Great piece. You beat me to it with the mention of Sony, but it wasn’t Morita who saw gold in silicon; it was founder Masaru Ibuka who saw it and Leo Esaki who cracked it by making the first tunneling diode. Esaki had a PhD from Tokyo Imperial University, won a Nobel Prize for his work at Sony in 1958, and then jumped ship to IBM, so he’s a perfect example of your brainy engineer spreading innovation among companies.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about why Japan has thus far failed to make any mark in the field of AI, and I wonder if this PhD dilemma isn’t a part of the puzzle.
I write more about the Morita-Ibuka interplay in the context of the development of the Walkman in my book, “Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World.” You might enjoy it!
Some related thoughts here about the importance of PhDs to US-Japan collaboration and by extension geopolitical ties:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-does-collaboration-between-japanese-american-so-often-riles-v5ihc
Thanks Annelise, I will read this. I wrote a bit about this earlier. https://richardkatz.substack.com/p/restoring-japans-leadership-in-innovation-466?utm_source=publication-search
Great piece. You beat me to it with the mention of Sony, but it wasn’t Morita who saw gold in silicon; it was founder Masaru Ibuka who saw it and Leo Esaki who cracked it by making the first tunneling diode. Esaki had a PhD from Tokyo Imperial University, won a Nobel Prize for his work at Sony in 1958, and then jumped ship to IBM, so he’s a perfect example of your brainy engineer spreading innovation among companies.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about why Japan has thus far failed to make any mark in the field of AI, and I wonder if this PhD dilemma isn’t a part of the puzzle.
Matt, thanks so much for the info about SONY. I did not know this.
I write more about the Morita-Ibuka interplay in the context of the development of the Walkman in my book, “Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World.” You might enjoy it!
https://www.pureinventionbook.com/
I'll check it out. Thanks