Japanese Must Tap Their Inner Israeli. Dekiru Ka?

Interesting op-ed piece from Glenn Newman on the fact that while both countries are islands (literally in the case of Japan, metaphorically in the case of Israel) beyond that similarity the cultures and countries could not be more different. Newman proffers 4 learnings for Japan based on the Israel experience:

1) More innovation and entrepreneurship
2) Global thinking
3) Create flat organizational structures (move away from "top down", command decision-making hierarchies)
4) Ease immigration restrictions

All obviously easier said that done, but within Japan there is a lot of intellectual horsepower and despite declining birthrates, there is still a critical mass of people of well over 100 million people.  With the likes of Rakuten founder, Hiroshi Mikitani,  mentioned in Newman's article, and who I met with when he was just starting out in circa 1998, the role models and templates exist for others to emulate.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120103zg.html