Business - Written Tuesday, March 18, 2008 by Denis Hancock - 0 Comments

The rise of the new Asian Business Revolutionaries

In 2006 my colleague (Deepak Ramachandran) and I did a piece of research entitled Competing with the Asian Business Revolutionaries as the move up and out. The key idea then, as it is now, is that while many Asian upstarts (particularly in China and India) were growing rapidly by mimicing what U.S. competitors were doing while capitalizing on their lower cost structures, increasingly we were seeing signs of true innovation starting to emerge. Hon Hai and ICICI bank were among the earliest examples, there have been many more since, and it is these companies that the “old guard” really has to worry about.

Forbes published an interview with Rebecca Fannin today that delves into this exact topic with an acute focus on China, promoting her new book Silicon Dragon: How China is winning the tech race. In it, she argues that companies like Baidu and Alibaba foreshadow a new generation of Chinese start-ups that have moved beyond imitation and are competing based on new, home grown ideas and innovations. A few of the companies she highlights are Pingco (mobile messaging), Maxthon (browser), Oriental Wisdom (mobile financial services), and Lingtu (digital maps).

However, it is her other commentary that is the most interesting. Continue…