Tumblroth

Knowledge@Wharton has a nice piece on the rise of innovation in China. As with every other thing that China has set its mind to, it’s moved at a ridiculous clip from being a place that makes what the world takes (sorry, Trenton), to a place that copies and steals what the world makes, to creating and making what the world buys. (That series really went off the rail there at the end.)

I remember doing a story years ago in China, searching for China’s Bill Gates, and seeing the birth of a lot of these companies in the dot-com sector, Tencent, Sohu, UFSoft. One of the most interesting parts of the research was hearing how all of these entrepreneurs trying to figure out how to win in the rest of the world. They had plenty of room still to grow in China, but they wanted to prove themselves on the world stage. Now that’s starting to happen more and will undoubtedly increase as China tries to figure out what to do with all of its dollars. The purchase of Hummer by some unknown industrial company is just the start of the process.

In any case, the Knowledge@Wharton article is worth reading (especially if you run a company that has operations in China, competes with China, or is looking to do business in China — in other words, everyone). And this little anecdote jumped out at me as a symbol of just how opportunistic some of the best companies there are:

Chinese white-goods manufacturer Haier found that potato farmers in China were using their washing machines to clean produce, so it designed a heavy-duty, special-purpose machine that can be used outdoors and will wash your clothes or your potatoes.

If Haier and other Chinese companies can succesfully monitor how consumers use their products in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world and quickly adapt, the pressure on Western firms is going to be even more insane.