China Has No Innovation? Look Closer

I gave a sharing session at the National University of Singapore last Wednesday about my experience living in China for a year. I am currently in my last semester at NUS majoring in Communications and New Media, with a very fun minor in ‘Technopreneurship.’ In order to obtain my Technopreneurship minor, I opted for a global immersion project called the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) program. In my case, I was attached to an Innovation Works’ invested startup called XingCloud, and took courses at Tsinghua University.

Before I could even share any thoughts about my experience there, some students already left the lecture theater. Even though I was following perhaps more popular talks from people from Silicon Valley, Bio Valley, and Stockholm, I couldn’t help but feel a little down about this.

A few cloned apples shouldn’t spoil the bunch

But after I gave my talk, many of the reactions I heard asserted that China has no innovation and creativity. Really? Some of them tell me that Chinese rip entires idea from the West and replicate them in the East. While this is indeed the conventional wisdom, it proves less-than-wise in that it often overlooks the fact that such entrepreneurs tweak and adopt the idea to suit to the local culture.

Regarding the oft-cited example of Sina Weibo — a micro-blogging tool which has surpassed it’s western counterpart, Twitter — it has adopted a number of innovations, tweaking the entire microblogging idea to suit local markets. In my opinion, it’s wayyyyyyy better than Twitter in terms of the user experience, value added services, and even the interface.

I attended one of the mobiTalk sessions organized by the Great Wall Club and recall 500 Startups founder Dave McClure saying that it would be foolish not to replicate business ideas into markets which no one have tapped into. I mean it makes sense right? If you see an opportunity to serve a huge market (such as, China), it would be silly to miss on the potential big bucks.

Should you let it get to you?

Cloning is when people replicate ideas, and it’s often associated with China. But what makes you think that it does not happen in the west? Take for example Zynga’s FarmVille. Wasn’t this replicated from Farm Town? Farm Town was the ‘first mover,’ but who’s doing better now?

People will try to learn what makes others successful, and try to follow in their steps, right down to the tiniest details such as the button placement, color, layout etc. If your product is being copied, you might feel a strange mix of anger and flattery.

I’m not saying that copying is cool, but I just wanted to illustrate that we live in an ecosystem which follows very Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest rules. But if you play the game, it’s dwelling on those who don’t play fair will only distract you from the ultimate prize. Instead try to think, how can I surpass them? How do I tweak and localize to suit to regional markets? How do I adopt innovations to stay ahead of competitors and clones? If you already have the first mover advantage, you should be leveraging on it, putting in an effort to stay out front. If you’re the leader, then act like it.

If you have a chance and are interested in tech startup scene, I encourage you to visit China (Beijing in particular). You might be surprised with the talent and innovation you find there. It really isn’t just cloning over there. You will believe me when you see it.