You're a Warrior, All Right–A Golden State Warrior, During the Team's 12-Season Playoff Drought

In June 2005, Sony chairman Howard Stringer told the company’s annual meeting that he was a “Sony warrior,” vowing to fix the faltering Japanese electronics-and-entertain- ment giant. “I am a foreigner,” he said. “I was born in Wales and I live in the U.S., though these days I live on a plane. But first and foremost I am a Sony warrior.”

Apparently, Stringer (who was interviewed at the fourth edition of D: All Things Digital conference on May 31, 2006) seems to have forgotten that the price of failure in the samurai warrior code is seppuku–ritual suicide by disembowelment. Because here we are two years after his vow and Stringer, onstage at the company’s annual meeting this year, again proclaimed himself a warrior–despite the conga line of blunders and financial misses that have plagued Sony for the past few years. “In the digital age, we have new competitors–not just consumer-electronics companies, but IT companies like Apple and Microsoft and Intel and Chinese companies,” he said. “The integrated approach to this competition using electronics, games and entertainment, seamlessly integrated with software, will be the best way to be the dominant company. We will shift Sony from recovery to profitable growth.”