The dangerous approach of SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son
The Japanese-Korean billionaire warped the meaning of value in an industry that is reshaping the world, determining which technologies are fast-tracked and who controls them.
In October 2014, Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato unveiled the findings of her now legendary analysis of the iPhone. With the aim of challenging the idea that innovation is the preserve of the private sector, Mazzucato had traced back the smartphone’s components to the organisations that had funded them.
She revealed, in a pamphlet published by the think tank Demos, that nearly all of the hardware within the device could ultimately be sourced to initiatives not within Apple, but national governments and their agencies.
