Entrepreneurship & Business
Failure Breeds Success
“Success doesn’t happen miraculously. Sometimes dreams are fulfilled after a series of failures.”
This is the story of Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motors Co. Ltd. Read this inspiring tale of his meteoric rise to success, despite the innumerable hurdles he faced along the way. Honda’s success won him legendary status and his life story is the perfect example of how failure breeds success in an individual.
Soichiro Honda was born on 17 November 1906 in Shizouka, Japan. He received elementary education and spent his early years helping his father, Gihie, repair bicycles. At the age of 15 Honda left school and moved to Tokyo where he worked as an apprentice at a garage and later as a car mechanic.
At the age of 22 Honda returned to his home town and put his practical knowledge to use by starting a business manufacturing piston rings for small engines in motorcycles. Undaunted by lack of funds and several initial rejections, Honda refined his piston ring design and finally sold it to Toyota. However, luck seemed to evade Honda as he was faced with another challenge. He needed to build a factory in order to begin mass production of his piston rings. But Japan was preparing for World War II at that time and construction material was scarce.
Hence, he put his sharp mind to work and came up with alternative ways to manufacture concrete. Once Honda had his factory ready and was ready to begin production, the war broke out and the ill-fated factory was bombed! It appeared that Honda and his dream of making piston rings was jinxed.
More determined than ever before, he rebuilt his factory his factory using gasoline cans that were discarded by the US Fighters. The new production unit was ready after much innovation and struggle. And as luck would have it, an earthquake struck Japan, razing Honda’s factory and his dreams to the ground. Honda was forced to sell his piston ring design to Toyota.
As conditions in Japan continued to deteriorate, they were hit by an acute scarcity of fuel, hence propelling the inventor into action once more. This time Honda made a small motor, almost as small as the one used on a lawn mower, and attached this to a bicycle. Behold the advent of the world’s first motor-cycle!
From making these new motor-cycles for neighbors and friends, Honda tried to raise funds to build more of these small bikes by writing to more than 18,000 bicycle shop owners asking them to help him in his mission to revitalize Japan. Five thousand responded to his request and advanced him some money to build engines for their cycles. Though the initial designs were bulky and cumbersome, Honda refined his model and came up with a way to make smaller, lighter engine which he called ‘The Super Club’.
The rest, as you might have gathered by now, is history. This light and zippy new set of wheels sparked off a revolution across Japan, which then spread across Europe and America, catapulting Soichiro Honda from being a small-time Japanese inventor to a world renowned name. And to make him even more popular was the fuel crisis that hit the world in 1970, forcing people to look at smaller cars as a cost effective means of transport. Honda, which was by this time had grown to a large scale manufacturing operation and was an expert in making small engines, capitalized on the growing trend and gave the world the first Honda small car — much smaller and faster than the ones his competitors were trying to make.
Soichiro Honda did not know the meaning of the word ‘failure’. He was a man truly committed to his dreams and constantly made adjustments and in an effort to achieve his goal. Today, the Honda Corporation employs more than 100,000 people in USA and Japan and is one of the world’s largest and finest automobile manufacturing companies. Honda’s life story serves as an inspiration to his employees and people at large, forcing them to review their options and move forward each time they faced with misfortune.
There are others like Honda, who have acted on their dreams, but succumbed to difficulty. And then there are some who have been so overwhelmed by the prospect of failure, that they have forgotten how to dream.
Local heroes like Dhirubhai Ambani, Ratan Tata, Lakshmi Mittal, Dr. Vijay Mallya and Sunil Mittal, have worked consciously to overcome obstacles in their respective business- lives and gone on to make themselves known as global business leaders. They have used successful combinations of skill and strategy to accomplish their goals.
Failure is nothing but a blessing in disguise; it brings with it wisdom and maturity. Failure reveals your weaknesses and gives you a chance to improve them.
It provides you with an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and overcome the fear of disappointment.
In conclusion, I urge you to interact and learn from people who have faced difficulty and experienced failure. These encounters will make you stronger and provide you with useful insight on how to tackle your own problems. It will increase your ability to deal constructively and effectively with mistakes and temporary setbacks.
Remember, when God shuts one door he always opens another. Keep looking for that door and walk through it fearlessly as soon as you find it.