And yet, from this tragedy springs wonderful news for Japan's future. Failure is good - good for financial institutions, good for government, and good for Japanese society. Return to Top Good for Business Failure is a critical part of all competitive processes. In business, failure is unavoidable because firms are just legal entities managed by real people - who bring all their human qualities with them into executive offices. As a result, how businesses respond to failure is just as important as how they respond to success.
Failure is an essential self-education function in market economies.
Japanese financial institutions are huge, some of the largest in the world. Their size comes both from the industrial success inside Japan and from barriers which keep foreigners out. But these institutions lag behind US and European competitors in part because they have never been exposed to market learning curves, particularly to those relevant to their domestic investment, commercial and retail banking industries. They cannot catch up by reading MOF white papers. Some will fail, indeed some should fail.