9 Comments

Hi Richard

I always enjoy reading your thoughtful articles. Reading your book at the moment.

I strongly agree there is so much more the government can do to support more entrepreneurial activity in Japan. Question - how do you square this with the incredible startup activity in the restaurant industry in Japan. I don’t have data to support this but anecdotally I’ve met many salarymen who leave their corporate posts to start a little restaurant. Japan is clearly world class in this space. Why not in tech/bio etc? Perhaps the capital required is so much less than a new software business.

My view is - and you make this point in your book - the Japanese clearly have it in them to start new enterprises. Thank you

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Thank you Richard! I learnt a lot from your articles!!

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Richard,

Thanks for the update. The situation is worse than I was lead to believe. Talk about tragic decline!

Please try to define abbreviations when first used (OECD = Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development).

B/r,

William Flanigan, PhD

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Yes, I assumed OECD was known, but a good idea

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Great post - thank you - Kishida writ large IE the ossified government institutions as well as the ridged large hurdles for small business to even start - concentrate any “growth “ into larger existing companies. Who in turn offer no incentive to innovate and actually severely dissuade any “out of the box “ thinking - of course you know all this - but wanted to mention as another deeper concern for whatever Scheme the government put in place

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Yes, big concern but there are forces on the other side, a subject for a future blog

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Shame of failure not also a factor? Yet Korea does relatively ok.

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Shame of failure is highly exaggerated as a factor among would-be entrepreneurs. More important is the real world consequences of failure due to lifetime employment system, personal guarantee system for loans, etc. My forthcoming book discusses this in detail

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"My forthcoming book discusses this in detail."

Looking forward to it, Sir. I personally need it for clarity and other reasons being in the education sector here in Japan. Life in many different ways for a significant percentage of the population is being diluted. It may even be speeding up.

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