The Country Manager of a foreign company starting up in Japan is more than just a manager, he/she also has to be an entrepreneur and salesperson to run the minutiae of a new business for the first 3-5 years.
Economists and businesspeople will be speculating about what will happen to the Japanese economy after the consumption tax increases from 5% to 8%, and therefore what will happen to Abenomics.
A newer global self-help entrepreneurial business organization, TiE, has appeared on the Japan scene, and this one seeks specifically to develop new entrepreneurs, although the networking aspect is there as well.
Consumption tax legislation will kick in in 2015 adding an extra 10% (up from zero) on digital contents/services that are purchased by consumers (versus businesses) from suppliers abroad.
The first edition of Terrie's Take for 2014. We take a peek into the future and ask ourselves what trends or macro developments might happen and what impact they will have on doing business in Japan.
This year's summary of key events revolves in around the role of government intervention and the trends that such politically-driven activity will have on our businesses in 2014.
It's always interesting to see how foreign business models will do here in Japan, especially those based on the Internet, that have done well overseas by breaking new ground.
Instead changing the Constitution and the U.N. Security Council an interim solution could be to employ private military companies, working on the behalf of the Japanese government to get "sticky" stuff done.
People are going "raw" and moving away from heavy fat and preservative-laden diets. A good measure of just how many people are doing this can be found from the sales of juicers and blenders in the market.
Rakuten CEO Mikitani is voicing what many other Japanese businesspeople think, that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Abenomics could be doomed by his government's inability to deal with vested interest groups.