China slips behind US in technology innovation stakes China may be driving much of the global economy, but a survey of global technology executives believes the good old US of A will be the source of the next big disruptive technology breakthrough. KPMG is the source of this assertion, which it makes after interviewing over 800 leaders of entities that range from start-ups to …
Why believe any report about innovation by a firm of accountants? The only innovation they know about is new ways of skating ever closer to tax evasion in your tax avoidance approach.
Come to think of it, perhaps this is what the article is about, and being in 9th place makes us comparatively honest.
You are most wrong, oh heavenly dragon! Accountancy firms have been closely monitoring China for millennia. Over this period the Chinese invented paper, which accountants shuffle from one side of the desk to the other. They invented complex heating systems which the accountants now use as a way of generating hot air, something which forms a core part of their business. And...the abacus. And so, armed with these three inventions, accountants have been raking in cash for centuries. What will be the next great invention? That is the question.
"Global technology Execs", "which it makes after interviewing over 800 leaders of entities that range from start-ups to large enterprises and included VC firms"
OK that seems to sum it up the respondents were made up from idiots from The Apprentice, who create a ebay store and class themselves as "internet entrepreneurs" and Deputy Vice-president of paper clips at Xerox, who has more time on his hands and thinks that filling in these surveys make him an important strategy leader.
Innovation is about coming up with something new and original, not just putting existing technology in a different coloured case.
The computer was an innovation.
The Mouse was an innovation.
The Wide Wide web was an innovation
ARM processers were an innovation
LCD screens were an innovation
The idea of an "app store" was an innovation
Collecting all the pieces to create a product is a fantastic part piece of inspired design.
Making the same product $5 cheaper than somebody else is not innovation
I'm not sure how you can say that LCD screens are innovation, but just putting bits together in a box is not.
LCD screens is just taking liquid crystal technology, adding some control electronics and some glass and just "putting it together in a box".
A mouse (invented in 1965) is just turning a trackball (invented in 1952) upside down and putting it in a smaller box.
The WWW is just putting a front-ent on the front of accessing data which had been done for ages already (ftp etc).
An app store is just another web store that sells bits. Web stores had been selling MP3 files and ebooks - just bits for long before app stores came along.
And what great innovation is it that the pundits think will come from the Yanks over in Disneyland? The iPhone 5S? The Plastic iPhone? Or is it perhaps that new Mac Pro that looks like a trash can? All the parts come from China (who manufactures the products that the big businesses stateside, sell).
"I wouldn't be surprised if the next few years saw some impressive innovation coming from China"
The problem China has is that seventy odd years of one party rule have actively discouraged original thought, risk taking and innovation (much as it did in Russia). A bit of copying doesn't resolve that cultural block, and it will take several generations to re-grow the intellectual curiosity that was previously an unwlecome threat to the state, and where people were trained not to say what they thought.
Even now, it isn't clear to me that the Chinese communist party would really want to encourage radical, questioning thought processes by its population, because those sorts of mind don't cease to ask "why?" when they leave work. If you keep the people under the party's thumb, then you don't get much innovation, but the alternative is more demands for democracy and a voice. When you look at the rocky road that Russian democracy has been down, and continues to endure, you have to ask what the future holds for China, and what effect that would have on the rest of the world, given that most transitions to democracy are not smooth.
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