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Yes, things are changing (slowly). My accountant left a salaryman gig (!) at 25 (!!) to open his own business (!!!) in accounting (!!!!) which successfully con
by patio11 11y ago
Yes, things are changing (slowly). My accountant left a salaryman gig (!) at 25 (!!) to open his own business (!!!) in accounting (!!!!) which successfully convinced Japanese businesses to use a 25 year old washout as their accountant (!!!!!). I happen to know a ~60ish year old Japanese software entrepreneur. This entrepreneur recently raised a venture round (!) from a US VC (!!!). She's a woman with approximately ~40 years of experience operating a software company. (This is so outside the norm that exclamation points do not do it justice. If instead of meeting her I had heard about her second-hand from the Pope, I would have called him a liar.)
My view on Japanese corporate efficiency is essentially that Japan had a few things going right for it, including a de-facto world monopoly on applied mathematics ("which is useful"), which lasted for a few decades. Those were very, very good decades, and no amount of other inefficiency in Japanese companies/government/etc could make a monopoly on math lose. ("Monopoly" is a slight exaggeration for effect.)
Japan no longer has a monopoly on math. It took ~30 years, but Ford and GM spent enough time looking at Toyota such that they can make a car which is, if not a Toyota, at least not a death trap. Korea and China skipped directly from dirt-poor nations to industrial-powerhouses-who-can-math without taking the US' 200 year detour through "Let's try running factories like they are public schools and public schools like they are factories." Meanwhile, the US becomes the global center for software (which works out swimmingly) and Japan becomes the global center for robots (which works out swimmingly if one owns robots but not so much if one competes with them) while cranking up industrial output and industrial efficiency but concentrating the gains of it rather than passing them around many folks as previously happened.
- knughit 11y agoAre Korean and Chinese not like factories? I always thought they were more so than American, to the point of famously turning out people who have a bizarre ability to imitate knowledge but not have it (much like Chinese factories can fill dollar stores and Walmart with stuff that has an amazing superficial resemblance to functionng functioning products)
- antoniuschan99 11y agoI think its about teaching rote memory vs creativity. It seems as though Math and rote memory are the things that attribute to the success of large scale operations. Whereas Creativity (thinking outside the box and connecting the dots of seemingly different things) is what attributes to the success of new ventures. It's North American culture to be able to think outside the box (regardless of how bad the public school systems are here) which is why most of the innovation comes from here. It is also why the factories are mostly in Asia, because the process of streamlining production has a lot to do with getting the math right.
- mwcampbell 11y agoWhat do you mean by running factories like public schools and public schools like factories?
- sethev 11y agoTreating workers like children and treating children like workers -- that's how I read it.
- mailshanx 11y agoWorld monopoly on math? Could you elaborate on that?
- barry-cotter 11y agoStatistical quality control. Edward W. Deming or a name very like that. The US and Britain made vast strides in quality engineering during WW2 and then ignored it. The Japanese got religious about it.
- antoniuschan99 11y ago"Japan as the global center for robots" I was at the Tsukomo store a few weeks back. I was underwhelmed :(. I thought it would be bigger. My next stop is Huaqiangbei. I have a feeling it's going to be a zoo.