What China does better than any place else in the world is to innovate by commercialization, as opposed to constant research and perfecting the theory, like the West. When the Chinese get an idea, they test it in the marketplace. They’re happy to do three to four rounds of commercialization to get an idea right, whereas in the West companies spend the same amount of time on research, testing, and validation before trying to take products to market. The electric vehicle is a good example. The Chinese view is that it’s not going to be perfect, and they’re not trying to make it perfect from day one. They’ve got a few more series of improvements to go, and they’ll work on them in parallel with finding out what the customer really likes and adapting to that. That’s an innovative way of doing innovation, something that the rest of the world is struggling to understand. In our business in China, if we don’t innovate through or with commercialization, we’re going to lag behind our competitors.
I try to take this approach when looking at a large project. If you don't focus on small wins and learning as you go, you end up getting lost in the big picture. Start with something is 60-70% to where you want to be and then go through an iterative process to get to 100%.
