entrepreneur

Masayo NamikiBy Michael Condon

For young foreigners in Japan, Sakura House may seem ubiquitous, but it remains a small business at heart

During the numbing hangover of the post-bubble days of the early 1990s, a real estate man found himself wandering the streets of Tokyo looking for direction. In the mid-1980s, land in Ginza was said to be priceless while real estate in the remainder of Tokyo, wasn’t far off. But when the party was over at the end of the bubble era, the prices of overvalued properties came crashing down.

By Marilyn Helms

How one female entrepreneur made it work for her.

Can Japanese women find career success and personal satisfaction through new venture creation? Professor Shiho Futagami and I addressed this question in our recently published case study of Digimom Workers, a successful female start-up company in Japan.

By Shiho Futagami

The significance of female entrepreneurship in the Japanese economy.

One economic solution for reversing Japan’s financial challenges is female entrepreneurship. These independent businesswomen are emerging outside the traditional Japanese management but remain Japan’s greatest untapped human resource.

By Terrie Lloyd

What type of company is best when starting up in Japan and how much capital should it have?

Probably the two most common questions asked by foreign CEOs wanting to establish a presence in Japan are what type of corporate structure they should use and what the capitalization should be.

Michael AlfantBy Darius Jones

When opportunity knocked Michael Alfant took notice, building success from scratch not once, but twice.

By Michael Condon

J@pan Inc takes a look at some of Tokyo’s most exciting Internet innovators:

Kristopher Tate, Eric Young, Andrew Smith Lewis, Taisuke Fukuno, Marc Wesseling, Michael Sheetal

Vincenzo LufinoBy Simon Shida

Now that IT has become such an integral part of business activity, it is important to find the right IT solutions for your business. We talk to Ecotech Japan—a company that can offer just that.

Terrie LloydBy Terrie Lloyd -- The apparent lack of desire by Japanese youth to become entrepreneurs. -- There is much that can be done, and in fact, is being done, to encourage entrepreneurship as a career. Ranging from universities to tax breaks for venture capital, there are many changes taking place in Japanese society as the authorities start to realize they have to do something. A quick look through the METI website lists many press releases on what the government is doing to support new business owners.

By Hugh Ashton -- Surviving entrepreneurs tell us about turbulent times -- Any successful business has faced pitfalls along the way, but for entrepreneurs and small-to-medium sized companies, these mistakes can prove fatal. Those who have survived tell us their story.

By Peter Harris -- Tokyo diamond broker Mark Willis and his unique business model of serving the expat community -- Like so many long-term residents in Japan, Mark Hiroshi Willis’ first job here, back in 1991, was teaching English. Although he enjoyed the job, Willis was a qualified gemologist and had always known that his professional future lay with diamonds.