boy died in a year. In 1929 the great
depression hit the world. It hit electrical supply manufactures of Japan hard and fast. Even
though the economy was weak Konosuke Matsushita to enter the radio market. Matsushita
Electric Industry sold its first radio in August 1930.production of National Radio’s increased
from 1000 in 1931 to 2,37,000 in 1938. By 1942 Matsushita Electric Industry was the
largest Radio manufacturer of Japan. Matsushita Electric Industry was no longer a small
enterprise. It manufactured more than two hundred products in four different categories
wiring fixtures, radio, lamps and dry batteries. This was the time Konosuke Matsushita
started appreciating the value of religion and God in his life. In 1933, Konosuke Matsushita
reorganized the firm by-products. Division one manufactured radios division two focused
on Lamps and batteries, division three produced wiring implements and synthetic resins,
division four handled electric heating appliances-irons, heaters. Each group operated like a
separate entity with different production and sales distribution networks. By 1930, the
business employed around 6500 people. At the end of the decade Konosuke Matsushita
married his only daughter to Masaharu Hirata, a graduate of the law department of Tokyo
University who later on went to become the chairman of Matsushita Electric Industry.

Around 1937, World War II started and Matsushita Electric Industry was
forced to help the Japanese military by manufacturing products according to their
requirements. Konosuke Matsushita considered this as a duty towards the Nation and
created an aircraft and shipbuilding company. But the Japanese lost the war and the allied
force took the control of it. Matsushita Electric Industry was forced to cease production and
Konosuke Matsushita was asked to move out of the company board. It was not until 1950,
that both Konosuke Matsushita and his company were allowed to operate freely again. It
was a process of rebuilding the firm from scratch as all was lost in the war. But Konosuke
Matsushita stood up to the challenge. In 1952, Matsushita Electric Industry signed a joint
venture with Philips to provide technological know how of its product, A Philips Matsushita
factory was built in Osaka to provide television picture tubes florescent lights and other
electrical products. In 1959 a sales company was established in United States and product
were sold under the brand name Panasonic. KM founded two institutions; one was the PHP
(peace and happiness through prosperity) in 1946 and the other Matsushita Institute of
Government Management (MIGM) in1979. He spent later part of his life in this institute
studying human nature with research students. He passed away in the spring of 1989
wherein over forty thousand people attended his funeral. The president of United Statesin
a condolence message of his family called him on inspiration to people around the world.
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