My own hypothesis about failure of Japanese companies in software is the "pursuit to perfection". This is pervasive in the Japanese work ethic and culture in ge

My own hypothesis about failure of Japanese companies in software is the "pursuit to perfection". This is pervasive in the Japanese work ethic and culture in general. I still vividly remember the first comment of a small prototype aimed at automating a tedious task: "this is not perfect". If you aim at perfection at every step for software production, especially internally, non customer-facing ones, you can't go very far IMO. OTOH, that's probably one of the reason why Japanese companies can be so good for video games (where a screw up costs a lot of money given the market constraints), and hardware in general. The business oportunity cost is just different. If you have any other comments or links about why Japanese websites are so cluttered, I would be really interested. While I am not in Japan anymore, this has always facinated me, and I have never been satisfied with the explanations I have seen so far.