An entrepreneur teaching Japan how to take more risks

An entrepreneur teaching Japan how to take more risks
bbc.com

This whole "entrepreneurship = taking risks" narrative is getting a little out of hand lately. First and foremost, entrepreneurs should have a worthwhile business idea and the skill and capabilities to assess and realize it. Confidence in doing so comes with skill. Taking risks is for the casino, or for investors who lack the means to evaluate a business proposal.

Nothing about this article says the Japanese are incapable of taking risks (obviously the subject of the article is a prime example), if it said no Japanese people ever take risks, that would be racist. However, it is well known and documented by themselves that their culture has values that avoid risk and those that take risks are looked upon as foolish and shunned for failure. That's more a collective decision made by their society and one that can be changed over time or individuals can choose to deviate from. Their economy has seen stagnant growth because there just isn't the start-up culture you see in other countries. Just look at the web design of a typical Japanese web site if you want to see how adverse the culture is with experimenting with anything new once they find something and establish it as standard.

Disclaimer: Also, there are no real judgments being made on a culture being risk adverse either. Obviously, that carries its own advantages that has probably greatly benefited their country over time. However, anything can be detrimental if taken too far to an extreme. Obviously, if no one ever takes risks or deviates from accepted norms of how you do things, you are less likely to find a new way of doing something or as quickly adapt to changes in the economy. If you want to encourage entrepreneurial businesses, its a cultural value that will need to be dealt with, where as it probably has great advantages in an normal office culture or an island nation where there are few natural resources and everyone lives in tightly packed spaces.

Having said that, apart from the title ... and the decision to run the article at all ... I don't really see much that fits the mould here. Actually, I would say that Mr. Saito is very Japanese in the views he expresses in the article. I was actually surprised that he was raised in the US. It's the kind of thing that I wish more westerners understood about Japan.

But why did the BBC print this article? They seem to be trying to imply that he is not acting in a Japanese way and that Japan needs to be taught something new. If so, I would say that they are wrong on both accounts (well, every culture can benefit from learning something new -- Japan is not different from other countries in that respect).