Oracle's Mr. Ellison

Wrote an article about Oracle CEO, Mr. Larry Ellison several years ago.

If you are interested in, please read as follows. The photo was taken by Jochen (siegleklingphoto.com).

For global marketing, understanding culture is very important,” said Oracle’s Larry Ellison recently at a convention in San Francisco. Forbes magazine’s 12th richest person is known for his love of Japanese culture. He owns a priceless collection of 16th-century Samurai armor, has yachts named Sayonara and Sakura (“goodbye” and “cherry blossoms” in Japanese), and lives in a Kyoto-style house, “Sanbashi,” which sits on 33 acres in Woodside, Calif., and has been under construction for 10 years, at a cost of $100 million.
“The Japanese are at once the most aggressive culture on earth and the most polite. There is this incredible arrogance combined with unbelievable humility — a magnificent balance. And I think, in building our company, we tried to, as much as possible, replicate that culture: to be very aggressive on the one hand and humble on the other.”
Ellison indeed was influenced by Japanese culture. One of his first jobs in California was working at Amdahl, which is 45 percent-owned by the Japanese company Fujitsu.
He took a business trip to Japan and visited Kyoto, where he was stunned.
“I simply didn’t know such a thing could exist. There were these wonderful gardens that were designed to promote intimacy between the viewer in the garden and the garden itself. Japan is one of the centers of Zen Buddhism, and what Zen tries to do … in fact, what the entire Japanese culture seems to do is intelligently pursue tranquility.”
The 59-year-old founder’s favorite saying comes from the Mongol warrior Genghis Khan: “It’s not sufficient that I succeed. Everyone else must fail.”
“I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win,” Ellison said.
As he has looked to the East, his company has mixed Japanese and Chinese business. The result: the official inauguration of Oracle Japan’s China Business Development Unit in Shanghai. With integrated expertise from Oracle Japan and Oracle China, this newly created unit will be fully dedicated to supporting Japanese-owned companies as they rapidly extend their businesses into China and seek to deploy IT systems quickly and smoothly.
China’s vast market size, rapid rate of economic development and large skills base have propelled huge numbers of Japanese-owned companies to establish business operations in the world’s most populous country. There are more than 15,000 Japanese-owned companies operating in China, with an estimated total investment reaching $4.2 billion, second only to U.S. investment in China, which totals $5.4 billion.
Oracle has business relationships with the Chinese Linux company Red Flag and with Legend Computer, the Chinese state-owned computer company. One of Oracle’s big rivals is IBM, which recently sold its PC division to Lenovo (Legend).
Ellison says the whole Western notion is to see ideas bear fruit. This has certain advantages, but it can be a double-edged sword. “I always hear artists saying, ‘I don’t want to do that; it’s been done before.’ Well, the Japanese say, ‘I want to do exactly what has been done before, but just a little bit better.’ They’re completely different points of view.”
Next, what he will learn from Chinese culture?