Zoltan Acs has an interesting report on global entrepreneurship which finds Tokyo as the least entrepreneurial city of any his team measured. What are we to make of this? When I go to Tokyo I am amazed at the creativity. A walk through Harajuku, Omote-sando, Ginza, Kichijoji, or any number of other neighborhoods scream creativity to me. In Kyoto we find Nintendo, Kyocera, Wacoal, and many other firms that are global-class innovators. Some of the new movies coming out of Japan are beautifully shot and fascinating studies of the human condition, as “creative” as anything coming out of Hollywood. Shifting frames, Japanese automobiles, machine tools, and various other manufactures are global-class.
This suggests a question that is worth thinking about. Namely, what is the relationship between entrepreneurship and creativity? We might accept that entrepreneurship is creative, but is the opposite true? Is a non-entrepreneurial society not creative? Or, to go even further, this obviously rhetorical question, are non-entrepreneurial societies not prosperous? What does the community think?
Tags: global entrepreneurship, Japan, Tokyo
August 25th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Well, most of the research out there says that entrepreneurship needs a specific skill set to actually get beyond the “hey, that’s a good idea. Maybe I can make some money off of it” phase. Sure, creativity is needed to come up with an idea that’s good enough to be successful in the market place, but it takes much more than that. You need to know how to write a business plan, look for venture capital and how to run a business.
Creativity is just one of the many things that are necessary for a good entrepreneurial infrastructure.
And, just to make a stab in the dark, I’d guess that the insane real estate prices of Tokyo make it hard for a small start up to afford office space anywhere near the center core.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:39 am
It was living in Japan that gave me the incentive to be entrepreneurial. What might not be so directly observed from the street is that the structure of the housing works to allow entrepreneurial endeavor within the household….it might be mom runs a juku, or there is some other activity that is income producing, or, maybe that room just off the entrance, usually across from the WC area, might just be a bedroom for older parent or adult child…in any case, one must pass thru that semi public space to reach the inner sanctum where family life is lived. I also remember houses with vending machines near their entrance–people do things to create cashflow beyond the salaryman income, and it is often right at home, but in a semi-public space of the house. Perhaps newer homes are not configuring the same way, but I was always amazed how creatively that space could be used–maybe not quite a storefront, but a work space. Now storefronts were around, too, in older neighborhoods, were the little street frontage was a market of some description, and one had to call out, then someone would emerge from the interior space that was their home. True “Mom & Pop” businesses. I loved it, I loved the community it fostered. We expansive Americans who have all this space to fill with stuff miss out…we’ve zoned away that social interface and wonder why neighborhoods are sterile and unsafe. Anyways, the experience made me feel I could take my ideas and do more with them. Another wake up call to entrepreneurship has been shopping a warehouse club, and realize people are coming to America whose language skills are not standardized, but they see opportunity and do something–maybe they don’t understand all the rules, and regulations, and they have to contend with authorities and regulars in due course to make corrections, but they keep going….and I, who has a clue of the requirements and issues, I, whose family immigrated well before the American Revolution, me, I stand back and don’t try because I am intimidated. So, I moved forward, I went out and did it. Opened my own business….it didn’t go much past a year, but I want to do it again. It is worth doing. There are no guarantees, the competition can be fierce, but I have this idea, and now it needs my will to dare.
August 26th, 2008 at 8:55 am
There is a very strong (cultural) aversion to failure in Japan. Usually, Japanese are very well suited to taking an existing industry (such as automobiles) and making them better.
When people immigrate to the United States they become more entrepenurial because they know that no one is going to take care of them - no one is going to bail them out. A certain survival mechanism kicks in when you struggle with the local language, and it’s “all up to you.”
August 26th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Hi,
These are three interesting comments and I have some random thoughts.
Jim I think that all societies have an aversion to failure. It expresses itself differently and in different contexts.
For example, as Katheryn hints (and I tend to believe) Japanese women seem to be more entrepreneurial than men — the costs of individual failure might not be as great? I think that maybe what she is saying. Ergo: entrepreneurial in different ways.
