Innovations in the limelight
Many businesses these days talk about innovation. They want, to coin a Silicon Valley phrase, to “move the needle” by creating a significant shift in technological development or how people and businesses use technology on a daily basis.
While China was for many years considered to be a key base for the mass manufacturing of cheap products — often of poor quality — the country has moved up the value chain and now competes for pole position in a number of areas. For example, China produces precision tools whose quality is on a par with Germany, a global stalwart for high standards.
The country has also upped its stakes in the innovation game. China leads the world in patent applications – last year its patent office received almost a million applications, more than a third of the global total and more than the combined total of the runner-up countries US and Japan. Not only does China have a growing mass of bright-minded entrepreneurs who are incubating and accelerating China’s start-up culture, it has started to increasingly woo foreign venture capitalists, technologists and the world media.
Such businesses had the perfect platform to unveil their inventions at CES 2016, the world’s biggest consumer electronics show that was held in Las Vegas earlier this year.
More than 1,100 of the 4,000 exhibitors were from China. Among their standout products were the world’s first drone capable of carrying a person, an electronic-powered car featuring internet-capable consoles, an award-winning Android smartphone, an intelligent robot helping people read and reply to emails, and virtual-reality headsets with greater adaptability than most rivals.
While Chinese innovators are now basking in the limelight, they have had to struggle to gain recognition. While everyone dreams of creating a world-leading business with and idea developed with a college friend, investment is a key issue. Faraday Future, the company founded by billionaire Jia Yueting which makes the electronic car, is planning to spend a billion dollars building new factories. Likewise, Huawei Consumer Business Group is investing in its consumer electronics group with R&D personnel accounting for about 70 per cent of its headcount.
This is where Thailand is falling down. According to pretty much all widely-recognized measures, we have desperately low levels of investment in research and development.
If we don’t boost this investment, we are likely to continue to underperform at a time when we desperately need to move up the value chain to stop falling further behind regional competitors for cheap labor. Without this Thailand will only have the occasional success story to tell — such as zidovudine (a Thai vaccine for HIV) or the successful Dinsow robot. This is a tragedy for a country with such an entrepreneurial spirit, and can only be overcome by increased collaboration between the private and public sectors.
