Jack of All Trades

Some companies find their niche and focus really hard on that one thing, making it their goal to perfect a single service or product and thereby differentiate themselves from their competitors. Yamaha, however, decided to take a very different path.

The Japanese company is best known now for making pianos and motorcycles, but over its 125-year history, the company has also made reed organs, furniture, harmonicas, audio equipment, guitars, sporting goods, band instruments, and semiconductors. And it’s actually done pretty respectably at all of them—I grew up playing a Yamaha guitar, and I now have a Yamaha piano. Maybe I should try to collect one of everything that Yamaha makes. My house would be stuffed.