Can China Be Innovative?
What innovation at the core of Chinese business culture today? First and foremost, innovation requires conflict and dissent. It requires that individuals not only have the education and training to go against the mold, but that they are in fact encouraged to do so. Yes, China's culture does not strongly discourage failure (like a Korea, where a business or personal bankruptcy marks you with a Scarlet "B" for life), but it's still hard to go against the popular grain in China. Just as we don't hear any internal voices from China dissenting when it comes to a current political/geographic issue, the Chinese still all too often speak with one voice from a business standpoint as well in a rigid, hierarchical manner. This must change for China to become more innovative on the world business stage.
Second, innovative countries place a tremendous emphasis on the power of an elite university system to churn out ideas at the intersection of industry and the public sector. China has a long way to go from building the university / government / private sector R&D bridge -- especially in comparison not only to the United States, but its Asian Tiger neighbor to the West, India. In this regard, China must realize that the university / innovation link is not a question of quantity, but of quality -- in other words, more degrees granted will have little bearing on overall innovation unless these recent graduates take advantage of a research-driven environment.
What do you think? I'm sure a certain "All Roads" colleague will take me to task for suggesting what I just posited -- and maybe he'll be right -- but I just don't see China as the innovator that others make it out to be.
- Jason Busch
"China risks becoming a good 20th-century industrial economy just when it needs to figure out how to be a 21st-century knowledge-based economy if it doesn't move in the right direction."
Then read the last paragraph again:
"China might be exacerbating some problems as it solves others."
Then go back and read "Can China Be Innovative", linked in the post, which says:
"In order to be innovative, China has to foster innovation in the next generation. And that is going to mean fostering independent thinking inside and outside the cirriculum."
In no way did I attempt to debunk the myth that China is not innovative because, as a whole, China is not innovative and the myth is actually right. (Heck, go back to my first posts in 2006 where I was warning individuals about their China frenzy ... )
What I was trying to do was point out that for every rule, there are exceptions (i.e. a few outliers in the country who, having spent considerable time in the west and / or dealing with the west have picked up on the innovation bug) and that companies like IBM are betting that the exceptions are big enough to take a chance on and that this, on its own, is interesting because if the risks pay off, then, in a generation's time (20+ years), China could actually become a fledgling innovator in the global economy. However, if they don't (pay off), companies, like IBM, taking this risk, are in for a world of hurt.
As I said, "it will be very interesting to see how this plays out over the next few years".
Eventually, as China advances and even takes the lead, they will ultimately be the ones that are the true innovators. It will take time, but eventually it will happen. Just like how the Swiss flooded the English watch market with counterfeits in the 18th century (yes it's true).