The article
Since the Reform and Opening-up, China’s manufacturing industry has been developing very rapidly. After joining the WTO in the year 2000, China has achieved even faster growth thanks to accelerating globalization. Despite a temporary set-back in the 2008 financial crisis, China’s manufacturing industry surpassed that of the US in output value in 2010, making China the world’s largest manufacturing power. Now, with the steady slowing-down of China’s economic growth, China’s manufacturing industry has moved into the new norm of indepth resource integration and structural rebalance. Challenged by the tapering cost advantages and the diminishing competitiveness of laborintensive manufacturing industry, China’s manufacturing industry sets the priority strategy as industrial restructuring, transformation and upgrading to move up on the ladder of value chain. In the context of renewed economic globalization spearheaded by the ongoing new industrial revolution, how to leverage the advantages of being a great manufacturing power to secure the in-depth integration of industrialization and informationization, boost the companies’ technological innovation capabilities, and drive the transformation and upgrade of economic structure become a pressing question for China’s manufacturing industry.
Global Manufacturing and Secondary Innovation in China Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by 84.114.196.151 on 11/24/22. Re-use and distribution is strictly not permitted, except for Open Access articles.
The interviewee
Prof. Xiaobo WU Qiushi Chair Professor of Innovation & Strategic Management, Changjiang Chair Professor, Honored by MoE China Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, China
The interview
Hi welcome to Coffee Break with Researchers. Today I’m having a very special guest from China, I’m having a coffee break with a professor Xiaobo Wu. He’s a Professor of innovation and strategic management at the Zhejiang University in China. Coffee break with researchers presents you with cutting-edge insights on Regional development and Innovation. We ask researchers directly and in a personal manner about their work. We make scientific knowledge accessible to all.
Professor Wu, thank you very much for accepting this invitation to a coffee break with me, how are you doing?
Fine thank you so much, that’s my pleasure to join the interview. The pleasure is mine, I want to ask you about your coffee today or if any of any drink if you are having, I am having a very special coffee from the region of Huila in Colombia.
That’s nice but actually in China we mostly drink tea, which has the especially our green tea yeah even though the young people like coffee more and more.
I have to try that one Professor, I want to talk with you about your book Global manufacturing and secondary Innovations in China. Could you please tell me what is it about?
People see very fast rising of Chinese manufacturing so China became the biggest country of the manufacturer right now, but what’s the main reason for it, so in my studies we see that the Chinese manufacturing rising from the secondary innovation, we’re following the different ways to rise, so that’s I think is a very necessary for us to dig out what’s the what’s the real reason for the rising Chinese manufacturer, so in my view that’s good secondary innovation.
That is indeed quite important to know and I also realized that this concept of secondary Innovations is the key of of your book, could you please define it?
in our definition the secondary Innovation that’s the Innovation based on the introduce technology not the originally generated by ourselves, so that’s the secondary innnvation,
That’s indeed a very crucial concept, could you please tell me the the findings of your book of your research?
because my research area is innovation management and especially when we see the series and the methods developed by those developmental Nations we try to link those original findings with the local companies local economies but in this we find that Chinese companies doing the innovation in some way different such as the Dynamics of innovation just reviewed by Professor James Adelberg many years ago from United States, he said that the first Innovation high frequency is the product Innovation then the process Innovation but in China we see that, in our work we found that Chinese companies undertaking the process Innovation first, then developed the productive Innovations so that’s the indifferent Dynamics, so in this way we can enhancing our technological probabilities effectively, so that’s something different and let me say, the unique or yeah that unit or can be learned by other developing nations.
I can imagine thank you for clarifying that and what was the reason behind writing this book what was it the personal motivation that you had to to write this book?
actually my first degree is a double so I used to be engineer whether we work to assimilating the introduce the technologies we see that the hard to make it it’s so difficult for developing countries yeah but we say that maybe we can find some more new ways so in this way I undertaking uh research to the manufacturing companies we find that our practice in the companies following the different device not as the way described by established the series, so we say that what’s the most three efficient ways so we say that the Dynamics of the secondary innovation so well if we can discover those uniqueness so we can doing work more effectively so that’s my personal dream at first is that how to make Chinese firms more effective more competitive, so then we see the series with the series we studying our company’s practice and again we’re developing something new and develop our own series.
I understand thank you for that very important indeed and I assume this uniqueness has a lot to do with the practical implications of policy implications of of your book. Could you please talk a little bit about that what would you say are they the key policy implications of your research?
The policy implications here is to see that the department to give incentives to the company in right away not a mismatch with the company’s needs so with the Dynamics of secular Innovation we see that our governmental policies mainly focusing on the technology acquisition with the project it’s called the technological transformation plan with this plan the government gave the incentives to the company to introduce our local suppliers to be involved with the acquired technological systems so in in our researchers and the proposal to the government we see that we should encourage in the process Innovation even more than the product Innovation at the first phase so in this we could see the both the local and the central government in China we provided the right incentives to the manufacturing sectors yeah so make those companies developing even faster, so there are a lot of policy implications and as I mentioned the the manufacturing side but also the Innovation policies we’re emphasizing the process Innovation especially.
Thank you for that that’s indeed quite relevant I think for the entire world to know and this was a special edition of coffee breaks I really thank you for that it’s the first time we do an interview about a book and it was indeed a very interesting read so thank you again Professor, I wish you all the best I hope to meet you in person and see you again in a coffee break bye.
Thank you so much thank you for watching if you’re interested in more details about this academic publication you can find here the link below find us on Twitter Facebook and YouTube or listen to our podcast on Spotify see you next time bye bye.