Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Keep in mind what we were saying for the last few minutes here about the size of these various technology "products" that were being used to build the radios that were the size of console tables and tape recorders the size of nightstands. The transistor is available for license and Ibuka is like, this is it. Just like when he saw the tape recorder and just like when he got obsessed with radios before, he's like, we got to do this. Morita is like, okay. Morita goes off to New York—this is, I believe, in 1953—and negotiates a deal. It ends up taking about a year to finalize this, but he negotiates a license from Western Electric, Bell Labs, to use the transistor. The Bell Labs guys are like, well, what are you going to do with it? Ibuka and Morita are like, we're going to make miniature radios with the transistor. They're like, guys, you can't do that. This stuff is still done with germanium at this point. You can't get enough power in this to really power a radio that would actually work. We think the market application that makes sense here is hearing aids. Hearing aids, that's right. Ibuka and Morita are like, no, the hearing aid market in Japan will not be a viable one for us. In fact, I think there's a cultural issue where it's perceived as a weakness to be hard of hearing. They knew for lots of reasons that there was no chance that they could build a big company and a big product making hearing aids.…

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