Whenever I am talking with anyone about entrepreneurship in China, we end up discussing innovation. And I am nearly always asked whether I see real innovation in China, or if the “innovation” is really just imitation. While this a very nuanced topic I plan to explore in many posts, in this post I wanted to discuss just one example of innovation flowing from imitation in China. This example blurs the lines between innovation and imitation for me, and reminds me that innovation is often just taking someone’s idea and tweaking it a bit. So while when I picture innovation I often imagine a creative genius with an epiphany, innovation is more frequently found when one idea is tweaked, or when multiple ideas are put together in novel ways. In business, this generally stems from solving problems faced by your customers in novel ways.
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Archives for February 2012
Innovation, and imitation, in China
Expanding your network
Many people feel an aversion towards “networking” because it feels too forced. If this is how you feel about networking, then maybe it’ll make it easier if you just think about it as meeting people rather than “networking”. Networking doesn’t have to be about wanting to get something from the people you meet, you can make it about either helping the people you meet, or even just making friends for its own sake. In fact, I find that the latter two are often the best ways to think about networking. Meet people, see what you can do to help them, and then just see what other opportunities may come up in the future.
I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by how friendly other foreigners living in China are, and how willing they are to just strike up a conversation. If nothing else, you always one have thing in common: that you are both living in a foreign land. So one great way to expand your social or business network is simply to strike up conversations with a lot of people. You simply never know what will come of it, be it a long-term, close friendship or a long-term business relationship that wasn’t even conceived of when you first met.
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