He also understood that there would be problems with globalization
and challenges to this process. He envisioned putting in place a
framework that could support globalization in the face of inevitable
inequities, disparities, and the kind of criticism that we saw so recently
after his death at the WTO talks in Seattle in 1999. Akio favored not
just “globalization” in the abstract, but something he called “global
localization.” Under his formulation of global localization, multinational
companies should strive to manufacture and create jobs in local
markets, transfer technology and skills, defend the environment, and
otherwise contribute as good corporate citizens building up local
and regional economies around the world. Sony, under his leadership
and today, is an exemplar in these areas. Akio articulated a visionary
proposal for global economic and business harmonization, which he
discussed in a series of path-breaking articles for one of Japan’s leading
intellectual publications. I encouraged him to share these views
with the English-speaking world. He did this, and added even more
to the argument in a major article for the Atlantic Monthly in June
1993. Almost alone among leading Japanese voices of that time, he
recognized that Japan would have to give up a lot in terms of more
open access to its markets, deregulation, and so forth, in order to be
a credible participant in a genuinely harmonized new world economic
order.