For decades there have been two iconic Japanese auto companies. One has been endlessly studied and written about. The other has been generally underappreciated and misunderstood. Until now. Since its birth as a motorcycle company in 1949, Honda has steadily grown into the world's fifth largest automaker and top engine manufacturer, as well as one of the most beloved, most profitable, and most consistently innovative multinational corporations. What drives the company that keeps creating and improving award-winning and bestselling models like the Civic, Accord, Odyssey, CR-V, and Pilot? According to Jeffrey Rothfeder - the first journalist allowed behind Honda's infamously private doors - what truly distinguishes Honda from its competitors, especially archrival Toyota, is a deep commitment to a set of unorthodox management tenets. The Honda Way, as insiders call it, is notable for decentralization over corporate control, simplicity over complexity and unyielding cynicism toward the status quo and whatever is assumed to be the truth - ideas embedded in the DNA of the company by its colourful founder Soichiro Honda, sixty-five years ago. With dozens of interviews of Honda executives, engineers,and frontline employees, Rothfeder shows how the company has developed and maintained its unmatched culture of innovation, resilience, and flexibility - and how it exported that culture to other countries that are strikingly different from Japan, establishing locally controlled operations in each region where it lays down roots. For instance, Rothfeder reports on life at a Honda factory in the tiny town of Lincoln, Alabama. When the American workers were trained to follow the Honda Way as a self-sufficient outpost of the global company, their plant pioneered a new model for manufacturing in America. As Soichiro Honda himself liked to say, "Success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."

本書は単なる企業史ではなく、本田宗一郎という異端児が遺した「哲学」の軌跡を辿る壮大な物語です。徹底した現場主義と現状への疑いが生む独自の熱量は、合理性だけでは説明できない人間味溢れるドラマとして描かれています。成功の裏に潜む「九十九パーセントの失敗」を尊ぶその姿勢は、挑戦し続けるすべての人の魂を激しく揺さぶるでしょう。 組織の肥大化を拒み、自律的な個の力を信じ抜くホンダ・ウェイの真髄が、緻密な取材で浮き彫りにされます。グローバル化に抗い、各地で独自の根を張る柔軟な強さは、現代を生き抜くための普遍的な指針です。ビジネスの枠を超え、一編の人間讃歌としての深みを湛えた本書は、読む者に新たな視界を開かせてくれます。