Founding Kaneka Solartech: over ¥10 billion on thin-film silicon solar cells (1998)

A line drawn not by rank but by time

The character of this decision shows less in the sum — more than $76.4M (¥10bn) — than in two numbers president Takeda Masatoshi set side by side in the same interview. Take a majority of a niche worth around ¥50 billion; on falling to third, withdraw at once. Stating that standard, he nevertheless put over ten billion yen into solar cells, where no grounds existed for expecting a majority share, and declared break-even three years out. He did not bend the standard. Where rank could not measure the field, he drew the line in time instead. For a company that had decided against cutting staff, there were not many routes left to changing its profit structure.

Even by that line, the judgement was wrong. Break-even in three years was not reached, and narrowing losses were still being reported up to the year ended March 2005. The thin-film silicon it bet on did not survive as the mainstay either; the world record Kaneka now holds is in heterojunction crystalline silicon. The business continued because the volume-production technology it had built from the equipment upward transferred to the next method, and because it found buyers in building and vehicle parts — roof tiles, walls and car roofs. It never became a business competing for rank in the solar market; it became one that survived by narrowing what it was for.