Move over Silicon Valley (and clones) --- the future has arrived, and it is Not you. The Chinese get It and live it; the world will soon follow. Shanzhai: The Disruptive Potential of Innovation From Below --- Welcome to a foretaste of the near future, the world of distributed manufacturing (3D printing) --- this is the New World Order thats about to unfold. Forget metropolitan commentators --- the future has left economies of scale behind, and with that, the entire structure built around the concept of the Primacy of Capital --- this time is for Intellectual Flexibility. From Buddhist economics postulated by as British economist E. F. Schumachers in his seminal book Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered, to Global Confucian Economics. The promises of the late 60s and 70s are happening now --- I love it. ************************ EXCERPTS Economist Joseph Schumpeter saw capitalism as a biological organism, an entity in a constant state of becoming. The agent of this constant mutation is the entrepreneur. Operating at the edges of the system, the entrepreneurial function creates ruptures of change by replacing old arrangements and hierarchies with those that are unfamiliar and unknown. Schumpeter famously named this process “Creative Destruction.” China’s word for disruptive technology is shanzhai, which translates literally as “mountain village” or “mountain stronghold.” The term has strong subversive connotations denoting a zone that operates outside of the law. As a concept and practice, it is rooted in the fiercely autonomous Special Economic Zone culture of Guangdong. Shanzhai, many note, sounds a lot like Shenzhen. From the start, shanzhai differed in a small but significant way from the familiar piracy of counterfeit Gucci watches and Louis Vuitton bags that proliferate in the new Chinese metropolis. Unlike standard knock-offs, shanzai products don’t try to hide that they are copies. Many businesses with humble shanzhai origins are now becoming formidable market disrupters — and, in many cases, market leaders. With the proliferation of shanzhai products in both China and abroad, shanzhai manufacturers are slowly making the shift from imitation to innovation. The mutation was not intentional. Due to shanzhai’s uniquely rapid production cycle, companies have been forced to innovate simply because the branded companies are too slow to come up with new products to copy. When there is nothing left to counterfeit, you have to try to come up with something new. Indeed, their incredible speed is one of the key characteristics of shanzhai producers. This accelerated pace demands innovation. Today, companies need only speculate on a product and the shanzhai version immediately exists. Today, the word shanzhai can be used to describe anything that is non-official, underground and inexpensive with acceptable quality. Shanzhaiism has become a philosophical term denoting a Chinese style of innovation with a peasant mind-set. Shanzhai’s cool DIY spirit has a nationalistic pride, but it is rooted not in the strength of the state but in the flexible, creative culture of the street. theglobalist/shanghai-and-disruptive-innovation/ ************************
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 22:56:42 +0000
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