BusinessWeek: What innovation advantage?

By John Moravec | 1/19/2006 | Filed under: Articles, Globalization, Innovation

Roger Martin writes that “Chinese and Indian companies aren’t leaving design to the North Americans”:

“There is a romantic notion in North American business that its future lies in design and innovation, while India and China will be the home of less skilled, lower-paying operations churning out the products and services the U.S. comes up with.

…

These globally oriented outfits are not entrusting all creativity, design, and innovation to ‘first world’ opponents while they huddle over their workstations. True, they have staggering cost advantages over traditional competitors.”

Ritzer (1998) writes that globalized systems “do not excel at innovation: they are at their best in implementing and rationalizing ideas stemming from other sources” (p. 178). Is the heavily globalized West about to discover that creativity and innovation cannot be commoditized and managed as such?

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About John Moravec

Dr. John Moravec is a faculty member in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development and the Innovation Studies/Master of Liberal Studies graduate programs at the University of Minnesota. He is the principal of Education Futures LLC; a co-founder of the Horizon Forum, a roundtable on the future of education at all levels; and is the editor of Education Futures. He can be emailed at john@educationfutures.com.

http://www.educationfutures.com/john

Tags: China, creativity, India, outsourcing

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