Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
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Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#2This is fantastically well-written. Great insights.
Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#3Naomi Wu has a youtube channel about hardware, electronics etc if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh_ugKacslKhsGGdXP0cRRA
Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#4> For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this instead?”. Traditionally, this is viewed as extremely arrogant and certainly not something to be encouraged in children or anyone else.
> Simply put, in a strictly hierarchical society, proposing a solution missed by your superiors is at the very least perceived as arrogant. You’re just as likely to be penalized in some way for making whoever is responsible for the current solution lose face as you are to benefit in any way from proposing a better way.
Is this generally true in other industries as well? How do Chinese companies try to be innovative, if people are discouraged from suggesting ideas?
Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#5This was an interesting article!
At the same time, there are innovations out of China (that surpass anything which may have inspired it, or which they could have started out copying). So judging by their output, whatever cultural issues surrounded:
>For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this instead?”. Traditionally, this is viewed as extremely arrogant and certainly not something to be encouraged in children or anyone else.
does not seem to extend to the whole of their ecosystem. I realize the author calls the above a "traditional" perspective.
Could anyone here who is current with current developments of Chinese IP and innovation comment on the validity of this general characterization?
The author in the entirety of the article certainly paints the Chinese culture with a very broad brush. But as would concern readers here on HN, the only thing that matters is what engineers who might work with them think.
What do people here think of the perspective in the article? For Chinese readers, do you agree with it?
Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#6> For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this instead?”. Traditionally, this is viewed as extremely arrogant and certainly not something to be encouraged in children or anyone else. > Simply put, in a strictly hierarchical society, proposing a solution missed by your superiors is at the very least perceived as…
Surely it's not true everywhere. Most of us have known plenty of Chinese engineers who are unafraid to report bugs and suggest solutions.
But in the broad sense you mean: yeah, kinda. Chinese companies (in the PRC in particular of course, but also outfits the stem from Hong Kong and Taiwan) tend not to be particularly innovative. It's a lagging market, filled with well-implemented but fundamentally cloned products first pioneered elsewhere. China has products that can compete well against, say, Google and Samsung's offerings, but there are no chinese Googles or Samsungs.
Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#7> If you’d showed your axe to Edison he’d either have stolen the design or declared it a menace and tried to run you out of business so he could sell more saws
LOL... best part of the article. Good writing in general.
Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#8> For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this instead?”. Traditionally, this is viewed as extremely arrogant and certainly not something to be encouraged in children or anyone else. > Simply put, in a strictly hierarchical society, proposing a solution missed by your superiors is at the very least perceived as…
Surely it's not true everywhere. Most of us have known plenty of Chinese engineers who are unafraid to report bugs and suggest solutions. But in the broad sense you mean: yeah, kinda. Chinese companies (in the PRC in particular of course, but also outfits the stem from Hong Kong and Taiwan) tend not to be particularly innovative. It's a lagging market, filled with well-implemented but fundamentally cloned products fi…
> but there are no chinese Googles or Samsungs
There is no american or european WeChat.
Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely it's not true everywhere. Most of us have known plenty of Chinese engineers who are unafraid to report bugs and suggest solutions. But in the broad sense you mean: yeah, kinda. Chinese companies (in the PRC in particular of course, but also outfits the stem from Hong Kong and Taiwan) tend not to be particularly innovative. It's a lagging market, filled with well-implemented but fundamentally cloned products fi…
> but there are no chinese Googles or Samsungs There is no american or european WeChat.
They call it WhatsApp. It has more users than WeChat.
For every successful social network or similar in everywhere but China there is a chinese clone whose main feature is that it spies on it's users for the government. It's not innovation, it's a bizarre Orwellian AOL portal maintained through first regulation then force.
Re: Lu Ban's axe and working with your Chinese suppliers
#10This was an interesting article! At the same time, there are innovations out of China (that surpass anything which may have inspired it, or which they could have started out copying). So judging by their output, whatever cultural issues surrounded: >For Chinese, this means you think you know better than a professional, than experts. It’s the act of seeing something and saying “why don’t they do this instead?”. Tradit…
As a Chinese reader, every sentence in this article rings true, even more so in the historic perspectives.
Especially in the PRC, you're in general incentivized to be an "excellent cog in the machine", and they teach this value to you in schools. "Being unique" in your first 18 years of life is considered a bad thing, and respect for hierarchy is enforced every day.
I wouldn't write everyone in China off to the type presented in the article -- most people in China know that this is not an efficient way of approaching things. However, their hands are tied in a society that enforces hierarchy in every possible way.