How To Innovate In China - Business Insider

A common complaint about China is that while it may be great at copying products (and sometimes not even so great at that), it will never be a real innovator and develop new products.

But Kai Fu Lee, the former head of Google China, disagrees in a?recent LinkedIn post.?He says that we need to broaden our definition of innovation beyond sea-change developments to include smaller, but still important, creative improvements.

He emphasizes that innovation in China, much like many endeavors in China, needs to be understood and approached from a Chinese context. And knowing where to look for Chinese innovation and how to maximize their strengths in innovation can be very valuable for a company.

He goes on to list a couple areas where Chinese led innovation have a lot of potential:

• Areas with Chinese government subsidies - like alternative energy?
• Areas where innovation "can be derived by exhaustive experimentation" - like pharmaceuticals

He also lists a couple of good approaches to innovation in China:

• Hard-work and solid foundation for long-term development as opposed to risk-taking and out-of-the-box approaches for immediate innovation
• Western-trained researchers leading teams in China

Lee's points are very much in line with the standard approach to China as a place where hard-work and long-term approaches are prioritized but he clarifies how these can be utilized for innovation.

Read the whole post at LinkedIn.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-innovate-in-china-2012-10

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