I’ve written a few posts here on the lack of Asian executives in American businesses. It’s been argued by some that Asians are just too reserved to be an executive. Others claim it’s because Asians don’t have an entrepreneurial or innovative spirit, and instead they only know how to copy good ideas, rather than come up with them. Randy Pollock, a former USC lecturer, just published a piece describing his experience with Chinese MBA students. Pollock challenged his students to come up with an innovative idea for a business. It could be any type of business and the most innovative would win a prize. He gave as an example a restaurant business. Six teams worked on this project and had two hours. 5 teams came back with restaurant proposals, and the sixth, a catering business proposal. None had wandered from the basic example Pollock gave, none had found their creative voice.
Pollock wrote in his piece as the final punch line:
Ultimately for China, becoming a major world innovator — and by extension, a robust economic power — is not just about setting up partnerships with top Western universities or roping off elites and telling them to think creatively. It’s about establishing an intellectually rich learning environment for young minds. It’s about harnessing the same inventive energy of the street markets and small-time entrepreneurs and putting it in the schools.
The Chinese don’t need expensive free-agent scientists. They need a new farm system — and about 10 million liberal arts professors.
As much as Pollock’s article stereotypes Chinese into one group, I hate to have to agree with him (at least for Chinese innovators). While not all Asians have a problem innovating, I think the Chinese have a particularly difficult time with the idea of being creative. It’s not part of the culture. We’re so ingrained with the idea of conforming and being respectful.
My own dad was the exception. Throughout his life and mine, he asked me not to go to work for a big corporation. He implored me over and over to come up with a good idea and start my own business. He didn’t care what that business was, so long as it was my own. On the other hand I was never very good at coming up with creative ideas for businesses, and instead usually found myself locked away in my own head writing poems and fictional short stories. I always viewed working as a means to end. I got a job to make money, so I’d have money to spend on the things I liked to do. Working wasn’t about working hard to start up a business as my dad wanted me to do. I was too American for my dad’s Chinese work hard ethic.
In the end, I did achieve some success in the business world working for big corporations, and my dad grudgingly gave me some level of respect, in acknowledging I had surpassed his achievements and was a good provider for my family, even if I didn’t run my own business.
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5 Comments to “Can Asians Innovate in Business?”
Ernie wrote:
It kinda pains me to say it, but Internet start-ups based in China are the same way, with the YouTube / Facebook / Upcoming clones that literally copy and paste their designs and UI flows with a new name. Ditto with the cellphone post John wrote a while back. And the posts about Asians in upper management. Yada, yada, yada.
Posted on 05-May-09 at 11:25 am | Permalink
Daniel W. wrote:
Every once in a while I read these type of articles or statements regarding innovation in Chinese society. It’s a bit more complex than what many say or whatever experiences the expats and foreign workers had. I was confused at their terminology because any human being is capable of being creative. Creativity is hard to define and judge.
However, in the workplace, what they mean by innovation is something slightly different. I read that many people often go by 4 ranks or catergories of innovation, ranging from little improvements (which involves copying)to radical innovation;something that’s really new. I still don’t understand how they judge it though, but it probably makes sense for those who have studied it for a long time.
Based on my liberal arts college experiences, that type of environment does encourage a lot of thinking outside the box. However, I find the majority of those students, professors and staff not that different from others who don’t have a liberal arts education. Most people are conforming, a lot of times it’s just the package rather than the substance which makes people believe it’s very innovative. Of course, there are many exceptional thinkers but as it is with all topics, critical thinking involves facing reality and viewing things in a relative manner.
Pollock’s article is valid but I’m afraid many readers will misunderstand it. Although, there’s a few points I disagree with. This isn’t the matter of Asians can’t innovate or there’s no creativity among the Chinese. It’s really about the the whole system(s) of work, learning and doing anything. Be a little optimistic, necessity is the mother of invention. There’s some truth to that quote and in Asian societies, there’s plenty of necessary things to work on.
Plus, this is sort of brainstorm activity Pollock did. Generally speaking, people can come up with 100 ideas each day, 90 of them won’t be anything original in essence, 5 could be worth your time, 3 are a definite must-see and 2 of them would be too silly/dangerous to consider.
Posted on 05-May-09 at 11:41 am | Permalink
Confuse-Us wrote:
I tend to view these kinds of articles with skepticism. If you stop and think about it, China has a 4000 year history during which time it produced some inventions millenia before they appeared in the west. China has a very long and distinguished history of innovation, and innovation is in no way an alien concept to it’s culture.Certainly, this spirit of innovation has been suppressed by fifty years of totalitarianism but it seems ridiculous to suggest that 4000 years of innovative thinking can be erased in fifty years.
I can remember smug and self-satisfied American and European commentators in the eighties deriding the Japanese for being “mindless” robotic sheep that lack the ability to think for themselves or be creative.Back then they said that Japanese culture suppressed individualism and creativity and that was why Japan could never sustain economic power! Of course we now know just how creative the Japanese can be.
Articles like Pollock’s are generally designed to make white America feel secure rather than provide any meaningful insight into the cultures of Asia. I would take it with a pinch of salt.
Posted on 05-May-09 at 1:08 pm | Permalink
Neil Cassidy wrote:
If you read the article closely, there is no stereotyping involved. It was careful to say the students were intelligent and personable people who have talent but have not been raised in an educational system that has promoted them taking the intellectual risks that creative thinking requires. That is simply the truth. Why read more into it? He wasn’t talking about Asian Americans. He was tactfully blaming the government but probably can’t say it direct. Give him a break–this guy picked up and moved to China for a pretty long time. I doubt he is out to insult Asian people.
Posted on 06-May-09 at 2:34 am | Permalink
8Asians.com » Ninja Warrior wrote:
[...] Japanese game show that my sons got me hooked on. I found it absorbing and creative (who says Asians are not creative?), so I vegged out for a weekend watching a Ninja Warrior marathon on the G4 channel. Called [...]
Posted on 23-Jun-09 at 4:22 pm | Permalink
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