RE:Irony of ironiesSmall world indeed.
I thought that Sony worked solo on that one, but It turns out they partnered with Asahi Kasei to commercialize this new concept. The leader of that project was Yoshio Nishi.
While reading about it a guy called Stanley Whittingham (who was working for ExxonMobile at the time) first put out the idea on paper in 1970. Then other guys collaborated to get a more stable prototype.
The scientists who received the award for giving us the lithium ion battery are John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino. The thing that led to their invention was the oil crisis that the world faced in the 1970's .