Trilogy of famous failures in History: Soichiro Honda

<p><b>Situations change. </b></p> <p>You’re set on one path, thinking all is right with the world and suddenly, the carpet is pulled out from under you. </p> <p>Technology shifts, something becomes obsolete, and now what you’ve been doing for years, no longer works. </p> <p><b>What do you do?</b></p> <p>For Soichiro Honda, the answer was to shift and adapt. You find the next best solution, regardless of how crazy or off the wall it seems at the time. </p> <p>Honda started out back in 1939 with the idea of creating a piston ring for Toyota, the prototype of which flopped almost immediately. </p> <p>Undaunted, he threw himself into making this idea better, succeeding to the point where he gained the contract he desired, only to run into problems entirely beyond his control: WWII.</p> <p>With a shortage of material with which to build a factory, Honda might have stopped there. Instead, he created a new kind of concrete he could use in place of more traditional materials. </p> <p>But problems abounded. His new factory was bombed twice, and when he was finally ready to go into production, there wasn’t any steel.</p> <p>There was, on the other hand, plenty of empty gasoline cans to be found, discarded by the American fighters.</p> <p>By using these cans, thus taking advantage of what was on hand, life should have been golden—except an earthquake took out the factory completely. </p> <p>Here’s where a lot of people would have taken this as a sign to get out of business altogether. Honda persevered.</p> <p>In the meantime, with resources slim, especially fuel for vehicles, Honda set out to solve his own problem. What he found was a solution for everyone else as well. He motorized a bicycle with a tiny engine so he could get to work. </p> <p>This engine was something his neighbors very much admired and wanted for their own. Seeing an opportunity to make a success in a direction he had never considered previously, Honda set out to mass-produce a small engine that could serve the needs of the community. </