On 17 July 1899, Nippon Electric Company, Limited (renamed NEC Corporation, effective April, 1983, both expressed as NEC hereafter) Japan's first joint venture with foreign capital, was established by Kunihiko Iwadare in association with the U.S. firm Western Electric Company (presently Alcatel-Lucent).

The basic aim of the new company, expressed in the slogan “Better Products, Better Service,” was to carry out the promise to provide its customers with world-class products and dependable follow-up service. The notion of follow-up service didn't take root among Japanese businesses until a full half-century later, whereas NEC had from the beginning embraced a concept that developed into what we now call Customer Satisfaction (CS).

World and domestic firsts in technology and research development, made possible by managerial innovation and backed by establishment, improvement and reform of its various personnel systems, as well as the early mounting of environmental projects, make it possible to say that NEC's history has been marked by constant innovation for more than a hundred years. NEC is empowered by the DNA of innovation.