(4) Lauren Hilgers, China's Innovation Idol; Can Lee Kai-fu solve the country's technology dilemma?
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... nas-innovation-idol
Quote:
(a) "We don't have a single Steve Jobs.
(b) "Lee says China’s venture capital landscape often limited the types of startups that received funding. 'Many VCs prefer to see safer investments,' he says. 'The venture capital ecosystem doesn’t favor investments that are outliers.'
(c) "The post [in his microblog] that likely got the attention of China's censors commented on the difficulty of creating a culture of innovation in a place where the goverment keeps a tight grip on the media and the internet: 'Can it possible to run a search engine business without believing in free information flow?' Lee asked about the People's Daily search engine, Jike.
"'I know what I can’t say, so I don’t go over the line,' Lee says. 'Of course, if you don’t push the line sometimes, the line will never change.' He says censorship is not his overriding concern. His chief goal is to get Chinese entrepreneurs to think creatively. He insists that incremental innovations will open more doors and, over time, change more people’s thinking. Other innovation watchers, such as Segal at the Council on Foreign Relations, doubt that the formula will work outside China’s domestic market. “Some companies are managing to get close enough to the line and managing to innovate. When they move abroad, however, there will be more competition and increasing demand for transparency and good corporate governance,” Segal says. 'The barriers are incredibly high.'
My comment: There is no need to read the rest. I do not think he is a thinker. And he says nothing new. Still, this article is one of the three feature stories in the issue. |