" If you thought the rate of change was fast thanks to the garage innovators of Silicon Valley, wait until the garages of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore get fully up to speed. I sure hope we’re ready. " -- Quote from the article.<p>I sure hope this turns to reality and the tide rises the rate of innovation that has meaningful social impacts on problems like poverty and disease plaguing the developing nations.
Hype aside, one of the key pieces of American technology development is a very simple one.<p>Bankruptcy.<p>The legal ability for an individual or a business to fail.<p>Seriously.<p>If I don't get buried in a mountain of business debt from a (legitimate) business failure, then I am free to try again with a different business idea or different business model, and to pivot and to hone my business skills, and to see what else might work with the customers and with the investors.<p>Countries and regions with punitive laws around business failures and particularly around the legal exposures and debt incurred by legitimate businesses will inherently operate at a competitive disadvantage.<p>Carefully balancing the societal benefits and costs of non-putative bankruptcies (and of non-putative layoffs, for that matter) is critical in encouraging new business ventures.
I think the hype is real, at least the hype about the upcoming wave of major and disruptive technology companies based in India and China. I think American startups and established technology firms will compete effectively against these companies, but the effect on other countries with a less-established startup and technology investment culture is more worrisome.<p>I'm particularly referring to Canada (which I'm most familiar with since I'm Canadian). Canada continues to fall behind the US in terms of productivity and technology investment. Apart from a few of the major population centres and Kitchener-Waterloo we have little in the way of a startup culture. We do have a strong tradition of entrepreneurship but it appears to me that this is mainly focused on traditional and particularly service-based businesses.<p>Technology firms here will also tell you that Canadian companies are slower to adopt new technologies than companies in the US, India and China.<p>Countries like Canada that have let innovation stagnate because they currently enjoy a high standard of living may be in for a harsh wakeup call as Indian and Chinese companies start to really come into their own.
Uh, exhortations to "believe the hype", phrased in exactly those words, are usually a sign of late-stage evolution of the hype, shortly before the collapse of the hype. I remember them from the dot-com bubble, I remember them from the housing bubble...<p>(I believe that India and China have a relatively bright future. I do not believe in the narrative whereby the United States faces problems, because we live here and can see them, but China and India must inevitably be on a smooth trajectory upwards with no bumps, because we don't live there to see the bumps and in China's case we are probably having the bumps deliberately and systematically hidden from us. Just as Japan's inevitable triumph over the entire world turned out not to be bump-free either. In fact, doesn't anyone learn from history...?)
I'm glad to see EKO (<a href="http://eko.co.in/index.php" rel="nofollow">http://eko.co.in/index.php</a>) making some solid progress as this post tells. It's nice they have started to make a profit.<p>I should tell that they have been trying this since last few years and one of the reason why the idea worked is that this startup reached out to people personally. The same is the story of Red Bus (<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/24/yes-you-can-build-a-web-company-in-india-here%E2%80%99s-how/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/24/yes-you-can-build-a-web-com...</a>) which reached out to the bus companies.<p>The trend I am seeing is that IT companies in India have bigger challenge in making people adopt the technology than marketing or anything else.
You see, it's very easy to turn this story around, just alter the caption.<p>"It takes an American executive to disrupt cumbersome Indian banking", "With globalization, Americans go on to innovate overseas", "U.S. education is the driving force of innovation in modern India" and so on.<p>Note: they could probably do just fine with local education and an Indian COO. Point is you should be cautious with extrapolations from a single story.
To me India seems as precarious as it is promising. Against all this entrepreneurial spirit is the possibility that northern India will drain its aquifers and its rivers dry, and that climate change will make refugees of the entire nation of Bangladesh.
Yes it is an achievement. Even a beggar owns a mobile phone. As an Indian what really bothers me is, you can get free sim card but to get a decent meal you have to spend 50-90 Rs (1-2$). Again most of the worker's daily wage is (3-4 $). The food prices are keep on increasing. Are we missing something?
Besides the line regarding Mt. Everest may relate to China, the rest of the post is about India.<p>What is really the truth is that the wealthy nations are unheard of the situations in poorer countries. What is obvious in our community (banks, credit cards) is not at all in some areas in the world. It's rare to see the problems when the problems are not in front of us.<p>The good thing about cheaper technologies is that, they are more accessible, could improve the conditions of people faster and have more impact.
May I suggest reading "Fortune at The Bottom of the Pyramid" by C.K. Prahlad "<p>This is an excellent guide for innovation for India and much of developing world. Companies like EKO etc. have taken these lessons and are building upon those ideas.
China has its own problem now. The inflation is really which drives the living cost and labor higher. Lots of companies are trying to seek cheaper labors in countries like Vietnam. But one thing is true that mobile is really big in Asia. With great infrastructure, you can have signals anywhere including in the subways which drives mobile consumption.
Don't believe the hype. I sincerely hope the BRIC countries do well, but you can't assume they will grow at the same rate for the next 20 years. There are Earth shattering events every few years which could derail any of these countries. Politics, war, natural disaster, tech revolutions, etc. The US can adjust to change faster than anyone.
India has a 5000 years old hidden dark side viz <a href="http://goo.gl/K8Pg" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/K8Pg</a><p>There are 17,000 cults aka castes in India.<p>They're destroying India because they literally hate each other.<p>To strengthen India, it is better to give autonomy to FC/BC/SC/ST/Minority regions with a single passport and currency across these regions viz <a href="http://goo.gl/A8F6" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/A8F6</a>
China prospered without India's dummy democracy and casteism.<p>Indians are brainwashed to believe that (voting in elections == democracy) and a solution to all problems.
India is a dummy democracy.
Only 84,000 Indians out of 1,173,108,018 have the courage to vote their conscience.
<a href="http://goo.gl/jNi1r" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/jNi1r</a>