Saturday, June 30

Competing with Chinese firms in your own country-market

Nobody needs to be reminded how popular Japanese cars are these days. There was a time, though, when people would sneer at these "rust buckets." I wonder who'll be the first to stereotype Chinese products? Oh, I forgot, we're starting to hear those already!

Peter Williamson, INSEAD Affiliate Professor of Asian Business and International Management, discusses his book, Dragons at Your Door, on the INSEAD Knowledge Web site. The author argues that Western firms need to be aware of how Chinese firms are likey to operate as they become more involved in global markets (i.e. country-markets outside China). You can listen to the interview HERE. This book would be a great companion to Sun Tzu's The Art of War if you are in any way interested in competing with Chinese-managed firms. Thanks to Bruce F. Webster for providing the link.



There's just so much stuff around these days on innovation, it's hard to know where to start. One item worth pointing out is this great interview on Guy Kawasaki's popular blog with Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation. This really is quite a fascinating interview as it places innovation more at the science side of town, a part of town that lacks a lot glamour.

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Thursday, June 14

Confidence: another element for successful innovation

In the town I grew up in Scotland, Crieff, there were two schools, a high school and a public school (fee-paying school). During exam periods my friends and I from the high school would compare exam results with our friends from the public school. The results were surprising: my friends and I would often get better results than the public school students. How could this be so? They are so eloquent. They must be better than us. Or prehaps not. We soon learned from this not to equate confidence, which oozed from the public school students, with ability. I think that because our schools were in such close physical proximity, we could break through the veneer (myth) that public schools create for themselves. In this sense, our experience was quite unique -- most public schools in Scotland are deliberately "set apart" from the free schools.

Wasn't it Nietzche who wrote in Beyond Good and Evil: "Having a talent is not enough: one also requires your permission to have that talent—right, my friends?"

Check out Paul Potts, mobile phone salesman from Wales -- soon to be Paul Potts, opera singer.



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Tuesday, June 5

Invention and innovation, for the people?

Brent Edwards at the Innovation Science blog recently commented on a recent Supreme Court ruling on patents. This ruling basically means that it is more difficult to obtain a patent -- the ruling favours the public good over the individual.

It was interesting to read the following article in the Financial Times, as it deals with a similar issue.

James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School, and author of The Shakespeare Chronicles, Bound By Law and Shamans, Software and Spleens, responds to a recent article by Mark Helpirn, author of Winter's Tale in the New York Times (Requires purchase).

Unlike Mark Helprin, James Boyle takes the position that patents and copyrights should not be extended too far. In the following quote, Mr Boyle refers to Thomas Jefferson's Constituition-based views on patents, a view that acknowledges that most innovations are built on -- and required access to -- previous inventions (knowledge/information).

"Mr Jefferson’s point was that for the process of invention to work, we need to confine narrowly the time and scope of the state-provided monopoly, otherwise further inventions would become impossible. Each process or part of a new invention would risk infringing a myriad of prior patents on its subcomponents. Innovation would strangle in a thicket of conflicting monopolies with their roots vanishing back in time."

Interesting stuff! Here's a video of James Boyle:



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