Posts Tagged entrepreneurship

2012/02/02 13:31 – Japan’s 1st Budget Airline Seeks ‘Trains In The Sky’

Feb 2

Posted by sheffner in news | Comments off

I have much respect for entrepreneurs, and especially for Japanese ones, given the culture.

CEO Shinichi Inoue, 53, has been hands-on in nearly every stage of the Izumisano, Osaka-based carrier, from the initial concept to crafting its business plan over the past four years.He describes the concept for the airline as providing “trains in the sky,” aiming to offer flights with the availability, ease of use and cost of rail travel.

All Peach Aviation seating is economy class. Booking tickets online has no service fee, but does if made over the phone. There are also baggage fees and extra costs for requesting a specific seat. There is no mileage point service. But as a trade-off, fares are around half that of major carriers — 4,780 yen for an Osaka-Sapporo flight, for instance.

…

Back in January 2008, when Inoue announced plans for the airline, he still harbored doubts that budget carriers would fully catch on in Japan, he recalled. His feelings changed after meeting Patrick Murphy, former chairman of Europe-based Ryanair, the world’s biggest budget airline, … in spring 2008, and asked for on-the-spot guidance. …

“Mr. Murphy changed my mind-set. He pulled me back each time I tilted toward ANA’s way of thinking,” Inoue recalls.

Peach Aviation is banking not just on low prices to attract business, but also its image. This partly explains why its name features a fruit — which simply would not fly for strait-laced Japanese airlines.

…

With about a month to go before his company’s inaugural flight, Inoue, whose personal motto is “everything should be interesting,” continues to wrack his brain for ways to wow people.

via 2012/02/02 13:31 – Japan’s 1st Budget Airline Seeks ‘Trains In The Sky’.

Tags: entrepreneurship, Japan

Searching for a new Sony in the rubble of the great quake – Yahoo! News

Aug 8

Posted by sheffner in economic and political philosophy, news | Comments off

Articles about entrepreneurship in Japan are rare – at least I don’t come across them that often. So this was an interesting exception.

Formal models of the economy, writes Murray Rothbard, tend to overlook a crucial instrument of change: entrepreneurship. via What is Entrepreneurship? (See also chapter 8 of Rothbard’s book “Man, Economy and State”)

In its 2010 annual report, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which ranks attitudes toward entrepreneurship by country, the perception toward starting businesses in Japan was the worst among 22 developed nations.

Japan’s score of 5.9 is less than a fifth of the average at 33.4. The United States was at 34.8, with Australia at 45.7 and Sweden at the top of the rankings with 66.1.

According to a survey by the Japan Venture Capital Association, investment in startups in Japan dipped by 23 percent in 2010 to 15.1 billion yen.

Overall, the value of venture funds in Japan stands at around $22 billion compared with $190 billion in the United States.

The hope of venture capitalists is that the quake that shook Fukushima will jolt attitudes enough to nurture a new generation of entrepreneurs.

“I am always saying the next Sony is going to come out of Fukushima. It’s why I am trying so hard to find that next company,” says William Saito, a start-up investor who moved to Tokyo after selling his biometric technology company in California to Microsoft.

via Searching for a new Sony in the rubble of the great quake – Yahoo! News.

Tags: entrepreneurship, Japan

Is Being an Entrepreneur in Your DNA? | LinkedIn

Jul 6

Posted by sheffner in teaching + learning | Comments off

Would you believe it? A college finds that college courses are useful and necessary. Who’d a thunk? Is the Pope Catholic?

Is being an entrepreneur in your DNA, or can it be taught? A new study from Babson College finds the evidence is “overwhelming” that if business students take at least two core entrepreneurship classes, that can “positively influence” them to go on to start up a business.

Professors at the Wellesley, Massachusetts-based college analyzed a survey of some 3,755 alumni and found that two (“or better yet three”) entrepreneurship classes strongly affected students’ decisions to pursue start-ups, and that writing a student business plan also had some influence, though not as strong.

Is Being an Entrepreneur in Your DNA? | LinkedIn.

There is evidence that entrepreneurs don’t do well in school, but you won’t find that discussed in the article.

This is a false dichotomy. The writer thinks there are only two possibilities: either it’s in your blood, it’s innate, or it is taught in a college course. What about apprenticeships? Or mentors? No. None of that. It’s either DNA or college. No other possibilities.

And in the third paragraph, the article makes the predictable but unfounded leap from “entrepreneurship CAN be taught (in college)” to “it SHOULD be taught”. Surprise, surprise. Also notice the stress on reducing risk, a typical professorial attitude.

Why learn entrepreneurship from a professor who has never entrepreneured anything in his life?

“It’s time to cast off the prejudiced question, ‘Why teach entrepreneurship?,’ because we now have excellent empirical evidence that it makes a difference. We think that entrepreneurship should be taught not only for the production and training of entrepreneurs but also to help students decide if they have the right stuff to be entrepreneurs before they embark on careers for which they may be ill-suited,” the professors wrote in the study, called “Does An Entrepreneurship Education Have Lasting Value? A Study of Careers of 3,775 Alumni.”

I don’t deny that entrepreneurship can be taught. Cameron Herold’s dad taught him (see the TED talk on the video below). I just don’t believe that college courses can teach entrepreneurship.

What’s next? Maybe college courses to teach selflessness and community spirit?

Tags: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, TED