Question

1. Sony has 12 core segments in its business. Is this too many or not enough? Are today’s companies diversified like they used to be a few decades ago? Can Sony’s 12-segment business model be sustainable?
2.The Future Lab Program, which is a part of Sony’s investment in R&D, embraces an approach to technological R&D that emphasizes an open creative environment and direct lines of communication with society, with the end goal being to co-create new lifestyles and customer value. Does Sony create significant customer value? Does Sony create new lifestyles?

Answer 1

Answer:

1) This question is about whether diversification is good or bad for a large corporation. Whether diversification can be considered good or bad depends on the corporation itself, there is no one answer fits all. In this case, Sony is divided into 12 segments or divisions and each of them generates their own cash flows and offers their own products or services.

High tech companies generally tend to diversify a lot because they need to continuously produce innovative products or improve their existing ones. E.g. Google got so large and diversified that it turned into Alphabet which owns more than 200 companies (most of them through acquisitions). Sony's largest revenue sources are gaming services, financial services and home entertainment.

When we think about Sony we probably think about consumer electronics, the Playstation or even movies, but in order to be profitable, Sony had to expand and diversify. Sony's revenues are shifting from consumer electronics to services (including financial, gaming, network, music and movies), so that means that their diversification model actually worked.

2) Sony's goal with Future Lab is to create customer value and new lifestyles, whether they are able to do so depends on how well they work it out. Future Labs is based on San Francisco, and it should serve as a place where innovative prototypes should be tested by real users. The goal is that Sony can learn from actual real life user experiences in order to improve their products and services. The real life customers and users that want to participate in Sony's program must pay a fee for doing so, but they can also experience prototypes before anyone else.