TOKYO, Dec. 8, 2021–Bureaucracy survival rests on the capacity for repeating and continuing what’s old as if new no matter whether they botched it in the past by rallying the big and and powerful. The Japanese government is going to do that from next year; it will revisit fostering dotcom unicorn businesses, its undertaking that flipped miserably in the pasts with hardly any results, by funneling government money into existing big Japanese businesses for their endeavors at new project startups.
METI, the trade ministry notoriously nationalistic and risk-averse, had come up with the idea of extending government finances to big Japanese businesses for their in-house startups and to independent unicorns that would rake in capital and human resources from big firms, according to recently Japanese media reports. The idea is presumed coined after the entrepreneur in residence concept long adopted by U.S. businesses, but the government is budgeting a ludicrously small 860 million yen ($8 million!!!) for it to help big businesses hire and retain 30-50 entrepreneurs (What?! Is that all?!).
Japan had 6 (Yes, six!) unicorns valued at more than $1 billion that have yet to go to IPOs as of this fall. The United States had 165.
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