Me On YouTube on Reviving Entrepreneurship in Japan

FCCJ Panel Discussion June 24 (JST)

YouTube has a video of the June 24 panel discussion about how to nurture more high-growth startups in Japan sponsored by the Foreign Correspondents Club Of Japan. https://www.fccj.or.jp/news-and-multimedia/deep-dive-series-start-companies-japan-and-asia-boom-time-june-24-2022

My talk leads off and the Q&A begins around minute 53:40.

The topics in my talk include:

·        High-growth entrepreneurs are a lot broader than high-tech ventures funded by Venture Capital

·        Innovation is a lot broader than whizbang high-tech areas like Artificial Intelligence or quantum computing

·        Why Japan has a dearth of entrepreneurial enterprises (hint: it’s not culture, it’s more about issues like funding, staffing, access to customers, etc.)

·        There are positive trends reducing the barriers to entrepreneurship, but they need to be nurtured

·        Kishida punted; like Shinzo Abe before him, he’s great at outlining lofty goals, but poor at providing, or even stating, the measures needed to achieve them

·        Offering some concrete examples of practical steps that Kishida could take via tax incentives, regulations, and other measures in funding, staffing, R&D, digitization, gaining customers, and getting managerial mentorship. Kishida would not allow the committee on startups to recommend any specifics until long after the July Upper House election.