Like most people, the Japanese have a lot of respect for the business leaders who have created enduring organizations, with Thomas Edison very near to the top of the list. Another man who is well respected in Japan is Konosuke Matsushita.

Very poor as a child, he was forced to leave school in the 4th grade and start working to help support the family. Trained as an electrician’s assistant, he soon got an idea for a new kind of electric socket, and in 1918 he founded a company to manufacture it with his wife and brother-in-law. This was the beginning of the Matsushita Electronics Company, more famous under its other name of Panasonic, which managed to grow from a tiny shop in Osaka into the largest electronics maker in Japan. That’s not bad for a guy with no education or capital doing business in a country that lacks an American-style “two guys named Steve in a garage” type of entrepreneurial tradition.

Like all Japanese companies, Matsushita is into a few businesses that might surprise you, including racing bicycles, home construction (as “Panahome”), and elevators.

After he retired, Konosuke went on to write books on his approach to business, and founded a Dale Carnagie type management school. He’s said that the man he respects the most is Hideyoshi Toyotomi, one of the three “unifiers” of Japan who started out as a peasant but managed to work his way up to the position of de facto shogun of Japan. Like Hideyoshi, Konosuke said he never shied away from any job that was assigned to him, no matter how menial or dirty it was, which was one secret of his success.