In corporate governance, a mission statement answers three questions: What do we do? For whom? Why does it matter? Sony’s current official mission, as articulated by CEO Kenichiro Yoshida, collapses these distinctions into a single, untranslatable Japanese word: Kando .
Official statement (paraphrased): “Fill the world with emotion, through the power of creativity and technology.” sony's mission statement
At first glance, this is vaporware. “Emotion” is unmeasurable; “creativity” is assumed. However, this paper posits that the statement’s ambiguity is its strategic purpose. Unlike Ford (“making people’s lives better”) or Google (“organizing the world’s information”), Sony’s mission rejects operational specificity to protect a sprawling conglomerate structure—spanning gaming (PlayStation), music (Sony Music), movies (Sony Pictures), electronics (TVs/sensors), and financial services (Sony Bank). The mission’s elasticity is not a bug; it is a survival mechanism. In corporate governance, a mission statement answers three
But the mission’s depth reveals a deeper corporate truth: Sony is no longer a technology company that makes emotions possible; it is a finance and IP company that occasionally manufactures nostalgia. Until Sony spins off its financial arm or sells its sensor division, the mission will remain what it has always been—a beautiful, untranslatable excuse for surviving without a strategy. Sony’s current official mission, as articulated by CEO
Kando (感動) is a compound of kan (feeling) and do (to move). In Japanese business culture, kando implies a sudden, involuntary emotional peak—the gasp when a song hits the right note or a game plot twists.