Chris Devonshire-Ellis has posted a great piece on his blog re. The US, China & Indian Innovation Race.
I am taking the liberty of reproducing it in full. Read on (emphasis mine):
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A good friend of 2point6billion, Nick Polimeni, is an experienced QC engineer and conducts work in both China and India. He’s had some interesting comments to make recently to us about Engineering standards in these countries, and the potential competition with the US in technological innovation. I quote:
I’ve been working in China for the last 4 years, and have met more ‘engineers’ than I had met in the previous 30 years. Chinese students who graduate as engineers are not what we call engineers in the west. Chinese Engineers “specialize” in a given application. They’re more like technicians, by U.S. standards. They do not seem to be trained in basic engineering science, and are very deficient in such things. I have yet to meet a single one who has any familiarity for example, with the laws of thermodynamics. I’ve worked with a wide variety of them in various fields. The few who know enough to think with science, have acquired it after years of experience.
Here’s an illustration for a different field. Dentists are not trained as complete medical doctors; they’re just trained as teeth repair technicians. They are quite good at what they have been trained; but they’ve no rounded knowledge of medicine.
So, even the reported statistics, do not tell you what engineers look like.
I once gave a class on database design to a group of Indian engineers. I have to tell you, they had formulas for everything I only had generalized logic from experience. In fact, if you gave them a stringent academic test, they would all pass with flying colors, where I would most likely fail. Yet, I could design databases, and they came to me to learn it.
Now I’ve had Indian engineers sitting next to me in working environments, and I have to say that overall, they’ve been a notch above some of the American counterparts.
What is in the future? In my opinion, the Chinese will take a very long time to catch up, because there are cultural, and educational system barriers which produce a way of thinking that prevents Chinese engineers, bright as they truly are on a personal level, from competing in development with the west.
Indians are top notch when it comes to raw technology, so they are likely to catch up faster if they are not there with US engineers already.
U.S. Engineers possess something, however, which I don’t think either Indian nor Chinese has, which I believe is “educated out of them,” and that is, a thirst for going outside the box, and breaking the mold, and moving beyond the conventional.
Before counting engineers, we need to define what one is.
That is an interesting observation, and touches again on a subject that came up a few months here – political systems affecting development strategies. With the Communist system, all if for the greater good of the society, and individualism is discouraged. Yet in a democratic system, the individual is given rights and can prosper.
When we analysed this in Nobel Prize Winners between India and China, both nations ran up a total of six each. Yet tellingly, the Indian Nobel Prize winners had all been educated in India, while the Chinese had been educated overseas, primarily in the US, with one of them (for literature) having his works banned in the PRC.
This negative aspect of communism also seems to have spilled over into engineering development issues, and as Nick points out – it is India that is closing the gap with the US in terms of the development of innovative technologies, with China far behind.
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Do also have a look at some of the comments on the 2point6billion blog.
Related Posts:
China, India and the “3D Advantage” and
Why India will* overtake China – II
Happy Independence Day to all fellow Indians… Here’s a ”cool” way to celebrate it!
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August 15th, 2007
Posted by
Shantanu |
China, India, USA and Asia |
no comments
This is a long overdue post but the points made are, I think, still relevant.
Earlier this year, Richard Wallace, Mike Clendenin and Sufia Tippu writing in the EE Times about India’s potential to become a “silicon superpower” concluded that: “It’s a tall order. India has the brainpower to pull it off, but China won’t easily concede its lead.”
Some excerpts from the original article:
“…Can India, like China, become the next silicon success story? This seemingly simple question has given birth to a debate that’s roared across the global electronics industry since India unveiled broad new financial incentives designed to lure chip makers to the subcontinent last month.
Some call India “the last frontier for semiconductor manufacturing,” and believe it will it be a magnet for companies like TSMC, AMD and Intel, the U.S. semiconductor giant whose fab site decisions–like the recent one to manufacture in China–can turn the fate of an industry.
“No way,” insist other industry watchers, pointing to India’s infrastructure shortcomings and late start in the chip-manufacturing sweeps. As the title of a recent JP Morgan Report puts it, “India and semiconductors: It’s too late; just don’t bother.”
Keep Reading…
August 7th, 2007
Posted by
Shantanu |
China, Globalization, India |
2 comments
A few weeks back, I came across the second part of Eye on the Tigers series in which Tosh talks about the strikingly different approaches to development/globalization being followed by India and China and how awareness about these changes continues to be very low in Europe.
He starts his analysis by noting that in spite of Indian companies now controlling “three European
Icons” (Arcelor, REpower and Whyte & Mackay), “awareness about India among Europe’s policymakers is feeble”.
But the really interesting bit (IMHO), is the part where Tosh analyses the differences between the Chinese and the Indian approaches to development.
In his own words:
“As perplexing at the Brussels Asia-Europe conference was a pictorial tsunami of Chinese technology parks – sprouting by day, sometimes by night. There was no analysis, for instance, of why China chose an Indian majority partner for its first offshore IT park, or the absence of windows at Intel’s high-security Bangalore operation.
Missing too were numbers, such as the American stock-market capitalisation of the large Indian software firms, each of which outranks ‘giant’US rivals Accenture and EDS, and have revenues higher than China’s entire offshore IT industry.
Though globalisation is principally about India and China, blurring the differences is unwise.
