Free Chapter From My Book: The Contest for Japan's Economic Future

If Japan had never experienced an effervescence of entrepreneurship, then trying to implant it would be like grafting an alien practice onto inhospitable turf. In reality, modern Japan has experienced two extended bursts of entrepreneurship. Many of today's corporate elephants began as gazelles--high-growth small and medium enterprises--in the first entrepreneurial burst, from in the Meiji/Taisho era. When WWII ended, the drive to recover and catch up drew in new companies. Of the 120 large electronics firms in 1979--those with at least 300 employees--nearly half had still been SMEs in 1955. Moderately large challengers like Seiko and Sharp, SONY and Honda, became giants and helped drive the postwar economic miracle. If Japan enjoyed such entrepreneurial effervescence in the past, there's no reason it's impossible for it to do it again.

            So (with some adjustments) begins Chapter One of my book, The Contest for Japan's Economic Future: Entrepreneurs Vs. Corporate Giants. It highlights the efforts of several key individuals and shows how they combined guts, technical brilliance, and commercial genius to propel their companies and Japan to the top of the heap. Then, it shows how and why the system ossified.

            Oxford University Press is offering this chapter for free, but only through September 20^th. There is no need for payment, subscription, or registration.

For details, see https://richardkatz.substack.com/p/free-book-chapter-through-sept-20th

Richard Katz