How Japan’s Startup Ecosystem Grew Alongside Its Large Firms

Many discussions about startup ecosystems run into difficulty when participants turn out to be using very different mental models of what they are and how they work, leading to conflicting policy prescriptions and politically easy but ineffectual appeals to voter constituencies. As recent work in social psychology shows, how issues are framed powerfully shapes people’s mental models of cause and effect. Stories and narratives are commonly shared frames about how things came to be and where they are headed—and the existing narratives around Japan’s startup ecosystem are often misleading.

Kenji Kushida