The site will offer digital music downloads, news and information for customers of the Memory Stick Walkman, its Internet music device. Sony's internal chaos has not been accidental. Having spent much of the late 1980s and early 1990s recovering from a disappointing multibillion-dollar investment in Hollywood, Sony was primed for a housecleaning. And Idei, who leapfrogged a long line of front-runners to Sony's top spot, was eager to pick up the broom. The sweep culminated in the 1995 firing of Sony Corporation of America CEO Mickey Schulhof.
Stringer holds the honor of being the most highly ranking foreigner in any Japanese company.
He was initially given the comparatively lowly task of overseeing the movie theater chain. Idei traveled to New York weekly to handle the rest of the U.S. operations. But Stringer cultivated relationships with each of the individual units and built Idei's trust, insiders say, finally convincing Tokyo to hand over the reins. The corporate culture evolved into a sort of Darwinism, where the units compete in the open market - even if it means developing competing products and services. In the Sony world order, synergy didn't exist.