The Idea Hunt - China vs Europe

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Innovation tops many agenda's, from individuals, organizations and countries. But what innovation actually is and how to deal with it, outside high-brow and often mythical debates, remains illusive.

Bill Fischer and Andy Boyton have in their recently released "The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen" produced an excellent guide on how to hunt for ideas and get them in place. They describe the core of innovation and - apart from giving very down-to-earth advice - they turn around arguments I have witnessed in many of the innovation debates.

My apologies when I focus on the China angle here, it is my angle and not of the book, but I learned a few important lessons from the book that should reflect on the debate on how innovative China actually is.

Is China not the 'cut-and-paste' country where few original ideas are the basis of its innovation? Is China able to be innovative, because of its cultural inhibitions? Is its neglect for intellectual property not actually stealing from others? Fischer and Boyton turn around that concept and argue that innovation is mostly a cut-and-past process, and mostly not producing new and original ideas. The better strategy is try existing ideas are use them in a different setting, they argue.

This is an extremely important attitude for an Idea Hunter. Trying to come up with thoroughly original ideas all the time ... is a losing game. The better plan is to identify potentially valuable ideas that either are already being used or have been used in the past. The task then is to slip those ideas into your setting or circumstances.

They use a wide range of examples to illustrate their point. Take for example Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart:

Walton made a habit of prowling for ideas in other people's stores... It was "just part of the educational process," part of his regular exercise. ... Walton had the right attitude as an Idea Hunter. "You can learn from everybody," he taught. "I probably learned the most by studying what my competitor was doing across the street." He gladly conceded that all the ideas tried at Wal-Mart, such as how and where to display items, were copied from stores. His wife, Helen, says he seemed to spend almost as much time in other people's stores as he did in his own.

Let's put this in black and white. In Europe, for example in my native country The Netherlands, basic research seems to be the holy grail of innovation. Original ideas are presented in TV-shows and are funded by the government. We look in admiration at a company like Philips whose research department has been famous for groundbreaking basic research. And, yes, we know all that basic research seldom left the corporate labs, because there was a huge disconnect with their marketing and what consumers really wanted.

Is from that perspective China not much more innovative? And should the innovation debate not be focused more on what we actually get from it, in stead of conducting intellectual debates on concepts and principles that add little value?

Bill Fischer is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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Idea hunters go to Beijing - Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer

When you are looking for smart ideas in China, go to Beijing, rather than Shanghai or Guangzhou, writes IMD business professor Bill Fischer of technology management in the Business Times, exploring the strategy for idea hunting.

Interested in Web 2.0? Go to Silicon Valley. If you go anywhere else, you are reducing the likelihood of finding a good new idea. Why? Because people with Web 2.0 ideas congregate around Silicon Valley; so, there is a higher probability that you will discover a good new idea there, than, for example, Paris, or Milan, or even Shanghai.
Can't leave China, and still interested in Web 2.0? My suggestion is to go to Beijing's Zhongguancun district. There, you will be more likely to 'bump into' someone from Beida, Tsinghua, or the Chinese Academy of Sciences, or even alumni of Founder, Stone or Lenovo who will be interested in your ideas and might have ideas of their own, or know somebody who does.
You are less likely to find that sort of information in Shanghai or Guangzhou, and certainly not in smaller cities. Good idea hunters know this and they, like any 'big-game' hunter, go where the action is in order to enjoy the best chance of 'hitting their targets'.

Read here his full article.

Bill Fischer is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

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More education not always better - Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer by Fantake via Flickr

Getting more patents and PhD's are not the ways to improve education, writes IMD professor Bill Fischer in Business Week. Getting faculty in with business experience is more important to improve the now lagging education in China.

IMD's 2010 World Competitiveness Yearbook reports that China's education system has been in decline since 2007 in terms of how well it meets the needs of a competitive economy, presently ranking 44th out of 58 countries—below countries such as Greece (43), Kazakhstan (35), and Qatar (14). Finland, on the other hand, which ranks 1st in this category, is a notable reference point that people speak about with respect to how its educational offerings in engineering, technology, and innovation are having a direct impact on the economic vitality of the country. Do you ever hear the same about China?

If pushing out more graduates, patents and PhD's does not help, what is the problem, according to Bill Fischer?

During my sojourn in China as an academic and as president and dean of the China Europe International Business School, I was frequently struck by the thought that China's scarcest resource might just be "practically experienced" university faculty. Far too many of the Chinese professors I observed in other schools (CEIBS insisted that any faculty had the ability to interact competently with executives) had never actually worked for a living; they were lifelong academics, and everything was "theoretical" for them. This simply does not work if the goal is to transform new ideas into practical solutions. And it is particularly devastating if we are speaking about business schools and their role in preparing a "managerial class" for competing on the world stage.

More in Business Week, where Bill Fischer explains this is not only a problem in China.

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Foreign managers increasingly hired in China - Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer by  Fantake via Flickr

The chances of foreign managers to get hired in China, even for Chinese firms, increases, but on the condition they speak Chinese, says IMD-professor Bill Fischer in an interview with CNN.

Bill Fischer, a professor at Switzerland's IMD Business School who has studied China's changing business climate, said that Chinese firms are increasingly interested in hiring foreigners with experience in international financial markets and building global brands.

"The skills that go along with managing on a broad platform -- those are skills that they haven't had to develop in the past. But as they want to build their own brands, they want to do that as well," he told CNN.

"The jobs are there, but they're there for people who not only are experienced, but have some language skills, particularly if you're working for a Chinese corporation," he added.

More on hiring trends in China in CNN.

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Bill Fischer is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

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2010: the year of shifting gears - Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer by Fantake via Flickr

IMD-professor, and former CEIBS dean, Bill Fischer, describes on his weblog the fast changing speed in China's development. While China has made huge steps forward, at the end Fischer still sees huge barriers to real change in China:

The conundrum underlying all of this is that there is lots of creativity in China today. The art scene; fashion; sculpture; music; cinema. China is awash with creativity. But, if you look closely, what you see is that this innovation is individual innovation, not organizational innovation. What sets the eBays and Amazons and Apples apart is that they are all “organizational” innovation. The iPod experience could not have been designed by one person; it needed a team, and a diverse team at that. Same is true behind most of the big innovations of recent times. Yet, what is it about Chinese organizations that they turn out to be so much less innovative than the sum of the people who are brought together under that organizational structure? Is it that the command & control approach to management which has characterized thousands of years of Chinese history is still hard to break? Or, is it Confucian respect for hierarchy and relational prerogatives? Is it not enough trust; or too much trust? Is it not enough diversity? Or, is it something else?

More at this weblog with a too long name.

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Bill Fischer is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch. 

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