Abstract
The international competitiveness of Japan according to the IMD ranking has, after having topped the list in 1991, been steadily declining down to the 26th position in the 2011 edition. After Japan marked the same 26th position in 2002, many raised voices that the country lacks management skill to exploit its excellent technology. Ten years since then, however, the IMD ranking of Japan for "entrepreneurship", a traditional weak point of the country, is still almost the lowest among the countries surveyed, while its score for "customer satisfaction-oriented management," another parameter in the survey, remains at the top. This suggests that no specific measures or techniques could actually improve Japan's competitiveness without change of the country's economic culture. The problem lies in the fact that the nation takes high precision and quality for granted and obsessively demands risk-free solutions, which has eroded the country's competitiveness by high costs and uselessly high quality. The recent earthquake and nuclear power plant accident were sufficient to break the dream of a risk-free fantasy world. It is now high time for the Japanese to accept the existence of risk for the pursuit of real values.
