Why the Japanese do not love Internet entrepreneurship? The failure of social intolerance

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

A big feature of the Internet is the need to take risks, and if you're not willing to risk it, how can you be creative?

Zeng Ai/Wen

Japan's mobile internet once led the rest of the world for many years. But in this round of smartphone-focused mobile internet entrepreneurship, we are surprised to find that China has in many ways started to be at the same starting point as Japan, even more than Japan.

In 2012 and 2013, I visited two well-known mobile internet incubators in Japan, the incubator of a famous Japanese venture capital company in Tokyo, and the incubator called Labo by Japan's second-largest operator, KDDI, which resembles China's innovation factory, which is like the Chinese telecom (Weibo ) 's entrepreneurial incubation base. But in these renovated offices, the number of entrepreneurial teams is very small, it appears to be quiet, this and the Chinese entrepreneurial atmosphere hot 3W coffee or garage coffee in sharp contrast.

When Apple's App Store and Google Play made the world's mobile internet entrepreneurs start at the same starting line, apps developed by Chinese companies began to gongchenglvede in the US and Japan, compared with a much smaller number of apps developed by Japanese companies.

So what is hindering the entrepreneurial climate in Japan's Internet?

Japan's social intolerance fails

When I talk to a lot of Japanese friends, they all talk about Japan as an intolerant and failed society.

In Japan's society, if a person fails, he will be difficult to survive in society, not only around the friends look down on him, want to find a job very difficult, not a wife, but also pass the credit of the bank loans. This social reality determines that young people are bound to fear their feet when they want to start a business.

And in Silicon Valley, many VCs are willing to invest in companies that have failed one or two times, and Americans believe that people who have had the lessons of failure are more likely to succeed next time.

In addition, Japanese young people do not like the limelight. I have a friend who studies in Japan recalls that Japan began to carry out quality education in the 890 's, went into a misunderstanding, stifle competition, emphasizing groups. Such an education system has led to young people in Japan compared with the herd, kindergartens, primary school races are hand in arm through the end of the collective. The university 4 years, even do not know which schoolmate's result is good, which schoolmate's result is poor, because everybody's result is not public. Such an education system has made many people reluctant to show off. And entrepreneurship is a matter of great need for publicity.

Japan's local VC industry is not developed, and relatively small number of entrepreneurial projects. China has a lot of copy 2 Chinese entrepreneurship projects, that is to see what is relatively fire in the United States, and soon a group of startups began to copy the domestic, and in Japan, people generally disdain this way, which makes the threshold of entrepreneurship has become very high.

The other reason for the Japanese venture is that large companies such as NTT DoCoMo, Toyota, Sony, Sharp and Fujitsu monopolize the country's many resources. Japan's big enterprises are often inextricably linked to the chaebol, many Japanese large enterprises cross shareholding, deep relationship, large enterprises and affiliated companies monopolize the entire business, including surrounding business.

Japanese interest rates have long hovered at 0 or even negative rates. Interest rates are an important measure of whether people in a country are willing to take risks. The Japanese are generally willing to deposit their money in banks, and no one is willing to venture, leading to very low interest rates.

Kita once mentioned in the famous "lost 20 years" that Japan's economy has stagnated for a long time, one of the biggest reasons is that Japan failed to catch up with the third industrial revolution of the 1980s Japan's business model and "the first 2.5 industries", that is, knowledge-intensive manufacturing needs very match, But not very suited to the needs of the information industry.

Today, the entire Japanese economy is still the core of advanced manufacturing, Toyota, Sony, Panasonic, Fujitsu, Sharp, Nippon Steel and other manufacturing enterprises are the backbone of the Japanese economy, manufacturing in Japan's share of the economy is much higher than the United States. By contrast, the financial and Internet industry has gradually begun to become the engine of the U.S. economy, manufacturing is starting to decline, although the U.S. economy has experienced a recession, but the emerging IT industry has begun to inject huge vitality in the U.S. economy, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other companies to the U.S. economic contribution to see.

