Congratulations to Toyota's Akio Toyoda for being voted CEO of the year by Japan's small business leaders. The honor comes after 12 challenging months of steering around a bumpy economy and massive recalls on the way to record profits.
But with all due respect, the corporate establishment is celebrating the wrong man at the wrong moment. The real accolades should go to a bone fide maverick blazing a trail the rest of the Japan Inc. should be following. And that can only mean Masayoshi Son, who got less than half as many votes as Toyoda in the Sanno Institute of Management's poll of 464 business leaders.
The SoftBank billionaire's bold global investments, staffing choices, inclination to break with the groupthink that pervades Tokyo and vision of where growth opportunities lay make him a fascinating outlier. He also personifies the very thinking Prime Minister Shinzo Abe claims executives need for Japan to thrive.