Toyoda Kiichiro, who set up Toyota's automobile manufacturing arm (they made automated loom machines before), wrote:
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Can you imagine if a businessperson were to walk into a room today, and go "Ok, so our plan is to study really hard, take cash flows and buy lots of expensive manufacturing equipment, practice on said equipment, and only launch 5 years from now."
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To be fair, there was a strong feeling of patriotism in Toyota's story. The Toyodas (Kiichiro and Sakichi) believed in business as a way of making Japan proud.
Similarly with Lee Byung-chul of Samsung (but for Korea).
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But you've really got to give it to Toyoda Kiichiro. With his father's blessing, he took all the money from selling their patents on automatic textile looms and ploughed it into car R&D. Materials were a problem. They finished their first moulds by hand.
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Two other things that weren't obvious to me: 1) Toyoda Kiichiro went to the West and saw Model-Ts zooming around first hand. Which was what gave him the idea to start a car company. 2) Taiichi Ohno (he of Toyota Production System fame) was 35 when Henry Ford died.
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I'd always thought that when Ohno read Ford's writings to understand the principles behind Ford's manufacturing system, Ford was long dead. But it turned out Ford was alive when Ohno was a young man. That puts quite a different feel to things when reading both men's books.
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