An Innovator Leaving Japan

[Mulboyne]

[Yokohammer]

Good article. I particularly like this:

You need a culture that can deal with change. You need companies that are small and agile. You need incentive structures that reward ideas over performance. You need a government that is not stuck in bureaucracy. You need a thriving VC investment climate with Angel Investors that are willing to take risk. You need entrepreneurs that take risk. You need an education system that rocks. And guess what, Japan has none of that.

[Kuang_Grade]

[pheyton]

[Yokohammer]

Feed the author to the fuckin pigs.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7125981.ece

Japanese scientists, engineers and financiers have begun work on a project that will make the construction excesses of Dubai look timid: a tower 1km (3,300ft) high and a vertical farm balanced on a floating concrete lilypad.

I'll believe this when I see it. At this point it's just a pipe dream, and one that overlooks some serious potential environmental problems.

[Mulboyne]

...It seems more a smoke screen for the authors own reasons for leaving after a whole 3 years in Japan than a damning indictment of the J system.

I can't seem to access his site now. The link was retweeted quite a bit so he may have generated too much traffic.

I did get around to reading it and thought that it was a bit disappointing in the end. There is a case to make for Japan having difficulties in the knowledge economy but I don't think our man makes it very well. Perhaps the fact he calls himself an "innovator" should have sounded a few warning bells.

If you are going to address an issue, you have to think about what evidence will make your case and then look for it. Too often, people seem to stumble across news items on the web which confirm their general impressions and then think collecting them in one place constitutes research. It may sound harsh, but that's the impression I got in this instance.

I am interested in the way that so many people feel the need to give reasons why they are leaving Japan, especially in relation to work. When I hear someone in another G7 country tell me they are choosing to relocate, the conversation is usually about why their destination is good and not why the place they are in is so bad.

Perhaps it's because, as our man mentions, the lifestyle in Japan can be very seductive so people are more frustrated that they feel obliged to leave a place which otherwise offers so much. Another factor might be that living in Japan requires an investment which you can't easily transfer elsewhere. Leaving Japan can feel like to some like writing off their entire time in the country.