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Looking back at his first 12 months in the top job at Sony, Howard Stringer said Monday that getting software engineers more involved in product design and the day-to-day management of the company has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the year.
Stringer was appointed chairman and chief executive officer of Sony in June 2005. The Welsh-born executive spent the past year trying to get the company’s independent divisions marching to the same beat while not stifling creativity.
A key part of the strategy has been elevating software engineers within the company. Many of Sony’s most successful products have been born from its hardware engineering skills, but the new age of digital electronics demands a stronger emphasis on software-related features, Stringer said.
“It has been my hope that we would find a way to include more and more and more young people, who are more familiar with the digital age, in the decision-making at Sony and make them create a ground-up revolution,” Stringer said at a briefing with reporters in Tokyo.
“We needed, in effect, to do two things,” he said of the situation when he took control. “We needed to have the traditional businesses more disciplined and more focused on creating champion products, and on the other hand we needed to bring the new generation of software engineers more directly into the mainstream of Sony thinking and decision making.”
Through a series of lunches, cocktail parties and events Stringer sought to bring the software engineers together to meet, talk and explore new ideas, he said. At a recent management meeting, around 80 such engineers were given plum seats at the front of the hall — normally reserved for higher-level managers — to encourage them to think more about Sony’s future.
Stringer’s determination to boost the company’s software skills was underlined in late 2005 when he poached Apple’s Tim Schaaff to head up Sony’s software development. Schaaff had managed development of Apple’s Quicktime video technology.
“If we are to create successful digitally networked products we understand that we need to marry software engineers to product designers at the beginning of the creation of new products,” Stringer said.
The first results of this new strategy can expect to be seen in products soon, a Sony spokesman said.
Overall, the restructuring of Sony’s business is on track, Stringer said. A plan unveiled in September called for the closure of unprofitable divisions, consolidation or closure of factories and killing-off non-core products. Restructuring targets are being met, he said, although Sony’s electronics business remains in the red, indicating that the company still has work to do.
Sony’s portable audio business, which has been hit hard by the popularity of Apple’s iPod, remains below target, said Ryoji Chubachi, a Sony president and the head of its electronics business. However, its Bravia LCD televisions are selling above expectations, while Handycam digital camcorders and Cyber-shot digital still cameras are selling well, he said.
— Martyn Williams (IDG News Service)
07:07 PM 
Mark Hiratsuka •
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