Will Chinese Consumers Soon Be Shopping Online with “Little Black Bags”
I recently read an article in Wired Magazine that set me to thinking about what the next big thing may be in China’s e-commerce space. A 100-year old Japanese custom may just be made to order....
View ArticleWishful Thinking Fuels R&D Centers in China
During a recent gathering of Western senior engineering managers and executives in China I was surprised at the pessimism they expressed about China becoming an Innovation Nation on the back of its...
View ArticleBackshoring to the Future
Recent announcements by Apple and GE and the moves of a host of other American manufacturers would seem to suggest that China’s draw as a manufacturing platform for the world is being challenged....
View ArticleThe China Innovation Play
Andrew Sheng asks in his article for the South China Morning Postif the Chinese central government’s policy of innovation by fiat will once again make China an innovation leader. Sheng is president...
View ArticleChina Innovation Scorecard for Own Companies Downbeat
Xinhua, an official government mouthpiece, recently published findings of a survey about the state of innovation readiness of its private manufacturing firms. The report cited, “that of those...
View ArticleInnovative Approaches To Money Transfers Out of China
We’ve been having rather spirited and lengthy discussions on the LinkedIn Group I host, China Fast Forward. In one of the discussion threads I comment to points made by other participants: I don’t...
View ArticleThe Perils of Western Professors in China
One of the members of the China Fast Forward group on LinkedIn posted an insightful Economist Magazine articleon the realities Western academic institutions face in China. Rote learning, a...
View ArticleThe Great Leap of China Patents
Much has been made recently of the rapidly increasing number of patent applications in China. The central government’s policy to show the world it will be an innovation nation reminds me of the the...
View ArticleChina’s Risk-Averse Youth Shun Innovation
I recently overheard in an elevator in Suzhou a conversation between bank managers. The bank has a branch in the lobby of the office building and a couple of floors in the building for management...
View ArticleBloomberg’s Totally Useless Innovation Index (TUII)
February 5th, 2013 Bloomberg recently released its own version of a global innovation index, and it’s even less informed than others I’ve written about. Some of my favorite rankings in the...
View ArticleWhen China’s Solar Equipment Patents Flew Too Close to the Sun
I was surprised recently during a research project on the the patent application activity of the Mainland’s solar power equipment industry to find a countervailing trend: patent activity in the...
View ArticleHuawei: R&D Dominance at any Price?
Huawei has recently appeared in several high-profile articles in international newspapers the last several days. Huawei makes telecommunications equipment and mobile phones. While best known for its...
View ArticleThe Shadow Knows
David Pilling of the Financial Timesreports some disturbing statistics on the degree to which China’s economy is dependent on official- and “gray” Ponzi schemes: The upshot is an ill-defined and...
View ArticleDoing Business in China: Innovative, or Just Plain Ingenious?
While in Beijing the past few days I’ve had the pleasure of participating in the Beijing Bookworm International Literary Festival. Just after the first of two talks on my latest book, China Fast...
View ArticleThe Chinese Middle Class Discovers Civilization
This past weekend at the Beijing Bookworm International Literary Festival a moderator asked me during one of my book talks where he thought non-traditional thinking about relationships in Chinese...
View ArticleThe Politics of Discovery in China
March 22nd, 2013 In other words, the two most important systems supporting innovation in a society are woefully skewed to meeting the demands and vanity of CCP sponsorship. Ultimately, Chinese...
View ArticleTapping the Brains of the BRICs
April 2nd, 2013 A great op-ed piece in the Financial Times echoes a proposition I make in the Afterword of “China Fast Forward”: countries need to break down the barri...
View ArticleChina is No “Robin Hood” of Innovation
April 8th, 2013 A recent link I posted on the China Fast Forward group
View ArticlePatently Obvious
I asked the American inventor one of the most important questions you can ask a foreign businessman in China: “How are you going to protect the invention?” He smiled, “That’s the beauty of it,” he...
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