Few CEOs get to change the world for the better. To genuinely alter humankind's trajectory in ways posterity rewards with accolades and, vitally for shareholders, riches. Did Softbank Group Corp. Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son do just that last week?
No, not his big win with Grab, where he engineered Uber's exit from Southeast Asia to SoftBank's benefit. The epochal moment in question was Son's $200 billion project to build history's biggest-ever solar project in Saudi Arabia. The venture even has batteries included, involving plans to store electricity for use 24/7, addressing a problem that's confounded the industry.
Decades from now, kids won't know from gas stations, oil rigs or petrostates. It'll be like trying to tell today's Generation Z about floppy disks, fax machines and pagers. That will be partly thanks to out-of-the-box risks. Son's gamble in the Saudi desert poses a major shift for the most important industry of tomorrow.