Akio Morita's first book, published in 1966 when he was 45 and Sony was already a rising force in consumer electronics. The title translates roughly to 'School Records Are Useless' — Morita's argument that academic credentials and university rankings do not predict success in business or life. Drawing on his own experience hiring and managing at Sony, he advocated for evaluating people on character, drive, and aptitude rather than the prestige of their alma mater. The book was published in Japanese only and never translated into English.
Morita wrote this book at a time when Japanese society was fiercely credentialist — a graduate of Tokyo University could coast on that distinction for an entire career, while someone from a lesser school faced permanent ceilings. Morita rejected this system outright at Sony, deliberately hiring 'irregulars' who had not come through the elite pipeline. His argument was practical: innovation comes from people who think differently, and the credentialist filter selects for conformity, not creativity. For founders building teams, this is an early and forceful argument for hiring against the resume — for looking beyond credentials to the actual person underneath.
The book also reveals something about Morita himself. He was the fifteenth-generation heir of a sake-brewing family who chose engineering over the family business, studied physics rather than business, and built Sony without any of the advantages that Japan's elite track would have conferred. The argument against credentials was personal before it was philosophical. Founders who themselves came from outside the establishment — no MBA, no family connections, no名校 — should recognize in Morita's argument the same instinct that makes outsiders see opportunities that insiders miss.