Faiure to take risks, to inernalize and to value employees based on merit is crippling the Japanese economy according to co-winner of the Nobel prize in physics, Shuji Nakamura.

This has resulted in years of stagnation in sei-conductors, solar panels and smartphones.

As Diet sessions opn this month, Abe has a chance to sorrect this.  Abe has pledged to lay out the specifics of his structural reform drive, which relies heavily on corporate tax cuts and reducing red tape. But he’s been quiet on one reform that truly would encourage the risk-taking culture Japan needs so badly: making sure employees get paid for their inventions.

Does Netflix new deal to make movies and stream them to home entertainment centers threaten movie chains?

Netflix has just inked a four-movie deal with Adam Sandler that threatens to shake up the big theater chains by radically altering the way movies are distributed and viewed. It will allow Netflix to produce movies and to stream them directly to customers’ home entertainment centers and computers, completely bypassing exhibit houses. The online Washington Post put this ominous headline on the story: ‘Why the Adam Sandler deal with Netflix could doom theaters…’ Exhibitors, especially big chains like Regal Cinemas, Cinemark and AMC, are understandably upset.

But  huge investment in digital projection systems will give the exhibitors the ability to transform the movie business even more radically than Netflix has transformed it already. At a cost of about $65,000 per projector, movie houses have installed digital systems that have all but eliminated Kodak prints. The savings to distributors have been enormous – on the order of a billion dollars a year in mailing and insurance costs alone. Now, instead of making and shipping 1,200 prints to open a blockbuster movie “wide,” the studios send out ultra-high-definition discs that cost just a few dollars to create and ship. Digital projection systems have also allowed theaters to broadcast special “live” events, such as performances by the Bolshoi Ballet, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York Metropolitan Opera. The theaters have a big advantage over home systems here, since such performances benefit greatly from giant screens (including IMAX) and spectacular sound systems that far outclass even the best home entertainment systems. And there’s yet one more very important factor that will continue to favor theaters over home entertainment systems: the eagerness of all but die-hard couch potatoes to get out of the house on a Friday or Saturday night.

Just three years after Harvard University opened its Innovation Lab,  a space for students to develop startup ideas, there’s a new annex for alumni businesses located right across the street. The Launch Lab is intended to support not only recent grads who may be growing companies they started when they were students, but also alumni several years out who are working on new ventures. Both the Launch Lab and the Innovation Lab are in the former WGBH television complex on Western Avenue in Allston. I stopped by earlier this month to have a look…

Jodi Goldstein calls the 3000-square foot facility a “prototype for the future,” and says the goal is to “prove to the university that there’s demand for an entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Allston.” (The current sign at the entrance to Launch Lab, right, is also a prototype. The permanent one hasn’t yet arrived.) To be eligible for admission into the Launch Lab, only one person on a startup’s team has to be a Harvard alumnus. Right now, the price is $200 per desk, per month. That’s less than other local “coworking” spaces like CIC or Workbar, which charge about $350 per month. “We had some generous donors who are helping to subsidize this,” Goldstein says, adding that about half the operating costs of the Launch Lab are expected to come from rent, and half from donors. Harvard brought on a former Workbar staffer Alison Baldygar to help run the Launch Lab.

Goldstein says that before Harvard even began broadly publicizing the plans for Launch Lab, “we got about 50 applications.” The space can fit about 15 startups, she estimates, or 55 people total. Tenants began moving in earlier in September.  The common thread is that these are first-time entrepreneurs looking for coworking space.” The Launch Lab’s first-floor digs are in a Harvard-owned commercial building that is right next door to the university’s future site for an expanded School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

There are already 14 businesses working out of the space; the largest, with about 10 employees, is Censio.  The company plans to use a smartphone app to monitor your driving habits — with your permission — to enable insurance companies to offer you a lower rate if you exhibit save driving habits. (IE, no excessive speeding, slamming on the brakes, etc.) Former Zipcar chief executive is serving as the company’s interim chief executive, and the startup has already raised some early funding from General Catalyst and Bain Capital Ventures.

Why do women leave good high tech jobs? It’s not the math.  Many women said that it wasn’t motherhood alone that did in their careers. Rather, it was the lack of flexible work arrangements, the unsupportive work environment, or a salary that was inadequate to pay for childcare. As Rebecca, a former motion graphics designer, put it, “Motherhood was just the amplifier. It made all the problems that I’d been putting up with forever actually intolerable.”    Why Women Leave High Tech

In-n-Out has to watch growth, becuase people prefer it to McDonald’s because the food is fresh.  You have to stay close to the food supply and forget freezing and shipping.

Megan McArdle writes:    We are the heirs of the Industrial Revolution, and, of course, the Industrial Revolution was all about economies of scale. Its efficiencies and advances were made possible by banding people together in larger and larger amalgamations, and we invented all sorts of institutions — from corporations to municipal governments — to do just that.

This process continues to this day. In its heyday, General Motors employed about 500,000 people; Wal-Mart employs more than twice that now. We continue to urbanize, depopulating the Great Plains and repopulating downtowns. Our most successful industry — the technology company — is driven by unprecedented economies of scale that allow a handful of programmers to make squintillions selling some software applications to half the world’s population.

In-n-Outt doesn’t think it can deliver the same level of quality as a far-flung mass-market operation. Not to mention the effect of expanding beyond easy trucking range of top-notch California produce. McDonald’s solved this problem by relying on frozen products machine-prepared to exact written specifications. Which is why so many people prefer In-N-Out to McDonald’s.

Sometimes entrepreneurs can compete by delvering the same goods in a different way.  Fresh versus frozen in this case.