Synergy and Other Lies would be a good first reading assignment for Howard Stringer, Sony's new chief executive, to be followed by The Synergy Myth.
Then Stringer should recognize that the Sony he inherits is constitutionally incapable of making one (electronics) plus one (entertainment) equal three.
Both books were written by Harold Geneen, the number-cruncher who directed International Telephone & Telegraph during its heyday in the 1960s.
He engineered 350 mergers and acquisitions, which brought such names as Hartford, Avis, Sheraton and Madison Square Garden under one roof. Geneen, however, harbored no illusions that ITT's individual components could be coordinated in mutually beneficial ways. Each had to make its numbers wholly on its own.
`electronics and entertainment'
Stringer now presides over a company that appears -- superficially -- to be the polar opposite of an ITT-like conglomeration of unrelated businesses. Sony is accustomed to thinking of itself as consisting of two well-matched halves: electronics and entertainment.
At the Consumer Electronics Show last month, Stringer observed, "A device without content is nothing but scrap metal," a platitude beneath mention -- unless, perhaps, one were a mite defensive about owning both a widget factory and an entertainment factory.
Stringer is expected to gently coax the consumer electronics half to stop sulking and to walk over to shake hands with the Hollywood half.
And then, step back, everyone, for alchemical magic, convergence, synergy.
At first glance, digital music is the field in which Sony's considerable assets seem best suited, with a little rearrangement, for a comeback.
On one side, Sony has 50 years of experience in producing portable music players, beginning with transistor radios in the 1950s and extended by its Walkman franchise that has sold more than 340 million players.
On the other, it owns one of the world's largest music labels to supply content.
Yet in the iPod era, Sony's head start counts for nothing. It's as if the company were the Sony Gramophone & Wax Record Co.
The cassette-playing Walkman, even though it was outrageously successful, did not help Sony prepare for the digital player.
It was nothing but hardware, and surprisingly simple. The first one was built in 1979, when a Sony executive sent down a request to the company's tape recorder division to rig up a portable cassette player that could provide stereo sound but still be light enough for him to take along on international flights.
`21st-century Walkman'
A small team pulled out the recording mechanism and speaker of the company's monaural Pressman, a cassette recorder used by journalists, installed stereo circuitry and added earphones. It was ready in four days.
The predigital Walkman evolved over the years into more than an astounding 1,120 models. But its essential nature remained unchanged: It was dumb hardware. When Apple Computer introduced the iPod in November 2001, Steve Jobs described his new player as "the 21st-century Walkman."
With 99 years remaining in the century, that was an early call. But he was correct.
The iPod in 2001 was a Walkman successor, but smarter, its hard drive easily navigated with well-designed software.
In April 2003, however, when the iTunes Music Store opened, the iPod became something else again: part of an ingeniously conceived blend of hardware, software and content that made buying and playing music ridiculously easy.
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