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The Japanese – Wannabe Entrepreneurs
By Lance Shields
One year ago, I made the impulsive decision to change the courseof my life and career, took the GMAT (barely passing), enrolledmyself into the McGill Japan MBA program and found myself spending long, grueling weekends studying business mathematicsof the sort I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But besidesrestarting parts of my brain I had deliberately chosen to hibernateafter high school calculus, another set of ideas has crept into mymind that I had never given much time to consider – I am born to bean entrepreneur. This has been emboldened from the new tools I’macquiring but even more so by the influence of several of my peerswho have clearly caught the entrepreneur bug and see the MBA as akick-start for opening their own businesses in the future. My class atMcGill is very international and the nationality that stands out as
 
born entrepreneurs are the passionate Indians, ready to go back toIndia and be the country’s next Infosys or Tata. Being a NorthAmerican of middle class upbringing and having worked for “theman” for all of my adult life, interacting with my Indian counterpartsis like a potent medicine for a slow sickness of safety, responsibilityand compromise. It is as if they have nothing to lose and everythingto gain. I could honestly say I envy their lack of entitlement andwillingness to go get what they want.A few weeks ago I read an interesting Facebook blog post by RobertSanzalone, a Nagoya-based Canadian technology writer and ownerof PacificIT. His post described how the definition of the word“entrepreneur” is quite different between Japanese and non- Japanese. Based on his recent experience starting up the JapanInternational Business Exchange (JIBE) and interactions with theNagoya Chamber of Commerce while looking for resources to helpentrepreneurs, both Japanese and foreign, Robert came to realizethat what his group meant by entrepreneurs (or “Kigyoka” in Japanese) was very different than the Japanese Chambercounterparts. He said that while both Japanese and non-Japanesesee an entrepreneur as a person who starts up a business, he wrote
“from a Japanese perspective, an entrepreneur is someone inTRANSITION in their lives. The trauma of making the transition out of the employment stream should probably happen only once in a person's life so why would you still call yourself an entrepreneur?” 
Robert’s post while certainly only one man’s opinion (as is thisarticle), it brings to light an interesting point about how to dobusiness in Japan and differences in perception about risk-takingventures.As I’ve made Japan my home and I’m getting a MBA here withhopes of starting my own business (a digital branding agency), Ican’t help asking the question is Japan a good place to be for thiswannabe entrepreneur? According to a March Economist special
 
feature on entrepreneurship:
“The latest GEM global report gives Japan the lowest score for entrepreneurship of any big country, placing it joint bottom with Greece. The brightest people want towork for large companies, with which the big banks work hand inglove, or for the government. Risk capital is rare. Bankruptcy isseverely punished.” 
Add to that the comparatively small amount of VC money being divvied out, and that makes for a pretty grimpicture. Or does it?I believe there’s another side to the story that the Western mediararely looks at and lies outside the corporate boardroom. It’s beingstimulated both by need and lifestyle choice. In the currenteconomic downturn, the “disenfranchised” or those that no longerfind themselves with a job to retirement are looking for otheravenues to supplement their income or replace the regular job thatmay not last that much longer in the midst of layoffs and overtimecuts. At the same time, much of the younger generation no longersee the corporation as an attractive path and are opening up smallbusinesses that afford them the freedom of lifestyle they prefer(what do you think all those surfers do for a living?) The “freeter”generation (temporary workers) is transitioning into a mode wherethey can afford to raise a family and have a house. If you Google theword “side business” in Japanese, the web returns 3.7 millionresults. Then there are the 80% of senior professionals in their 50swho have doubts about the national pension and are interested inworking in their 60s. For this group, the Japanese government haswised up and is subsidizing up to one third of any business startedup by three owners over 45 years of age. And what choice does thegovernment have with a dwindling population of talented workers?In many cases, entrepreneurship is clearly spurred by need as Japanfaces growing unemployment as high as 8.6% in Osaka and 7.5% inFukuoka. Traditionally, immigrants such as Koreans in Kansai (likemy wife’s father in Osaka) who couldn’t find a place in Japanese
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