Japanese Culture Archives - Disrupting Japan: Startups and Innovation in Japan

Selects: Why Japan’s Geisha are disappearing in the social media age

by Tim Romero | Aug 4, 2020 | 2

You don’t usually think of Japan’s geisha as being an industry, but it is. In fact, strictly...

Your Japanese textbooks are lying to you

by Tim Romero | Jul 7, 2020 | 2

They probably mean well. They are telling you something that is easy to understand and that seems...

How Japan’s forgotten past can stop IoT’s dystopian future

by Tim Romero | Dec 24, 2019 | 2

Technology is global, but ideas are local. The same IoT technology is being deployed all over the...

DJ Selects: Why Men Need Women Founders

by Tim Romero | Nov 26, 2019 | 2

Ari Horie has always had a different approach to supporting women entrepreneurs. She doesn’t talk about “empowering” women and …

Outside of the Bubble with Japan’s Startup Girls: Mone Kamishiraishi

by Tim Romero | Aug 20, 2019 | 4

Those of us who spend our lives working with startups live in a bubble. Whether you spend your...

DJ Selects: The Myth of the Successful Startup Failure

by Tim Romero | Jun 25, 2019 | 8

Startup culture has crazy and contradictory views about failure. As founders we are told to fail fast, but also to never give up. We are told to follow our vision, but be ready to pivot. Somehow this macho-bullshit culture of “I never really fail and ‘m not afraid of failure.” has become dominant amount founders. But it’s the result of denial. Trivializing failure is a way of not thinking about it’s effects.

The truth is that failure sucks. Failure is painful. Failure …

DJ Selects: The Real Reason Uber is Failing in Japan

by Tim Romero | Feb 5, 2019 | 10

Uber and Airbnb represent a new very kind of startup, one that could not have existed twenty years ago, and the very thing that make these companies so transformative in the United States ensures they will never succeed in Japan. You see…