Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder of the telecommunications group SoftBank and perhaps Japan’s most successful example of an American-style entrepreneur, has made a career out of beating the odds. He casts himself in the mould of his hero, Soichiro Honda, an outsider who began making motors for bicycles and ended up building one of the world’s leading car manufacturers. Mr Son loves to recall how Honda defied Japan’s state planners, who wanted to restrict carmakers to a few national champions such as Toyota. Honda had to take on the establishment as well as his competitors.
身爲億萬富翁，電信集團軟銀(Softbank)的創辦人孫正義(Masayoshi Son)是經過艱苦奮鬥成就一番事業的，他或許也是全日本最成功的「美式企業家」。孫正義崇拜本田宗一郎(Soichiro Honda)，視他爲榜樣。本田宗一郎從製造自行車的馬達起家，最終打造起了一家全球領先的汽車製造商。孫正義喜歡回顧本田宗一郎是如何對抗日本的國家規劃者的。政府當局原本只想讓豐田(Toyota)等少數幾家全國性龍頭汽車企業得到發展，本田宗一郎不得不同時應對當局和競爭對手。