JapanAkio Morita
A physics graduate of Osaka Imperial University, Morita came from a family of sake brewers but chose engineering over the family trade. During wartime naval service he met Masaru Ibuka, with whom he co-founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo in 1946 — later renamed Sony. Morita drove the company's international expansion, relocating his family to New York in 1963 to understand Western markets firsthand. Under his leadership Sony pioneered the transistor radio, Trinitron TV, and the Walkman — a product he personally championed, envisioning portable personal audio long before a market for it existed. His hallmark was an instinct for what consumers would want before they could articulate it, paired with an insistence that design and usability carry equal weight to engineering — a philosophy that still echoes in Sony's approach to consumer electronics and console VR.
