Shuji Nakamura

I have been very fortunate to be supported by many people in my career. I also appreciate my personal friends, business friends, and my family who have been patient and understanding of my long working hours.

It's good to have high-quality competition. It helps drive research forward at a faster pace.

The LED light bulb is more than ten times the efficiency of regular incandescent lighting, so it can save the world hundreds of billions of dollars in electricity costs.

Many researchers have joined the field and applied the LED to many new markets such as mobile phone screens, LED TV, and LED Lighting.

There are still people in Japan who think money is something evil.

I couldn't achieve the American dream in Japan.

It is very satisfying to see that my dream of LED lighting has become a reality.

A small company like Nichia should do niche products.

If I had gone to a big company, it would have been very difficult for me to do research freely. At a big company, say Sony, there are very, very good researchers. So I would have to ask them what I could do.

I am thankful to Nichia Chemical Corporation and its founder Nobu Ogawa, who gave me the research opportunity to create a blue LED.

The promise of energy savings, reduced carbon emissions and affordable lighting was there from the inception. The proliferation of the technology into areas such as displays, automotive, medicine and horticulture was unexpected.

If Japanese companies don't reform drastically and implement English as their daily business language, the economy will only continue to contract.