From..ahem…a few months back comes this fascinating article from BusinessWeek about growth in China. It looks across a wide range of industries, but comes back to a key point. If you are churning out commodity products that do not have a high margin, then growth is hard to sustain.
…delve beneath the muscular statistics and hype about advances in strategic industries, and China doesn’t seem so prepared to catapult into a role of global economic leadership. Experts familiar with highly touted Chinese achievements such as commercial jets and high-speed trains say the technologies that underpin them were largely developed elsewhere. There is no Chinese Sony, Toyota, or Samsung on the horizon. While Beijing’s $586 billion stimulus package and a 150% increase in bank lending have spurred impressive growth, “the question,” says Morgan Stanley Asia Chairman Stephen S. Roach, “is the quality of that growth.”
The question facing many countries – and companies – is how do you develop a culture of innovation to deliver quality growth? Samsung is one example of an organisation that has invested heavily in this regard and is reaping the benefits. The proof is in the pudding – at an annual international product design competition, Samsung won more awards than Apple last year.
The full BusinessWeek article is worth reading…
