Fundamental reasons why a venture business fails Part 2

Kyocera actually started its business as a venture business and, over past several decades, it has grown as billion dollars sales conglomerate. Mr. Inamori* has shared a lot of tips to the fundamental attitudes and its business philosophy which allow them to drive such a business success.

This time, by analyzing business tips that Mr. Inamori shared with us, I highlighted a sort of reasons why a venture business fails. If your business fails to check one of the below, your business implies the possibility to fail.

3  Does your actions come from Love?

→ Are you givers not takers?

Mr. Inamori introduced a book written by American bioethics researchers.

“The word Love in English originally means doing something for others. It just means” giving everything ” and the love gives people without seeking any reward. Give what you have to the world with no rewards. Furthermore, the love-based actions have ultimately been empowered. That’s why great outcome await those who are identified as “Givers”. That research group also published a book entitled Good Things Happen to Good People. In other words, it is academically proven that “Compassion is not good for others but yourself.”

→ Aikido Master, Yamaguchi of Okinawa Aikikai talked about love like this. “Mother feeds a baby with breast milk, I think this is nothing but “love”. They are not giving their milk for some rewards. They naturally got fulfilled by giving birth to them and feeding them. This is also the fundamental value of Aikido.

When it comes to ventures, their ultimate goals tend to be to make money, become famous, and go public.

However, I think it should be Love that motivates those venture entrepreneurs to drive further. I believe, looking at Mr. Inamori, this love was the only motivation for the successful venture companies.

4  Are you working hard for others? 

This is, in other words, for what are you working hard? To others or to yourself?

Some challenged Mr. Inamori: “Well, you are always telling that altruism is the motivation of your business, but I don’t believe that. Under the capitalism, we have to compete with others, if you think about others, we would lose our market share, profit, and our success. Your philosophy does not work at all. You are simply hypocrites. ”

Inamori answered “We work hard but this is simply to protect our staffs, clients and shareholders. We never worked hard to kill our enemies. This is the great mistake.”

I think this part needs more explanation.

What he is trying to tell is our motivation, our intention, where our energy comes from.

If we feed our staffs, we should be filled with the desire to give our energies to others.

On the other hand, if we aim at beating our competitors, we should naturally end up with full of intention of “taking, robbing, and extortion”. Those two are completely opposite energies.

Mr. Inamori reiterate that those who are “takers” would naturally being taken. We should work hard to others by spending our all resources. Thus we never get categorized as takers, but givers.

5 Does your action come from the attitude “adequately fulfilled ”?

Mr. Inamori referred to an episode of an African tribe. Their agriculture has burned out the fields.  But even though they are in a shortage of food, they never burn more simply because their God never allows them to distort the life and natural cycle. If they burn more, they would sooner or later starve.

Sometimes ventures worked hard to take all the market shares. Knowing the balance would lead us to understand the dynamism of our environment, and helps us to take the proper actions

6 Live and keep prosperous together

Mr. Inamori said “ if we provide favorable conditions to our group companies, we may end up weakening ourselves. Or otherwise, our group company may lose the opportunity to grow and eventually they would not be able to survive under the harsh conditions. This looks like a superficial benefit, we should not do that. ”

Nowadays, real estate transactions in Japan, I have found translations among group companies. They would sooner or later damage not only the market but also the industry.

To sum up, below is the checklist whether or not a venture fails.

I believe among those criteria, being fulfilled and co- prosperity are two most important values. Most ventures appear to the market, grow rapidly, and disappear. This is simple: they lack some of the above criteria.

Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com

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