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【比成本，更要比創意 新興經濟大搞「節儉式創新」】
作者：經濟學人 出處：天下雜誌 445 期 2010/04
一場豬羊變色的革命正在發生。過去只能提供廉價勞力的新興國家，開始跟西方比創新。工業國家的優勢日漸不保，全球競爭正面臨一百八十度大翻轉。
全球經濟重心逐漸東移新興市場，一場豬羊變色的新革命也正在發生。
新興國家不再甘於扮演廉價勞力供應者的角色，開始成為創新的發動機，從電信、汽車到醫療，不斷帶來突破。他們重新設計產品，硬是能砍掉高達九○％的成本；又徹底改造企業流程，把事情做得比西方對手更好、更快。別再說「世界是平的」，因為全球競爭正在一百八十度大翻轉。
工業富國正在流失產業創新的領導優勢。原因之一，是愈來愈多企業都把研發搬到了新興市場，美國五百大企業在中國已有九十八個研發中心，在印度也有六十三個。原因之二，則是新興國家的企業與消費者正在「升級」，例如，中國電信設備大廠華為二○○八年申請的國際專利數目，高居全球第一。而中國年輕人的上網時間，也超過了美國年輕人。
更重要的是，新興國家愈來愈有辦法用超低的成本來生產：三千美元汽車和三百美元筆電，也許比不上蘋果iPad那麼拉風，卻可以改善更多人的生活。
節儉式創新 造福世界
有些人開始把這種能力稱為「節儉式創新」（frugal innovation）：不但善用廉價勞力，還能翻新產品和流程，削去不必要的成本。印度塔塔的Nano小車，就是一例。不僅這樣，新興國家的創業家們更懂得利用行動通訊等新技術，為醫療、金融與鄉村發展，帶來先進的服務，例如肯亞的行動電話匯款服務，早已領先全球。
跟三十年前日本人以精實製造改變全球汽車業相比，今天新興國家企業「躍升」的領域更多，速度也更快。西方企業不但將面臨激烈的價格競爭，連過去的競爭優勢也可能被顛覆。
這一波低價的破壞式創新來勢洶洶，許多西方產業都會被波及。對業者來說，變動勢必帶來痛苦，然而，西方消費者卻將因此受惠。對缺錢的工業國家政府來說，好處也不少，例如，心臟、青光眼手術上的節儉式創新，或許可以避免美國醫療體系拖垮財政。
創新的力量一旦啟動，就會源源不絕。開發中國家的創新，相對也會激發工業國家精益求精，投入更多創新。就像當年的日本人向美國人學習大量生產，後來西方汽車業也向日本人學到了精實製造，眼前這一波新革命，未來肯定造福全世界。（吳怡靜譯）
【The new masters of management】
By The Economist print edition
From The Economist Published: April 27, 2010
Developing countries are competing on creativity as well as cost. That will change business everywhere
THIRTY years ago the bosses of America's car industry were shocked to learn that Japan had overtaken America to become the world's leading car producer. They were even more shocked when they visited Japan to find out what was going on. They found that the secret of Japan's success did not lie in cheap labour or government subsidies (their preferred explanations) but in what was rapidly dubbed "lean manufacturing". While Detroit slept, Japan had transformed itself from a low-wage economy into a hotbed of business innovation. Soon every factory around the world was lean—or a ruin.
Management gurus are always glibly proclaiming revolutions. What happened in Japan qualified, as did the advent of mass production in America a century ago. Now something comparable is taking place in the developing world.
It is hardly news that the world's centre of economic gravity is shifting towards emerging markets. Buy a mobile phone and it will almost certainly have been made in China. Use it to phone a customer helpline and your call may well be answered by an Indian. Over the past five years China's annual growth rate has been more than 10%, and India's more than 8%. Yet even these figures understate the change that is taking place. Emerging countries are no longer content to be sources of cheap hands and low-cost brains. Instead they too are becoming hotbeds of innovation, producing breakthroughs in everything from telecoms to carmaking to health care. They are redesigning products to reduce costs not just by 10%, but by up to 90%. They are redesigning entire business processes to do things better and faster than their rivals in the West. Forget about flat—the world of business is turning upside down.
Competing for the future
As our special report argues, the rich world is losing its leadership in the sort of breakthrough ideas that transform industries. This is partly because rich-world companies are doing more research and development in emerging markets. Fortune 500 companies now have 98 R&D facilities in China and 63 in India. IBM employs more people in developing countries than in America. But it is also because emerging-market firms and consumers are both moving upmarket. Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, applied for more international patents than any other firm did in 2008. Chinese 20-somethings spend even more time on the internet than do their American peers.
Even more striking is the emerging world's growing ability to make established products for dramatically lower costs: no-frills $3,000 cars and $300 laptops may not seem as exciting as a new iPad but they promise to change far more people's lives. This sort of advance—dubbed "frugal innovation" by some—is not just a matter of exploiting cheap labour (though cheap labour helps). It is a matter of redesigning products and processes to cut out unnecessary costs. In India Tata created the world's cheapest car, the Nano, by combining dozens of cost-saving tricks. Bharti Airtel has slashed the cost of providing mobile-phone services by radically rethinking its relationship with its competitors and suppliers. It shares radio towers with rivals and contracts out network construction, operations and support to specialists such as Ericsson and IBM.
Just as Henry Ford and Toyota both helped change other industries, entrepreneurs in the developing world are applying the classic principles of division of labour and economies of scale to surprising areas such as heart operations and cataract surgery, reducing costs without sacrificing quality. They are using new technologies such as mobile phones to bring sophisticated services, in everything from health care to banking, to rural communities. And they are combining technological and business-model innovation to produce entirely new categories of services: Kenya leads the world in money-transfer by mobile phone, for example.
Hope versus fear
All this is obviously good news for the billions of people who live in the BRICS (see article) and other developing countries. More consumers will have access to goods and services that were once confined to the elite. More than 90% of Indians and Chinese tell pollsters that they are optimistic about the future. Anand Mahindra, an Indian business leader, has described his dreams about the future as "not just colourful, but steroidal".
What about the slow-growth rich world? Emerging firms are advancing on a greater number of fronts than the Japanese did 30 years ago and also advancing much faster, gobbling up Western rivals. Their charge will upset many established Western firms, which will face increasingly savage price competition, and also overturn many assumptions about the rich world's competitive advantage. Many of globalisation's most vocal supporters have justified the loss of manufacturing jobs in the West on the ground that the rich world will maintain an edge in innovation; the clever jobs will stay at home. Emerging economies are not merely challenging that lead in innovation. They are unleashing a wave of low-cost, disruptive innovations that will, as they spread to the rich world, shake many industries to their foundations. All sorts of chief executives will scream for protection.
Change will indeed be painful for incumbents, as disruptive innovation always is. But cheaper goods and services will be a blessing for Western consumers, who are likely to face years of slow income growth. It could also be good news for rich-world governments, which are plagued with deficits even before the baby-boomers begin to retire. Frugal innovation may well prevent America's health-care system (which already consumes 17% of its GDP) from swamping the rest of the economy. Clever ways of applying economies of scale and scope in new ways could boost public-sector productivity.
Moreover, it is in the nature of innovation to feed upon itself. Innovation in the emerging world will encourage, rather than undermine, innovation in the rich world. Western carmakers learned the techniques of lean production from their Japanese rivals, just as the Japanese had earlier learned the techniques of mass production from the Americans. This great insurrection, like its predecessors, will make us all richer.
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