![]() I came up with 40 new business ideas-everything from creating software to setting up hospital chains, since my wife’s father is a doctor and has a hospital. I bought books, I read all kinds of materials to prepare for what I would do for the next 50 years. I spent all my time just thinking and thinking, studying what to do. They asked me, what are you going to do? You spent years studying in the United States, and now you aren’t doing anything. All my friends, my father, my mother, everybody was worried. For me, thinking of new businesses is like inventing new products.įor a year and a half, I did research and made business plans. As a student, I had a hobby of inventing new ideas for products. I thought of 40 different businesses I could start. I wanted to start my own company when I came back to Japan. I started Softbank in 1981, a year and a half after I came back from the United States, after graduating from Berkeley. We have a variety of information products, practically every type imaginable, except the PC itself. That’s what I’m doing in information for PCs. They sell products that range from refrigerators to televisions to semiconductors. If you look at Matsushita or Toshiba or Sony, they’re not one-product companies. That’s why we carry 40,000 different pieces of software. We supply that wisdom and knowledge through magazines, software, telephone systems, systems integration, all kinds of media. So we specialize in the PC industry’s knowledge. But the knowledge industry is too big, too wide. ![]() I want to be number one in the business of supplying wisdom and knowledge all over Japan. Wisdom and knowledge are the most valuable things in the body. Inside the brain are wisdom and knowledge. The brain is more valuable than the skull. If you look at these carefully, you don’t think the skull has the most value. The semiconductor is the brain within the head. I would say that hardware is the bone of the head, the skull. People usually compare the computer to the head of the human being. In ten years, we’ve gone from two part-time employees doing software distribution and making about $12,000 to 570 employees doing software distribution, book and magazine publishing, telephone least cost routing, system integration, network computing, and CAD-CAM and making about $350 million.ĭo you have a way of thinking about your company that ties all these different parts together? About a year and a half later, we were supplying 200 dealer outlets. ![]() They stood up and opened wide their eyes and mouths, and they thought, this guy must be crazy. In five years, I will be supplying 1,000 dealer outlets, and we’ll be number one in PC software distribution.” And I said it very loudly. ![]() In a loud voice, I said to my two workers, “You guys have to listen to me because I am the president of this company.” I said, “In five years, I’m going to have $75 million in sales. I got two apple boxes, and I stood up on them in the morning as if I was giving a speech. Masayoshi Son: When I first started the company, I only had two part-time workers and a small office. Son’s office at Softbank in Tokyo, Japan by HBR’s editorial director, Alan M. In addition to its operations in Japan, Softbank today has affiliates in the United States and Korea. He returned to Japan in 1981 and a year and one-half later, started Softbank. Masayoshi Son, 34, founder, president, and CEO of Softbank Corporation of Tokyo exemplifies this new Japanese-style entrepreneurship.īorn in Japan of Korean heritage, Son attended high school in the United States-graduating in two weeks-then graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where he started several businesses and, at the age of 20, used his technological skills to invent and patent a device he sold to Sharp Corporation for $1 million. Today there is another world emerging-one of high-tech startups begun by young entrepreneurs who contribute their fresh global outlook and new generational attitudes to the traditional world of Japanese business. The world of Japanese business, according to conventional Western thinking, consists of huge manufacturing corporations, tightly interwoven corporate families, and hordes of lifetime employees working as devoted company salarymen. ![]()
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