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KAZUO INAMORI
TRANSLATED BY T. R. REID Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1997 190 pages. y2,900
During the past decade in the United States, so much faith has been placed in corporate downsizing and restructuring as a key to global competition that Wall Street rejoices at the news of layoffs and rising unemployment figures. But the translator's preface says Inamori Kazuo, "one of the world's most successful business managers, argues that there is, indeed, another way to corporate success." He should know.
After faltering on the usual, examination-strewn road to success in Japan, the 27-year-old Inamori founded a tiny company with seven colleagues in 1959. That company, called Kyocera, is now a world leader in high-tech ceramic and electronic products....