> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-examining.<p>No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, opposition to the norm<p>When you demand that your people bow and obey, and imprison people like A1 WW, this goes against promoting and nurturing innovation<p><a href="https://steveblank.com/2012/11/06/entrepreneurs-as-dissidents/" rel="nofollow">https://steveblank.com/2012/11/06/entrepreneurs-as-dissident...</a><p><a href="https://medium.com/@they_made_that/innovations-secret-ingredient-73da24fdd775" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@they_made_that/innovations-secret-ingred...</a><p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/10/22/never_before_published_isaac_asimov_essay_reveals_the_secret_to_true_creativity/" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/2014/10/22/never_before_published_isaac...</a><p>When your culture is very antagonistic towards people who don't like the status quo and forces them to carefully think about what they say and write, the culture itself becomes a big obstacle to innovation. When you run garbage likethe Great Firewall that limits the sharing of information, that's another strike against innovation. (Of course one way to mitigate the effects of authoritarian rule is by being really favorable towards immigration from places with the opposite culture.)<p>I guess Shenzen is a place that's figuratively where "the mountains are high and the emperor is far away". I wonder how long before that changes?
WIRED UK did a great job going into more detail on Shenzhen, highly recommend watching the documentary. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY&t=8s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY&t=8s</a>
I was in Shenzhen a few months back for the first time. I can only describe it as Disneyland for electronics enthusiasts.<p>Going into all the specialized malls in Huaqiang Bei and seeing the entire supply chain in one building is amazing.<p>Highly recommend that people interested in electronics hardware make a visit.
I'm so impressed with Shenzen, but there's nothing shocking about it. I've been following China's rise up the value chain since the late 90's. It is steady, predictable, and inexorable. They're not done yet. If America doesn't get serious about invigorating it's high tech manufacturing ecosystem, so we have the talent and supply chain needed to stay competitive innovating in the world of atoms they way we do with bits, we're gonna have a bad time... if we aren't already. (Here's looking at you, GoPro)
Ok, I'm probably more engaged in discussing and promoting Shenzhen with Westerners in English than any other Shenzhen resident. I'm a Hackaday contributor, tweet and vblog about it with more followers than any other local, all that. I'm also the most prolific Maker as Westerners tend to define "Maker" in Shenzhen, maybe China. No, I'm not bragging, check around.<p>>Shenzhen has only a handful of lacklustre institutions of higher learning<p>Shenzhen University- while not Tsinghua, it well regarded and it's graduates are quickly hired by local tech companies.<p>>Shenzhen spends over 4% of its GDP on research and development (R&D), double the mainland average; in Nanshan the share is over 6%.<p>This is true "on the ground" and it shows- I live in Nanshan High Tech Park right in the center of this. The amount of money local government and local companies are putting into innovation is staggering.<p>>Most of the money comes from private firms. Companies in Shenzhen file more international patents<p>Lots of these are questionable. There are financial incentives for the number of patents filed. Goodhart's law applies in China like no place else. Likewise- you can get grants and tax breaks opening a Makerspace, so we have over 600. In reality nearly all of these are empty offices.<p>>He insists this could not have been done even in Silicon Valley, because California cannot match Shenzhen’s ecosystem of “makers”.<p>Shenzhen has no Makers, and no Maker culture. We have one, maybe two Makerspaces in the Western tradition and their focus is almost entirely on kids classes. There are huge obstacles to actually building an authentic Maker Culture in China which we have been unable to overcome. As a result- the same factory bosses and businessmen we've always had, are now called "Makers". People who actually do technical things- let along things with their own hands are still called engineers and still very much looked down on.<p>We have large, fantastically equipped Makerspaces- these are about as real as a North Korean fruit stand. They are part of the local cargo cult mentality and purely for face. It is common here to have a huge, privately catered "Maker Meetup" of hundreds of people- and not a single person in the room will have ever fabricated anything with their own two hands. They are also quite proud of this.<p>Yes- some tremendous innovation occurring here and it's a fantastic place for hardware. No- very little authentic Maker culture and very little interest in actually fostering it.
The "maker movement" is alive in Shentzen, but mostly dead in Silicon Valley. TechShop is mostly crafters, not people building anything innovative. Hacker Dojo is appslaves. If there's a maker space in Silicon Valley with a pick and place machine, I can't find it.
Despite the politics, and crazy economics, China future looks amazing, because of the huge of human potential. If I were 20 years younger, and having the possibility of an interesting job in software programming, I would go to Shanghai or Shenzen.
wake me up when connections to non-Chinese servers (the vast majority of them) don't time out half the time, or connections to neighbors like HK and Singapore don't do crazy routing through Beijing, to America, to HK/Singapore and back instead of directly to HK/Singapore, or numerous key websites aren't outright blocked<p>>lived in Shenzhen, the internets are broken and everybody knows it
Shenzhen has to be one of my favorite cities. If you're at all interested in manufacturing or supply chain management you have to go to Shenzhen sometime and check out Huaqiangbei
I've always wanted to visit Shenzhen. Ever since I studied it in a required elective in college ("Design the City") I've admired it.<p>sn: Sometimes the required but irrelevant/"easy" classes do provide some value. Anyone in college should remember that you need to expand your mind a bit too and sometimes take these stupid classes seriously enough to get something out of them.
<i>Getting from early-stage research to manufactured product would require a massive amount of what he calls integrated innovation: “Materials, process, device design, circuit design—all needed to be innovated…if you changed one material, you had to change the process.” His team had to develop entirely new materials and factory tools, including custom-built robots, to make his screens, accumulating over 600 patents along the way. He insists this could not have been done even in Silicon Valley, because California cannot match Shenzhen’s ecosystem of “makers”. </i><p>This phenomenon has been under appreciated by the macroeconomists guiding the US. If the people with the expertise, their factories, their suppliers - the whole chain -- migrate to places far outside the US, then something extremely important is lost.<p>And favorable exchange rates plus container ship globalization is not enough to get that something back.
What would it take to create a Shenzen in the US, say, to economically revitalize a Rust Belt industrial center that's near rock-bottom after decades of decline? I'm, uh...asking for a friend... :)
Dangerous Prototypes used to host Hacker Camp Tours of Shenzhen:<p><a href="http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/category/hacker-camp-shenzhen/" rel="nofollow">http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/category/hacker-camp-she...</a><p>Does anyone know if there is something similar that is still going on?
Anyone keen on working in Shenzhen, please review our recent <i>Who's Hiring?</i> post at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14029295" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14029295</a><p>(We are currently relocating to Shenzhen from elsewhere in China.)
<i>“order is important in the market.” But one of the local speakers livened things up by delivering a surprisingly stout defence of disruptive innovation.</i><p>Order and disruptive innovation are not necessarily mutually exclusive. What happened to ordered disruptive innovation?
I lived there for a couple of months in 2014. Amazing city, even outside of the hacker world. The locals are very friendly and there's a great expat community too. I would love to go back.