Unlike my older brother, I don't feel a need to remain at the forefront, lead an organization, and enlarge a company. Even though my company had grown, I still stepped down as company president and promptly handed it over to the next generation.
My stance on that stemmed from the fact that there were so many new and interesting things that I wanted to go out and accomplish. I'm an incredibly curious person at heart.
Although I did tackle a lot different things at my company, I feel that it's egotistical for a company's founder to try to take on everything from the start with a single company.
My view is influenced by Silicon Valley, where there is a mindset that wards off the need to overextend your company. The focus is on perfecting a single service in particular, rather than extending into a multitude of different business ventures.
For example, Facebook in the U.S. limited their focus to social networking services and thoroughly refined their company based on that. They have grown proportionally, yet we have not seen anything like a “Facebook Bank” or “Facebook Mall.”
In contrast, it is not rare to see a large company in Japan having its hands in a wide variety of business ventures, trying to take on everything by itself.
I have come to harbor a particular resentment for this sort of thing. Even as bright young startup companies pop up, there are giant companies that deftly latch onto them and devour them completely. At some startup companies, you have managers who come over from large companies and end up taking away freedom in the workplace, which eliminates any inherent potential that these startups have. This phenomenon isn’t limited to Japan, though I do think it's quite pervasive here.
