The secret of Japan.

Am back. Shop's open, work resumes as per usual. Sigh.

A good sigh for a good trip :)

Anyway, one of the best parts of my trip was to finally be able to articulate what I thought was amiss in my own country. The habit of always, not resting, not giving excuses, not dampening others' efforts, to always, ALWAYS find a solution to every problem. That's the essence of Japan's entire being. The secret to their success. So if you want to be successful, emulate that.

But of course, there are many supporting but significant factors which continuously spur this spirit of innovation. One of the many is volume. With a population size of approximately 127 million, they have enough volume to almost support any sort of invention. Whether or not it takes flight or flop is a different story. The inventions almost always evolve from the initial concept anyway, constantly improved on which explains why everytime you fly with JAL, you'll be pleasantly surprised in the little improvements made here and there. And why everytime you fly with MAS, it's same old same old, you can almost rehearse the safety script with the Malaysian Girl :)

Imagine niche inventions evolving into bigger ones, combining with other concepts, constantly changing and meeting more needs, solving more problems, serving a bigger purpose. Like an amoeba. Except this one, instead of dividing itself to survive, it keeps swallowing the smaller ones causing it to grow bigger and bigger by the day. Countries with the will but not the volume needed to support it, will have to take bigger risks and higher investments to pursue innovative concepts. It could be a longer route (and a more expensive one) but it will get there. Countries such as South Korea maybe? Taiwan? Singapore? But countries with volume that can swallow up the globe, unfortunately may not have the same mindset and/or skill set (yet). They will also take some time to fully realise their potential. India? China? Brazil?

How about Malaysia? Will we one day be able to catch this thinking? Even if we're 100 million heads behind?