In Early Days Entrepreneur Honda “Pawned His Wife’s Jewelry for Funds”

(p. 217) At the root and origin of all great empires of industry can usually be found a perspiring entrepreneur, often frustrated and fatigued, struggling over a machine that won’t quite work.

Honda, for example, was to become the world’s single most brilliant and successful entrepreneur of mechanical engineering since Henry Ford. But only the perspiration of genius was in sight during that period before the war when he embarked on a siege of day-and-night study and experiment in the techniques of casting, in his attempt to make a piston ring. He lived at the factory, turning from a gay blade into a hirsute and harried hermit, stinking of grease and sweat, while his savings ran out, his friends fretted, his parents reminded him of promising opportunities in auto repair, and he pawned his wife’s jewelry for funds.

Source:
Gilder, George. Recapturing the Spirit of Enterprise: Updated for the 1990s. updated ed. New York: ICS Press, 1992.

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