We also need to be careful about which industries we are talking about and how we define entrepreneurship.
Also careful about Japanese and existing industries. In the complex manufacturing area, the shop floor is important as Rich and I showed two decades ago in Beyond Mass Production.
Ben, I think you are right about entrepreneurial infrastructures or what I have called in academic papers the “entrepreneurial support network.”
So Japanese are not as entrepreneurial as other societies according to Zoltan’s work. But are they as creative? My answer is definitely “yes!” Possibly there the economically valuable creativity is channeled differently! Not through entrepreneurship but through group work where credit and failure are shared collectively!
As a generalization, a Japanese wants credit but carefully and in the group context. Just like failure should be shared in the group context. So to a Westerner it looks like no one wants to fail and “guilt” cannot be affixed.
Anyway, thanks for commenting. This is an area that is extremely interesting as the US increasingly competes on the basis of quick trust, short-term arrangements, individual entrepreneurship against other societies where the shadow of the future is longer and that believe they need to take care of the wounded and fallen in capitalist struggles.
There is certainly room for a lot of solutions.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:32 am
Katheryn, good luck with your business. Japan had a similar impact, it made me return to Uni for a Finance degree.
Martin,I think much of what you say about wanting group credit is correct in the Japanese context.
Having lived in Japan previously for close to 2 years, (in Osaka and Fukuoka) though, the dynamics are fascinating at present. If economic growth can be equated to body heat, then Tokyo is warm, and Nagoya to a lesser degree. The rest of the country to various degrees is between discomfort and frostbite/hypothermia. Many of the local governments are effectively bankrupt, and only Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa and Fukuoka (from memory) have positive population growth.
I think it may be true that Japanese women are more entrepreneurial because they are often the ones suffering directly from the country’s stagnation. They study hard at University, but are still often demoted to making tea etc in an office, or working in a convenience store or the like to make ends meet. Unsurprisingly, they don’t appreciate this, and so (as an example) 77% of the Japanese applicants for Working Holiday visas in my country (Australia) are female.
This imbalance stems from the occurance that young men are proportionally more integrated into what’s left of the “jobs for life” club, while women are exposed to the free market - and often this means they have more exposure to the outside world.
The younger generation of Japanese as a whole are being badly screwed, and many are waking up to this. As a group of people, they are often using their creative talents to express their frustration through music/dance/film/IT, but as noted it’s not in an entrepreneurial sense very often.
The Japanese skill for design is still strong, and turns up in unexpected places - I met an artist selling his paintings at Fukuoka (Hakata) Train station and was surprised that the city seemed to tolerate it. But I think they felt that he wasn’t in anyone’s way, and he wasn’t hassling anyone.
I often think that Japan will be quite a different place in future. If the Yen drops in value by enough, their tourism industry will benefit, and I think the sense of hospitality offered will hold up. This would also benefit Japan’s creative industries. It may also open up opportunities in different fields, allowing some of the Japanese regions to generate some economic and creative heat again.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:13 am
I have the impression that Japan as a whole does not welcome cultural diversity, compared to many first-world nations. What does this mean for their creativity? Is diversity less important for creativity than we had imagined? According to a map from Who’s Your City, Japan is the most innovative place on the planet.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Hi Zoe,
I’m no expert, but you are right to a point. As a foreigner over there, I was always treated with courtesy, but to a large degree this has been because living in Japan long-term has been difficult.
Having said that, if you look at articles in the Japan Times (one of Japan’s English-language papers), there are efforts recently to help groups called ninen-sei, who are descendants of Japanese people who emigrated to places like Peru and Brazil around 100 years ago.
Also, the younger generation, from what I can see, is less hidebound than the 60-plus geriatrics running Japan’s parliament. One politician recently suggested the previously unthinkable - that due to a falling population and labour shortages, Japan could aim at having foreigners as 10% of its population by 2020.
There are many foreigners who work there for various lengths of time, but for most the visa rules make it very hard to seriously consider putting roots down.