David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Okay, let's talk about power. This one's hard to do because it's a conglomerate. The question is, do we talk about each business having its own power or lack thereof? Or maybe let's first ask, does the conglomerate itself have an overarching power where it actually effectively leverages the ownership of multiple businesses to help those businesses versus competitors? I would say, today, the answer is no. I do think in the past there was a brand power. that went across much of the conglomerate, maybe not all of it. For sure. This is great. I actually thought you were going to take it there, so I pulled this quote. In the New York Times in 1983, there was an article that said, "The technological leader, Sony was able to command a premium for its wares in the marketplace and refrain from price-cutting, allowing it to keep its profit margins up." The irony was that this piece was written right around the time that Betamax was not catching on, so they were starting to cut prices showing for the first time that they didn't have the brand cache. Actually, the analyst who's writing that article says, it's over for Sony, the company's best days are behind it. The stock would go up a lot after 1983, but the spirit of what they were saying was right because I think the very thing that was alluring to Steve Jobs—that this company makes stuff of the highest quality always has the superior brand and therefore can command higher prices—was kind of going away.…

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