The founder of Concord Electronics, Ladd was largely responsible for the introduction and acceptance of personal audio and video tape recorders in the US.

[4] Ladd graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942 with a degree in electrical engineering and earned an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

The ten years after WWII saw Ladd actively involved in the formation of several businesses including a Southern California toy company.

Ladd founded Concord Electronics, developing and marketing the first reel-to-reel and stereo audio compact cassette tape recorders that were sold in the U.S..

Concord produced the Conrad NAV-1 Marine Navigation System, licensing the patented process from inventor Daniel I Schneiderman.

[10] In 1968, Ladd sold Concord Electronics to the New York based Ehrenreich Photo-Optical Industries, the exclusive US importer of Nikon photographic equipment.

[16] Under Ladd’s leadership, the Fisher Corporation under Sanyo grew to be a multi-million dollar leader in the consumer electronics industry.

After a "broadening of product and technology philosophies", Ladd predicted "the remarkable turnaround" will see the "privately held subsidiary doing 100 million (equivalent to $467,142,857 in 2023) in annual sales".

With no electrical connections to the rotor, there were no armature windings and all complicated electronic circuitry was in a stationary (non-moving) position on a single PC board mounted under the platter on the turntable base.

[16] During that time, Sanyo had production facilities in a number of countries around the world, including Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Ghana, Brazil, Canada and Los Angeles, California.

[21] Growth in the video sector was slowed by Sanyo's ill-fated decision to adopt Sony's Betamax VCR format instead of Matsushita's VHS.

The mergers made the entire organization more efficient, but also resulted in the departure of certain key executives, including Ladd, who had first introduced the Sanyo name to the United States in the early 1970s.

[23] The company sold stereo radio receivers and cassette tape players for automobiles under the brand names "Concord" and "Westport Labs".

[25] Concord mobile audio equipment quickly became one of the leading sellers of high-end, in-dash automobile cassette deck receivers, amplifiers and accessories.

The 1982 Concord HPL-130 pioneered the use of Sendust tape playback heads, dbx noise reduction circuitry as well as Dolby noise reduction circuitry, four-gang quartz digital tuning and an audio reproduction range of 30-20,000 Hz, at less than 0.08% distortion, rivaling many in-home audio receivers at a retail price of $ 600 (equivalent to $1,894 in 2023).

By 1985, Ladd had sold the Concord Electronics mobile audio company to the Penril Corporation in Rockville, Maryland.

[28] Projectavision, founded by Eugene Dolgoff in Westbury, New York was an early American producer of high image quality LCD projectors.

As a division of Concord Technology Development, the business was said to be "a creator of cutting-edge consumer products for home and office".