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Hayashi's young business, Loftwork Inc., earned 900 million yen ($11 million) in annual sales taking a different but equally Japanese route as Hasegawa's. She offers a service that stems from her diagnosis of the sickness at major companies
-- the loss of the innovative spirit. She hopes to start a kernel of creativity going at companies that "starts small but snowballs." Top Japanese companies have a load of talented hardworking people, but they have become so obsessed with rigidity like quality control in mass production that their thinking has grown static, and they can't figure out where to start or how to change, she said. "The companies need our help because they've grown to be a giant Gundam robot that isn't able to handle delicate innovations, which are like ants at its feet, and may instead squash them," Hayashi said, referring to a Transformer-like robot. Saito, a son of Japanese immigrants to California, believes Japan Inc. has simply lost its entrepreneurial spirit. His assessment underlines a growing view among experts here. Saito's own career took off when he was just a teenager, partly because management of major Japanese companies like Sony Corp. and NEC Corp. weren't afraid to take risks in the past, even on a child prodigy like Saito, when he came up with fingerprint-recognition encryption for security. Microsoft Corp. licensed Saito's core technology in 2000, and bought his company nine years ago, allowing him to technically retire. "But I've never been busier, doing a ton of different things, to really give back to society, and to reinvigorate the creative spirit and become a more entrepreneurial society again because it used to be here," said Saito. "It's just bringing it back. All the parts exist. It's just a matter of how to execute that." Saito, the computer whiz, has opened "Creative Lounge Mov," in a fashionable shopping mall in Tokyo's Shibuya, known as this nation's Silicon Valley, complete with locker rooms, offices and sofas, to provide a place where venture types can exchange ideas and hook up with investors. He and others believe such ventures will nurture entrepreneurs, and in the longer term get Japan back in front. Despite being ahead in key technologies like the mobile Internet and electronic money, Japan saw its lead eroded by latecomers with more imagination, according to Gerhard Fasol, a consultant who works with Japanese companies. "Japan hasn't woken up," said Fasol.
[Associated
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