Sony . .

A MANAGER'S CHALLENGE A Turnaround at Sony is in the Works iPod, smartphones, and the Wii garne console that better met customer needs than Sony's old-fashioned and expensive products. Finally, all these companies were working to reduce manufacturing costs, and Sony lagged behind because its bloated cost structure had made its products expensive and uncompetitive. Why did Sony lose its competitive advantage in both style and price? Why is managing the global environment so complex today? Sony, the Japanese electronics maker, was renowned in the 1990s for using its engineering prowess to develop blockbuster new products such as the Walkman, Trinitron TV, and PlayStation. Its engineers churned out an average of four new product ideas every day- something attributed to its culture, called the "Sony Way," which emphasized communication, cooperation, and harmony between its product engineering teams across the company. Sony's engineers were given the freedom to ! pursue their own ideas, and its different product teams pursued their own innovations; but problems arose with this approach in the 2000s. Companies in Korea and Taiwan such as LG and Samsung made major innovations in technologies such as the development of advanced LCD screen displays and flash memory that made Sony's technologies obsolete. SORY make. F4 F8