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.
Like Honda, Mr Son is a disrupter. He once playfully threatened to torch regulators’ headquarters if he did not have his way. He did (have his way, that is, not set the communications ministry ablaze). After acquiring Vodafone’s Japanese arm in 2006, he threw Japan’s staid telecoms monopoly into turmoil – much to the benefit of consumers.
SoftBank started a price war. It also introduced new services and products, including Apple’s iPhone, which years before anyone else Mr Son realised would upend Japan’s sophisticated but isolated market.