Panasonic

by Francis McInerny

"Panasonic is an insider's tale of the root and branch rebuilding of a global giant that was broken in every way: sales, profits, brand, organization, manufacturing, and distribution. Everything that could go wrong had been wrong for years when incoming CEO Kirk Nakamura began his reforms in 2000. Then, in the earliest stage of his rebuilding, when the company was at its most vulnerable, it was slapped sideways by the tech stock crash of 2001 and nearly went out of business." "Panasonic is about one of the largest and most complex enterprises on the planet, Matsushita Electric Industrial, a company with more products in more homes, offices, and factories than probably any other manufacturer in history. It is about how a world-beating brand began to implode under its own weight. It is about a company so deeply bound up in Japanese tradition that meaningful decisions became impossible. It's about a company that was, by every measure, headed for the history books." "That it became instead