Kazuhiko
Nishi Oral History
Kazuhiko
Nishi’s oral history offers a glimpse into
the mind of a true business entrepreneur,
visionary, and management strategist. Dropping out
of Waseda University after only one year, Nishi
started his own company, ASCII Publishing
Corporation in 1977 (now ASCII Corporation). With
only minimal capital and an unrelenting drive,
Nishi, who had founded the company to publish
his articles that kept getting rejected from other
publications, developed a corporate structure that
became a model Japanese-style intermediary
business, specializing in horizontal
diversification. As a market-driven business
that remained small in management style over
the years, Nishi diversified his product investment
with an unmatched flexibility, from publishing to
software, to technical design, to
semiconductors. Nishi describes his (and
ASCII’s) management, employee, product,
and marketing style as that of
“synergy”: the understanding of
diversified elements that supplement one another to
create a strategy of working together.
In
answering Aspray’s questions about
“how to successfully manage a
technological business,” Nishi’s oral
history provides unique answers. Hailing from
an unorthodox, yet still technical background, Nishi
proffers insight from a management-minimal and
product-diversified-heavy company.
Additionally, though not covered in-depth in this
oral history, his relationship with Microsoft
and Bill Gates in the late 1970’s and
early 1980’s, denotes the unique and
important position that Nishi held in the
growing software and pc industries. His corporate
strategies focus on a delegated structural
style, paired with a fiscal and budgetary
autocracy, and a clear goal that technology is the
tool, not the objective. Equally, his
straightforward assessment of employee skills,
the near retirement-age pool, and the practicalities
of continuing education, demonstrate how
Nishi’s mandates for ASCII have allowed
the company to succeed, or rather survive (in his
words), in the fast-paced technology market.
ASCII Corporation now constitutes the largest
media empire in the Pacific region, and Kazuhiko
Nishi, the once college dropout, now teaches
and lectures as a professor.
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1
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Discussion of technology
background and skills needed to manage
software, semiconductor design and
publishing; creating a roadmap
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2
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Decentralized management
structure; emphasis on profit and sales;
technology as a tool, not an objective
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3
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“Basic
research” strategies;
subsidiaries and joint ventures;
short-term business outlays versus
long-term investments; growing a
company
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4-5
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Serving as an intermediary
between U.S. ventures and large Japanese
companies
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6
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How his business developed
as a marketing firm--from publishing to
software to semiconductors:
“synergy”
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7
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His engagement in the movie
industry
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8
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Specialists, synergy, and
design methodologies
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9
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Developing software, quality
assurance, and distribution
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10
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Hiring engineers; the
Japanese software talent pool
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11
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Recruiting, job rotation,
and continuing education
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12
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Sending engineers to get
Ph.D.s
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13
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Predominance of short
lifespan products; future product
development
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14
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Magazines and publishing as
secure income; succeeding in a risky
field
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15
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Success versus survival;
management and the market; managing
through small groups
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16
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Delegating authority;
central set of business skills
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17
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Attracting employees with
business skills; the
approaching-retirement-age pool;
long-time employee growth lagging
behind business growth
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18
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Accelerated employee rise
through the company ranks; Japanese
sensitivities to peer placements;
increased responsibility before
increased salary
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19
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Overseas strategies; focus
on Japan; horizontal diversification
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20
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Content-oriented business
and functionally oriented business;
national and international products
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21
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Nishi’s background;
starting ASCII; how he spends his time:
compartmentalization
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22
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Brain athletics; personal
time; the problem of capital, past and
present
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23
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Banks as partners and on
boards for access to capital; business
competition
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24-25
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Managing a technological
business: a budget system, delegating
execution (but not budgeting), long-term
investment, profits in
low-tech; Nishi’s personal
history
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26
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Starting a business;
organizational diversification
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27
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Partners, expansion, and
Microsoft
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28
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Termination of Microsoft
relationship; the Modem 100
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29
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Relationship with Radio
Shack; key events: starting the company
and “now”
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30-31
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Successful products: the
Nintendo joystick and software;
Nishi’s interest in
the history of media development; the
“dark part of
history”
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32
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The bright part of history
versus the black part; true historical
assessment; engineering and technology
as magic: making the
impossible possible
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33
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Denying accomplishments to
begin new activities; diminishing
arrogance
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34
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Remaining sensitive and
active
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