The problem with the industrial structure is another important reason why the Japanese lack the entrepreneurial atmosphere. Because the most active areas of entrepreneurship are still in the rapid development of IT industry.

Japan's lifetime employment system hinders entrepreneurship

Another factor that the Japanese do not love to start a business is that Japanese companies have a deep-rooted "lifetime employment system".

The life-long employment system was proposed by Panasonic, who is revered as the operating God, who said Panasonic would not fire any of its employees so that employees could work at ease. The idea of Panasonic's support has been accepted by many Japanese companies. Until the post-war 50 's, Japanese enterprises began to form a tradition of lifelong employment and made a contribution to the rise of Japan's economy.

In the industrial age of Sony, Panasonic, Nintendo, Sharp, Toyota and Honda, life-time employment is indeed a great divinity. This system greatly reduces the wastage of social resources caused by the frequent job-hopping of employees. After World War II, due to the rapid development of Japan's economy, there is a general shortage of labor force in society.

At that time, Japanese enterprises in order to stabilize the skilled workers, to prevent workers "job-hopping", the general implementation of the "annual work series wage System." The so-called "annual work series wage System" is based on the staff's qualifications and length of service to determine their salary level, the longer the length of service, the higher the salary, the possibility of job promotion is greater.

In Japan, even poorly performing employees are usually not expelled, but instead they are politely excluded from the core and transferred to a rural branch or to a job or a job to retire.

For an ordinary Japanese, because of the guarantee of a lifetime employment system and regular salary increases, they will be able to arrange loans to buy a house, prepare their children's education costs, life and death can also rely on the National health Insurance system and the various benefits of enterprises to solve. These make the Japanese in a very reassuring social environment, they hope to enter the first-class university, and then into a first-class enterprise or State organs, from life without worry, this is the typical Japanese mentality.

This makes many big business employees unwilling to resign--because quitting means that all the qualifications you've accumulated in the past have been forgotten, and the consequences of failure are severe.

And one of the great features of the Internet is the need for adventure, and if you're not willing to take risks, how can you be creative?

Japan's new generation of Internet entrepreneurs seeking change

After World War II, Japan was deeply influenced by American culture. The Japanese have a very popular attitude towards a strong America.

The Internet culture in the United States has also had a profound impact on young Japanese in recent years. A notable example is the number of Facebook registrations in Japan that began to soar after the American film, "Social Networking", was aired in Japan.

So in recent years Japan has also begun to emerge a group of less traditional internet entrepreneurs, the typical representative of Rakuten founder Hiroshi Mikitani and Gree founder Tanaka and.

The father of Mikitani's history was a professor at Yale University, so he was deeply influenced by American culture, and a few years ago he forced an English-language office in Rakuten, requiring all employees to learn fluent English in the short term, or to dismiss or demote, which caused great tremors in Japanese society. Tanaka, the founder of Gree, a famous Japanese social networking firm, has a similar character, and he has become a maverick among Japanese entrepreneurs.

Anyway, three wood Mikitani and Tanaka and rely on the Internet to start a business, young to become a high ranking of Japan's rich list of people on the top, or Japanese young people have a great touch, in Tokyo, six wood and other places, still gathered a considerable number of entrepreneurs, Japanese society is changing.

The Japanese are not willing to start the status quo, but also important to China's inspiration. China's surface boom under the entrepreneurial tide, in fact, also hidden deep impetuous. In the United States, people start a business more to achieve their own dreams of life, or simply because of interest. And in China, the entire social ladder is limited, a large number of "cock silk" people born in order to change their fate, are desperately to squeeze entrepreneurial bridge, leading to China's entrepreneurial competition is too fierce, the electricity business to make money, immediately a group of people to join the electric business, buy money, immediately a group of people to do group buying, app money, A bunch of people are going to do the app right now. Lead to a lot of industry people can not make money.

Similar to Japanese society, Chinese society has limited tolerance to failure, which makes it difficult for many entrepreneurs to climb up once they fail. That's what we need to watch out for. Like Japan, China's big internet companies are increasingly controlling the resources of their industries, making it hard for startups to rise, which can also hamper the industry's ability to innovate.