Archive for the ‘Risks’ Category

Uncertainty makes us free!

No Comments
Posted 08 May 2012 — by Charles Martineau
Category Books, Risks

I am cur­rently read­ing the great book Against the Gods by Peter Bern­stein and we learn a lot about John May­nard Keynes and its view on risk. Like Karl Pop­per, Keynes believes that we have a very lim­ited knowl­edge. So much that there is no sci­en­tific basis on which to form any cal­cu­la­ble prob­a­bil­ity. In the words of Bern­stein “Keynes’s words bring great new: we are not pris­on­ers of an inevitable future. Uncer­tainty makes us free.”

Couldn’t agree more! Imag­ine if life was cer­tain… how bor­ing would that be!

Taking risks in Japan: maybe there is already too much to risk to cope with…

No Comments
Posted 29 Dec 2011 — by Charles Martineau
Category Risks

Many say that Japan’s strug­gling econ­omy of the last 20 years is result of the poor entre­pre­neur­ial risk-taking. We know that avoid­ing risk is some­thing that is cul­tur­ally embed­ded. It is known that when you fail once as an entre­pre­neur you will be known as a fail­ure for the rest of your life. Quite hard to get the moti­va­tion to take risk right?

I am cur­rently on my third to Japan (a place that I now call my sec­ond home) and every time I ques­tion how this econ­omy can get back on its feet again. We can always push the peo­ple to take more entre­pre­neur­ial risk but we must rec­og­nize some­thing… that coun­try lives in an envi­ron­ment where dan­gers and risks sur­rounds them day in and day out: tsunamis, every­day earth­quakes, the crazy North Kore­ans, typhoons, vol­canos that can erupt at any moment, and now nuclear risks. Maybe, cul­tur­ally, the indi­vid­u­als are fed up on tak­ing more risks — they have plenty to cope with already!