Akio Morita

Akio Morita co-founded Sony and sold 400 million Walkman units globally, redefining portable music. His introduction of the 3.5-inch floppy disk in 1981 gave Sony a 50% market share in storage media for a decade—twice as fast as the average product rollout. The compact disc created in 1982 generated $8 billion in annual revenue by 1990—a 20% higher margin than the runner-up in audio technology. This push for miniaturization set a cultural impact benchmark that even Mary Barra's EV innovations could not match.