…here it is.
From “Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation System?” – The case of Apple’s iPod, this table that details “the geography of $190 of the captured value in a single $299 video iPod” (Thanks, Jason).
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and from “Dreamliner 101: All About the Boeing 787“, this picture showing where the parts for 787 come from.
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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In the Feb 12, ’07 issue of Forbes, came across this piece by Jerry Flint: “The Pain of Second Place” – very readable…
It has this graph that shows the staggering and relentless growth of Toyota over the past 30 years which will culminate this year in its finally overtaking Ford as the world’s largest manufacturer of autos.
Some excerpts from the story:
“The General Motors era is over. This year Toyota will overtake General Motors as the world’s largest manufacturer of autos, selling something more than nine million vehicles, probably half a million more than GM. This seems certain. It is even plausible that in, say, 2011, when Toyota has built more factories and hired more dealers as GM sales keep falling, the Japanese Godzilla will outsell GM in the U.S. I am not predicting this, just saying it’s possible with present trends.
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The psychological effect of GM’s fall to the number two position will be enormous. Sure, there is maybe one good side to it. People will stop blaming General Motors for everything that goes wrong in the world. The company won’t be blamed for destroying the air we breathe, for not doing enough for safety or diversity, for not saving the polar bears. People don’t pick on the second-ranked guy.
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…At first GM will try to prove that it hasn’t lost. We call that denial. When GM ruled, it led in technology, inventing or popularizing the automatic transmission, the high-compression engine, the collapsible steering wheel, the catalytic converter — and those great designs…
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But this preeminence has been fading for decades. GM puts four-speed transmissions into its big Cadillac when Toyota has an eight-speed in its biggest Lexus. We all know about those hybrid Priuses. And when it comes to engines, GM still is catching up to the newer overhead-cam designs pushed by the Japanese. We may not understand what overhead cam means, but we buy them.
Some sobering remarks and thoughts from a recent TIME magazine article on the WEF in Davos (”Lovely While It Lasts”, Pg 36, TIME Europe, Feb 5, ‘07)…
Zhu Min, Vice President, Bank of China:
China and India together account for about 40% of the world’s population but only 6% of the world’s economic output. By contrast, the US, Japan and Western Europe make up 15% of the global population but account for 80% of its output…(as a consequence…)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel:
Laura D. Tyson (ex-Dean, LBS and now Prof at Haas Business School)
and finally,
Worrying…
I first met Susan Leiby back in August at the ASVC Event that we did in Palo Alto.
After the panel, Susan (who is a Senior Consultant at SRI) and I talked about the innovation eco-systems in India and China and how they were evolving…Susan mentioned that SRI was, in fact, conducting a survey to identify the strengths and weaknesses with regards innovation in India and China relative to the United States.
A few weeks ago, Susan sent me the results from the survey and graciously granted me permission to reproduce a couple of slides on this blog.
The slides make for an interesting comparison. The biggest surprise to me was that respondents to the survey* perceived “China and India at or near parity with the U.S. in ‘ICT development,’ ‘quality of human capital’ and ‘government receptivity’ by 2015”
…that’s very interesting – especially the point about “quality of human capital”…
There were also several qualitative comments on why the US is vulnerable to loosing its leadership (in tech & innovation). I will mention just two:
“(the US government’s) ill-conceived regulations and protectionism. Examples: U.S. financial markets are losing their attractiveness because of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. Because of telecommunications regulations, the U.S. has become a third-world country for mobile communications and broadband”. (sic)
“(the)… Arrogance and complacency of leadership…not enough emphasis on education; High costs and inability to learn about “developing” countries…”
Comments?
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* The National Innovation Systems survey was carried out by SRI Consulting Business Intelligence and polled entrepreneurs, VCs, and CTOs or other people directly involved with technology development in India/China.
Had a very interesting meeting with Rafiq Dossani yesterday. Rafiq has just finished a study on VC in India and is currently researching Globalization and Venture Capital, in particular how VC firms are responding to globalization of the industry.
Amongst other things, we talked about the “globalization” trends in the Valley.Rafiq had an interesting take on this.
He said contrary to appearances, Valley VCs have not really taken to investing in Asia (or more accurately, there is no strategy at work). What is happening is the Asian (India/Chinese) Partners in most firms are taking a lead in this – and the rest of the team is going along with it as long as money is being made.
If you agree with him, you can see why European VCs are nowhere to be seen – How many Chinese and Indian Partners do you know in the European VC community?
