Konosuke Matsushita

Konosuke Matsushita was a Japanese entrepreneur who founded the company in 1918 that grew into the Panasonic Corporation, one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers in the world, starting from small beginnings producing electrical fittings such as improved light socket attachments. Under his leadership the company expanded through the twentieth century into radios, household appliances and a wide range of electronics products, and Matsushita became known for a distinctive management philosophy that emphasized long-term employee welfare, a sense of shared corporate mission, and the idea that a company existed to serve society as much as to earn profit. He survived the severe economic disruption of postwar Japan, including a period when Occupation authorities designated his company for possible breakup, and rebuilt it into a global industrial leader in the following decades. In his later years he founded the PHP Institute, devoted to philosophy and public policy research, and the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, intended to train future Japanese political leaders, before his death in 1989, and he remains widely regarded as one of modern Japan's most influential industrialists.