Japan, the biggest reason why you cannot carry out the disruptive innovation.

There is a debate about innovation model on Economist website

Walkman, it may be one of the most famous products and was launched out from Japan. However, a question is, if you can come up with other products that were invented in Japan. I think answer is NO. Even it is really difficult for Japanese to guess. Compared to other countries, the US, UK, or Germany, there are few things that were made in this country and are known for everybody around the world, Japan is the third economic country in the world though.

Contemplating a reason for it, I have bumped into a profound problem. The answer is Japanese people, as their nation wide characteristic based on the cultural background, haven't get used to ask questions that evolve toward innovations. Probably it's not difficult for you to agree with idea that people in each country have their features that differentiate them from others. Americans are always hyper energetic, British are sarcastic, and italians always chase women. We are inclined just to think the differences happen only at the custom level and the behavior level, but also it happen on the thinking level. In the next paragraphs, I am going to describe the importance of questioning that leads for innovations, uncover the history to find out the reason why Japanese didn't need to ask those question.

What is the relevance between innovations and questioning? Let me start with giving you a quick example. If you always question the function of products, ideas, and systems that are inconvenient, you are really good at improving thing with making them more convenient and efficient. That's the way how Japanese people often do. However, if you tend to ask questions in that way, the possibility to have doubts toward products and systems themselves is really low. That questioning way is really important for the development of innovations and Japanese people can't do or are not interested in. Moreover to say, a way of questioning is one of the biggest element to create a custom, a behavior and a culture. Looking at examples I gave at the second paragraph, I can say Americans are hyper energetic because they always to think to be positive and British are sarcastic because they always try to see things from different points of view.

Now, there reises another mystery. Why Japanese people only question how to improve products and etc? The history gives you a clear cut answer for this. That is Japanse people didn't have to make innovations since China could do it much better. Over 1000 years, China was one of the most richest country in the cultural aspect and the technological aspect. Japan, which is located next china, had a great influence from it. Japanese people imported new products and systems from China regularly and their goals were to make them more conveniently and efficiently to fit to their culture for most of the time. Unfortunately, this situation continued for more than 1000 years from A.C 200 to about A.C 1400 and it is not hard for you to imagine that this continuous situation made the pattern of questioning fixed.