Long considered a global copycat, China is now home to many of the fastest start-ups to reach a $1 billion valuation globally. Whatever has propelled Chinese companies to the top, the metrics we use to evaluate innovation have missed it. The author argues that China today has a resource that no other country has: hundreds of millions of people who have lived through unprecedented amounts of change—and who, consequently, can adopt and adapt to innovations at a speed and scale unmatched anywhere else on earth. Those hyper-adaptive and hyper-adoptive consumers are what make China so globally competitive today. But competition with the Chinese should not be considered a zero-sum game. Foreign companies would do well to seek to learn from China’s newly powerful example. The complete Spotlight package is available in a single reprint.

Up your imitation game. If you’re used to believing in your own exceptionalism, leaning into imitation as a strategy can feel like a declaration of defeat. But innovation has always been about both invention and imitation. We don’t think less of Apple because Steve Jobs got the idea for the mouse from Xerox. Genius steals, and it always has. To compete with China, imitation must be a weapon in the arsenal of global companies—one they’re willing to use.

Socialism with American characteristics soon? Lmao

  • Nakoichi [they/them]M
    ·
    2 years ago

    "new" innovation as if they haven't been at the forefront of HSR

    • emizeko [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      paper, gunpowder, fireworks, the compass

      "China has just now started innovating and it's thanks to all the copying!"

  • TankBombadil [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    he connected his phone to the subway Wi-Fi

    Inconceivable in America on so many levels.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I was genuinely surprised when I visited NYC for the first time that many subway stations didn't have aircon, wifi, or even mobile internet signal.

  • The_Walkening [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Even here the government has played a significant role, because it has conditioned its citizens to expect less data privacy than Americans do—

    lol it's fucking galling to print that on a website that's literally pinging Facebook, and Google along with whatever other bullshit.

    • build_a_bear_group [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      This is something I just can never understand. Like I remember talking to STEMbros from a highly prestigious elite institution that were like "You know I am scared about TicTok, like there are now more Americans using it, and I heard they hand over all their data to the Chinese government..." and they were upset and coming up with such paper thin arguments when I pointed out "You know, Google and Facebook not only do that, but have an interface so that any Fed can just go directly into their databases to retrieve any information they want immediately. Like, shouldn't you be more afraid about that living in the U.S. under that government's jurisdiction rather than the Chinese Government knowing what Zoomer TicTok dances you like?"

  • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Last time I visited China before the pandemic, even the street buskers stopped accepting coins and wanted to be paid by WeChat instead. It was like stepping into a different century.

  • TankBombadil [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    According to its National Bureau of Statistics, China will have 81 million fewer working-age people in 2030 than in 2015; after 2030 that population is projected to decline by an average of 7.6 million annually.

    Is this a Chinese or Western bureau?