No. 7: You can get through a crisis as long as you stick with technology.

Apple has been growing in full flood. Its aggregate market value is about 20 trillion yen that is more than six times as much as that of Panasonic and Sony, and it is approaching Microsoft’s aggregate market value of about 23 trillion yen. The source of Apple’s tremendous success lies in its identity that no other company can imitate. It is only in the high-growth period that a company can increase its revenue by doing the same thing that other are doing. The true competitive edge lies in the uncompromising pursuit of identity. Then, what matters most is to decide in which area a company should pursue its identity. An old company that produces gold and silver leaves and flours reduced the factory utilization rate to as low as 20% because the auto-related business slackened in 2008. The auto-related business accounted for 60% of the revenue of this company founded in 1700. This long-established company desperately looked for the field in which its traditional technology would be utilized, and decided to venture into the battery business. The company exhibited its self-developed perforated electrolytic copper foils in the secondary battery exhibition held last March. It products attracted wide attention from the visitors as the state-of-the-art technology developed by a well-established company. President of this company said with confidence, “We are not outdone by others in the technology to thin and break up a thing. As long as we excel others in this technology, we can get through a crisis.” The company that drops its guard loses in technology innovation. When your company has a difficult time, every company also has a difficult time. Knowing that your competitors are making more efforts that you are making, you have to make strenuous and unremitting efforts. Otherwise, you will be left in the dust created by your competitors.