Nobuyuki Idei's Second Act

With his new consultancy, the ex-Sony chief aims to smash seniority silos, ease funding of startups, and improve Japan's competitiveness

by Kenji Hall

Former Sony Chief Idei

Stacks of file folders and books teeter along the perimeter of Nobuyuki Idei's desk. A few boxes sit against a row of cabinets, untouched since they arrived weeks earlier. The boxes contain files that Idei had been keeping at Sony (SNE) headquarters since he stepped down as chief executive in 2005, handing over control to Howard Stringer. As a member of the company's management advisory committee, Idei had taken his time moving out.

Though only a half-hour train ride from his old digs, Idei's new Tokyo office is a world away from Sony HQ. Housed on an upper floor of the Japanese Bankers Assn. building in the Marunouchi district, it's a cramped space behind a sturdy door bearing the name and logo of his eight-month-old startup, Quantum Leaps. Cubicles crowd the front room, and there's a small conference room in back. The mess in Idei's own office, which has a big black leather sofa and a multipaneled pop art rendition of the Empire State Building above it, hints at a schedule that's so hectic there's been no time to tidy up.

For Idei, life after Sony is anything but quiet. Two years ago, he started Quantum Leaps with his own money. Idei, 70, won't say how much he's spent but it's enough to maintain an office and a nine-member staff to handle the day-to-day details as he dashes between appointments, conferences, dinner parties, overseas business trips, and, when time allows, the occasional round of golf.

Breaking Down Barriers to Startups

According to its Web site, the company's stated mission is "to create new businesses and industries." Need Idei to explain what that means? "I can't," he says and roars with laughter. He expresses a vague hope of replicating the Silicon Valley model in Tokyo, and he's on a personal crusade to find and fund new, eco-friendly technologies. Judging by the work he's done so far, he's mainly a management coach and strategic consultant. But more than anything, Idei is doing his best to break down social barriers that have long hampered startups in a country where venture-capitalists only receive a tenth of the investment of U.S. counterparts.

Idei's biggest role is as a connector. After 10 years at the helm of Japan's best-known tech brand, he has made friends in high places. He has flown overseas with Japanese prime ministers, hobnobbed with the glitterati in Hollywood and with national leaders and other notable persons at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and held the No. 2 spot at Japan's influential business lobby Keidanren.

Despite the public hammering Idei took after leading Sony through a dark period of plummeting profits and damaging internal rivalries, his soft-power quotient is off the charts. He is an adviser to several Japanese high-tech companies and U.S. and Indian venture capital firms and sits on the board of a half dozen companies, including Accenture (ACN) and Chinese Internet search company Baidu (BIDU). And his ties to the financial world are only likely to grow since he signed on in late November as adviser to Dubai International Capital, a $13 billion fund that counts the emirate's ruler among its investors. (The move came just three days after the fund bought a sizable stake in Sony. Idei says the two events were unrelated, and that he is advising the fund on investments in Asia.)

Concerned About Japanese Competitiveness

Someone of Idei's stature could easily work the phones and reverse the fortunes of a struggling startup. Yet that rarely happens in Japan. Idei admits that at Sony he hardly spared a thought for the small fry. Only after he had left did he see that rigid business norms and a dearth of Silicon Valley-type early-stage investors meant the slow-moving Establishment was still the main source of new innovations.