Life and Leisure

The devil's in innovation

By Jules Quartly (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-27 08:13

While China is already a digital superstar, it still has to cross the creativity barrier to earn superpower status, panelists say at a Web 2.0 conference.

Most conferences are passive affairs - sitting, listening and twiddling thumbs - so "China 2.0, The Rise of a Digital Superpower" was a refreshing change. Most participants had their heads buried in some device or another and were basically tweeting and blogging, while the guest speakers made their points.

It was confirmation, in some measure, of the collaborative nature of the Net and information sharing, as defined by Web 2.0, which includes wikis, mashups and social networking sites. The lesson seemed to be: It's okay not to focus all your energy on one thing, there is a virtual universe out there.

Conference organizer Duncan Clark, of BDA, believes China is one of the leading players in the field of Web 2.0. He says this isn't because of any great innovation, or a "eureka! moment, it's just tweaking and applying the tools that we have. Fundamentally, this is re-innovation, co-innovation, working up the value chain".

A theme that kept echoing over the two days of the conference at a well-appointed hotel in Beijing last week was "size does matter". China's rise from small beginnings - its first international Internet connection was only established in 1993 - to becoming a Web giant has at its heart more than 400 million netizens.

"China's density makes it a leader," said Bill Huang, general manager of China Mobile Research Institute, who added one of the features of the Web's development has been the migration from computers to phones.

"It's an essential part of the popularity of the Web, especially in China," where access to computers isn't a given, especially in the vast countryside, but where nearly everyone has a phone and coverage is almost 100 percent.

Smartphones are the future, he said, adding China Mobile was not in the communications business. "We are in the information services business." He said the company had to adapt to the rapidly changing environment, or die, like railroads in the United States.

Evolution was another key theme of the conference. Gady Epstein, the Beijing bureau chief of Forbes, said that because a lot of the "social networking platforms are so tightly controlled there is a leapfrog of platforms. While the West is inundated with new platforms, China picks up the best, modifies it and is off running, kinks removed".

Epstein gave the example of Sina Weibo, which currently has about 40 million users, more than Twitter, upon which it is based.

Another adopted and adapted platform that is huge in China is the Youku Web video site. Founder and CEO Victor Koo said he was bored of being compared with YouTube and Hulu, however, and argued that his company's product is "both and better".

He said that with the advent of broadband the time when TV controlled the market was over and consumers now had choice. "Youku," he said, "is about what's best, what's cool, and helping people choose what they watch."

He claimed his company was an innovator and cited a webcast of a concert that his company hosted in 2009 allowing netizens to control content, camera angles and even present virtual flowers. He added that an online press conference with Nokia, Sina Weibo and Kaixin, in August, was another first.

"China is certainly a digital superstar," Koo said. "It's already the largest market in the world but to be a digital superpower it needs innovation."

Alex Lee, a vice president at Cisco Systems, broadly agreed with this vision and called video "the new voice, where we can talk, see expressions", adding he was looking to spread this idea to "every single device". But, he said, China was not as innovative as the West.

"We are good at expanding things, making them bigger, but we have to thank Western companies for their creativity," Lee said. "One reason we have not been so creative is we don't understand other cultures."

John Chiang, who among his many IT achievements established the Peking University Global Innovation Research Center, enlarged on this theme when he talked about his students.

"I've been schooling the next generation of entrepreneurs, but they want to work for the government because the wages are good and they don't have to work that hard."

He said their other career choice was investment banking. "Basically, the number of people willing to take a risk is much lower than it should be."

Chiang said this was due to the fact that China had only "33 years of opening up. There was very little interaction previously. Having your own phone only happened 10 to 15 years ago".

Chiang's notes of caution were the ideal foil for the more optimistic Duncan Clark of BDA in their forum discussion, who suggested China was the "new California, something different, a new crucible, the center of gravity is shifting".

Their conversation is still ongoing, albeit in cyberspace. That's the beauty of conferences in the Web 2.0 world.