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Daisuke Inoue with the first karaoke machine

Humility or grandeur? Let the alcohol decide.

Daisuke Inoue, the man who invented karaoke in 1971, never bothered to patent his tiny invention, thus missing his chance to become one of Japan’s richest men. Some put his losses at more than $150 million:

“I’m not an inventor,” says the 65-year-old in his small Osaka office, where the first version of the karaoke machine sits in a corner. “I simply put things that already exist together, which is completely different. I took a car stereo, a coin box and a small amp to make the karaoke. Who would even consider patenting something like that?” (The Independent)

“Karaoke” means “empty orchestra” in Japanese. But one thing karaoke did not do–as Mr. Inoue expected it would–was fade away quietly. Instead, karaoke blew up. By the 1980s it had swept across most of Asia, becoming a staple for business parties and drunken social bonding. In the 1990s karaoke took hold in the states and has never let go.

Today it is an enormous industry, with video games and world championships skyrocketing talented crooners to international fortune and glory.

Although, Mr. Inoue would have been content to let his invention take off without him, in 2004 Harvard University awarded him the Ig Nobel Peace Prize “for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.” He celebrated by calling himself, “the last samurai,” and sung a rendition of Coca-Cola’s “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”

LVHRD would also like to thank Daisuke for creating karaoke, specifically for inventing something that fosters collective humility, while at the same time nurturing the spark for potential greatness we’re all taught to dream on.