zlacker

>>anigbr+(OP)
Low interest rates and lack of manpower was one of the catalysts of the Industrial Revolution.

Perhaps Japan is going to be the place to be if you're in the "do more with machines" business.

They can only solve this with significant capital investment and major productivity improvements.

>>neilwi+im
I'm not really sure about this, Japan loves meaningless highly manual process intensive jobs and high employment rates, so I understand what you mean, but replacing people with machines isn't really in their DNA even though Japan seems to like robot movies.

Maybe in the face of some type of economical crisis they will change their tune but I wouldn't bank on it. In my opinion, they've been burned once, they were the top dogs for a while, economically poised to even surpass America, and now, a lot of people are without money. So I think it will take a bit of convincing to want to go back to those days.

Japan has an interesting sort of apathy (??), kind of like, they're happy to not be the center of attention and just go on minding their business. We had some business development people visit Japan recently and they were stunned at the lack of competitiveness and interest in growing their businesses.

I guess this is a culture which was happy isolate itself from the world for centuries and I guess if it could, there's nothing saying it wouldn't do it again...I have to say, I can't always blame them :)

>>bamboo+rp
There is likely a "correct" size for any given business in regards to it's function in society. If you chase eternal growth you are somewhat at odds with the society you're part of. Eventually you either need to exploit it to grow past the size it needs you to be, or move out into other markets.

I think the difference is that for the most part, small and medium businesses in Japan are just trying to fit the size of their role in their communities, growth for the sake of growth isn't the goal.

Just observations and idle thoughts from me though, both views on growth clearly have merit and I can't actually speak for Japanese business owners.