   Rodney Lanthorne, president of Kyocera International, was asked to join the company in 1979 after he helped it get certification to sell stock in American markets.
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Rodney Lanthorne invalidates Rudyard Kipling’s adage that “east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” After serving as a Navy officer, Lanthorne spent eight years as a CPA with Coopers Lybrand. The “meeting of the twain” occurred when he helped Kyocera Corp. obtain in 1976 the necessary certification to sell stock in American over-the-counter markets and later over the New York Stock Exchange. Lanthorne developed such a camaraderie with his clients that he was asked in 1979 to join the company.
As he considered joining a foreign corporation, he weighed the philosophy of Kyocera’s founder, Kazuo Inamori, who directs his company to “respect the Divine and love people.”
Inamori taught that the company he founded “exists to provide opportunities for the material and intellectual growth of our employees, and through our joint efforts, to contribute to the advancement of society and humankind.” It reminded Lanthorne of Ashland Oil Co., which was the longtime employer of his father and most of Ashland’s residents.
Lanthorne also found philosophical parallels in Christianity, particularly in Jesus’ call to love people as you would yourself. Inamori’s teaching that “if our motivation is pure, we will get those whispers from God about how to solve a particular problem” also resonated with him.
“This is very important to our company,” says Lanthorne, 59, who today is president of Kyocera International, the North American holding group for eight Kyocera subsidiaries with aggregated annual revenue of $2 billion.
“The philosophy can be complex, but at its core, what we are saying is that we want to do the right things as human beings, and how we approach business or life, we should be working harder than anyone else in the field,” says Lanthorne. “We want to try to use our creativity and we have to remember that we have to be modest and humble because our role is to serve others.”
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