Hitachi Business Strategies
To be in business for 100 years, surmounting tough challenges and coming out successfully can only be attributed to the strategies and key decisions Hitachi’s management took and acted on over the decades.
Here are the key decisions and strategies that have made Hitachi the huge success that it is today, and which you can adopt in your business too.
Being Confident Of Your Ability
Most people on earth have great capacity to achieve certain tasks, but they are not confident of themselves that they could do it and so never even try. Success in life and business requires believing and applying one’s abilities.
Hitachi was founded based on the absolute belief and confidence Namihei Odaira had for his ability to create certain products that were then heavily imported into Japan. With this confidence he did not only succeed in producing small five-horsepower electric motors, his product could actually compete favorably with imported kinds on quality and durability.
Persevering In Reaching Your Goals
Success doesn’t come on a platter of gold, there will be initial rejections and failures on the way to achieving it, but if you are not overwhelmed by them or quit, you will soon start seeing the ray of success overshadowing you – opportunity for your breakthrough will always emerge somewhere in the future. If you don’t give up before then, you will enter your desired success.
For some years Namihei had only one customer for his electric motors because other companies were already used to the imported kinds and didn’t really think Namihei’s could measure up to them. But Namihei kept on pushing his business until the opportunity came for his product to be tested by large scale buyers, and he didn’t disappoint them.
Anticipating And Preparing For Possible Future Developments
One of the surest strategies to achieving business success is to be able, from past and present experiences, predict the trends and developments your industry may likely experience in the future, and so get your business prepared for it. Because you have taken position, when the future eventually comes and your prediction comes through, you will immediately reap the benefits the new era has in stock before other unprepared businesses start adjusting their operations to also tap into it. This is how discerning companies position themselves to become market leaders in their industries.
The coming of hi-tech industry in the 1950s did not take Hitachi by surprise. The company had well prepared for it when Chikara Kurata, the president, invested heavily on computer research, and instituted a technology exchange with General Electric and RCA.
Flexibility In Your Business Structure And Processes
Change will always take place, and opportunities will present themselves in new dimensions, however if your operating structures are not flexible enough to quickly adapt to the change and new opportunities, your business may be adversely affected, making your business no longer relevant, or shutting it out of great opportunity to make sales.
Hitachi’s operating structure was flexible enough to enable it weather the storm of the OPEC oil crises of 1974. By taking certain necessary cost-cutting measures, and adjusting its operations, it went through the crises successfully.
Recognizing Change And Restructuring Your Business
Many business owners lose their businesses simply because they fail to notice the change that has transformed their industry, and so do not make the necessary changes to their businesses to make them relevant to consumers’ new taste and desires.
You need to be in tune with your industry, and your society and observe the changes that are taking place in technology, consumer behavior, economy, and competition, and to determine how they could be affecting your industry and business. Then you need to make the needed restructuring to put your business in tune with consumers’ present needs.
Hitachi almost lost its business in the late 1980s when it initially failed to realize the changes in its industry that have made industrial equipment and consumer products markets, which were it major businesses, no longer selling. In fact, due to its poor sales, its profit dropped by 29 percent in 1986.
Having recognized it was being sidelined by certain developments, Hitachi, led by Katsushige Mita, immediately took action to redress the situation by restructuring the company’s operations and business strategies.
Read Hitachi Success Story here: The Making Of Japan’s Largest Electronics Manufacturer
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