Reading. Young Hearts Keep Casio Ticking Consumer electronics is a competitive business and k eeping up with the latest fashion is difficult. But a Japanese family-run electronics group, Casio Computer, has shown that they can do as well as much larger companies. Over the past decade, Casio has launched a number of innovative products. It was the first to launch a very small digital camera, the Exilim, in 2002. Casio’s strong G-Shock watches also started a fashion. More recently, the company developed a range of very thin mobile phones for a large mobile-phone operator; they have become the best-selling model in Japan. Casio’s success is based on selling to young fashion-conscious people. This is surprising when one considers that its senior executives are well over the usual age of a senior manager. Kazuo Kashio, the President, is 79. His elder brother and Chairman, Toshio, is 81, while his younger brother, Yukio, Vice-President, is 76. The company was founded in 1957 by Mr Kashio’s brother Tadao Kashio, the eldest of the four Casio brothers who have led it over the past half-century. Other corporations in Japan have elderly executives. Chihiro Kanagawa, 80, has been Chief Executive of Shin-Etsu Chemical since 1990. Tetsuro Funai – the founder of Funai Electric, a consumer electronics manufacturer – is 79. Many other CEOs are in their 60s and 70s. This is partly because greater respect is given to old people in Japanese society, and also because the population of Japan is rapidly ageing. The average life span is 79 for men and 86 for women. Even so, the Kashio brothers’ ability to create innovative products is impressive – particularly when the Chief Executive does not use the Internet regularly and rarely visits the shops to try out the latest technology. Normally it is young people who generate rapid changes in trends. But according to Mr Kashio, it isn’t a question of being young: training and the ability to think creatively are more important.