China is driving up the value chain, very visibly, from low-cost, ultra large-scale foreign-invested manufacturing. Its technology parks may well be needed in the future; but they could also share the fate of Malaysia’s much-hyped ‘Multimedia Super Corridor’.
India is driving in the opposite direction – down the value chain from technology services. This ride is carefully calibrated to global market forces. In effect, India is harnessing its technology/management skills to add value to emerging frontiers in manufacturing –such as rapid prototyping and mass customisation.
On the flip side, unlike the US, Europe’s rich but fragmented patchwork of SMEs offers would-be buyers easy targets to ‘plug and play’ in tomorrow’s global supply chains.
… waiting in the wings are others like Tanti (Suzlon’s CEO). India’s bottom-heavy but world-class stock markets already boast 150 companies with over $1 billion valuations.
This is the global/European face of tomorrow’s India Inc., bankrolled byAmerican capital and soldiered by Indian-American managerial Merlins co-opted from McKinsey, Bain and the like.
Such wholly-new trends surely require some assessment….”
Sadly, “the state-of-play within the European Commission, its listening posts and sounding boards, is that of Rip Van Winkle waking up and seeing a new emperor’s new clothes.”
I am very interested in comments – particularly from those with insight into (or experience of) policy-making in Europe and UK.
July 25th, 2007
Posted by
Shantanu |
China, Europe and Asia, Globalization, India |
2 comments
Nandini Lakshman has written a nice article in BusinessWeek on how VCs in India are broadening their scope and looking at non-obvious opportunities: “India Rides the VC Wave”
Some excerpts:
“The fishermen from the Indian village of Chidambaram live a hard life. They sleep most of the day, then spend the night out on the water. For light during those dark hours, they have long depended on wobbly kerosene lamps that were easily blown out or, worse, toppled by the wind, risking deadly fires on their boats.
But these days, the kerosene lamps have been replaced with MightyLights, $50 solar-powered fixtures. “I save 100 rupees [$2.50] a month on kerosene alone,” says K Kanimuri, a fisherman’s wife, who also uses the MightyLight in her makeshift kitchen. With her savings, she now makes and sells candles…
…MightyLight is the brainchild of New Delhi-based Cosmos Ignite Innovations, a Stanford University-incubated startup by Matthew Scott and Amit Chugh that aims to provide simple products for the world’s poorest people. And Cosmos got its start with backing from Vinod Khosla, a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Now Cosmos is in talks with other groups, including London-based 3i Group (TIGRF) and eBay (EBAY) founder Pierre Omidyar, for a second round of funding. “For us, it’s not just the light, but using a sustainable model to affect social change,” says Scott, chief executive of Cosmos.
…”The base of the pyramid is often ignored, but offers a tremendous opportunity,” says Katie Hill, the India representative of Acumen Fund, an $8 million fund backed by the Cisco Systems (CSCO) Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Acumen has put $1.5 million into Ziqitza, a Mumbai-based ambulance company that offers deep discounts on its service for residents of the city’s vast slums. Shafi Matther, the founder of Ziqitza, says the funds will be used to stretch the company’s ambulance fleet of two dozen vehicles to 70 in the next two years, and roll out service across India. It is already operational in the south Indian state of Kerala.
…Or take IT-rural, set up by a group of software engineers from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. A clutch of U.S.-based VCs are circling the startup technology venture, which develops solutions for rural India. The company doesn’t just provide a bunch of computers and conduct basic-training classes, but has a Web site to educate farmers, giving them information about crop patterns, nature of soil, crop diseases, and remedies. IT-rural also has established backward and forward linkages, from buying the seeds to branding and retailing products.”
I am hoping to meet some of these guys during one of my future visits.
July 4th, 2007
Posted by
Shantanu |
Development Issues, Emerging Markets, India |
2 comments
Here’s how to get a cleaner, more connected world:
From a recent report in thechilli:
“…Indian mobile operator Idea Cellular, Ericsson and the GSM Association’s development fund today announced…four mobile base stations powered by locally produced biofuels
…All four locations in the state of Maharashtra are greenfield sites that have not previously had access to a mobile network and are located in areas with unreliable power supply”
As the report mentions, biodiesel is not only more environmentally friendly than conventional diesel but because it is produced locally, generates employment and reduces “the need for transportation”. Biodiesel generators are also easier to maintain and have lower opex in the long run.
So not only are these generators helping extend telecommunications coverage to rural, hard to access communities, they are also helping generate local employment and minimising the environmental impact of development.
Looks like a win-win for everyone….isnt it amazing?
July 2nd, 2007
Posted by
Shantanu |
Development Issues, India |
no comments
In its latest “Index of Failed States“, Foreign Policy magazine has ranked India (at # 110) way ahead of China (and Russia – both at #62) in terms of stability while Pakistan jostles for a position in the “Top 10″ (at # 12) with North Korea (at # 13) – both nuclear armed for good measure.
…and yet the report describes China in words that could have almost been written for India:
“…the growing divide between urban and rural, as well as continued protests in the countryside, reveals pockets of frailty that the central govenment is only just beginning to address”.
For the curious amongst you, the top 3 places in the Index go to Sudan, Iraq and Somalia.
Related posts:
Why India will* overtake China – II
China, India and the “3D Advantage”
India, China and the next decade…
Of Googlies*, Cricket, India and China
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June 21st, 2007
Posted by
Shantanu |
China, Development Issues, Emerging Markets, Globalization, India |
2 comments
