#423 Soichiro Honda

I wanted to read a biography of Sochiro Honda after James Dyson wrote about the impact that Honda had on his career. The key lesson that James Dyson took from studying Honda was this framework that Dyson actually used throughout his career, and it was pretty straightforward. It was take an existing product, notice what's bad, clumsy, overcomplicated, or even ignored about that existing product, improve it obsessively and continuously, and you do this by making the product simpler and more pleasurable to use, then you retain enough control of your company to keep improving the existing product, and then you repeat this loop and never stop. And so the book that I wanna talk to you about today was written in 1975, and it was called Honda, the man and his machines, and it was written by Sol Sanders. And I think the dedication to this book actually describes the kind of entrepreneur that Honda was. It says to the free spirits in all cultures that Satura Honda typifies. And I wanna jump into the introduction, and I'm gonna pull out a few key ideas. I think it's a gives a wonderful overview of who Honda was and the kind of just really, this is a story of a Japanese maverick. And one of the most remarkable things about his life story and then the work that came out of his life story is what he had to endure, the changes that were happening at the country level. So it says, across his sixty year career, Japan has come a long way. It has been a torturous trail that led through enormous and seemingly unlimited expansion. The Great Depression, military coup d'etats, the China war of the nineteen thirties, World War two and the nuclear bombing that destroyed two cities, foreign occupation, and the remarkable economic miracle and post war prosperity. Honda has lived and worked through this all, and this next part goes into his personality and his obsession. There is a man named Honda who very much dominates the history of the company and its products. He has almost constant nervous activity. It takes a while for a stranger to get him into conversation that will reveal the fire in his belly. What can draw that out is talk of machines. He has a passion for motors. Motors and machines grab hold of him from a very young age, and they never let him go. In fact, he's he repeats this phrase over and over again that fumbling with machines is what he loves to do, and it's what he would do for free. He would fumble with machines before he got paid to do it. He built his career fumbling with machines. And in retirement, what he does is fumble with machines. And one of the things that made this book so much fun to read, and Honda's a person so fun to study, is that he's just a maverick and a rebel, and he's a …