Sublime

The flip side of the railroad genius was dismissiveness and distaste for corporate protocol. Harrison had little patience for boards. Put simply, they were a pain, a waste of time and money. They didn’t increase shareholder value or improve the operating ratio (OR), the key metric for a railroad that’s constantly scrutinized by investors.

Unquestionably, Yokoi needed narrow specialists. The first true electrical engineer Nintendo hired was Satoru Okada, who said bluntly, “Electronics was not Yokoi’s strong point.” Okada was Yokoi’s codesigner on the Game & Watch and Game Boy. “I handled more of the internal systems of the machine,” he recalled, “with Yokoi handling more of the

Resilience, immanence, numen—qualities his discipline is notoriously poor in measuring.