China, Canton Fair 2010

Ni Hao. I am back posting again after a visit to the 108th Canton Commercial Fair in Guangzhou, China. It was my first visit to this country working for ChromaticWorks in finding new forms of business and ventures for a client. Opportunity hunting! The experience was amazing and the objectives were accomplished, now it’s time to execute the plan alongside our client to make the profit. Let me tell you a little bit about the trip and my experience on Chinese innovation.
The Canton Fair is a three week event held twice every year in April and October, where large factories and distributors from all over China present their products and services, divided in phases according to product categories, from electronics to clothing to what-ever-you-can-imagine. I’ve never seen in my life so many large companies creating one same specialized product, such as compass or stuffed teddy bears.

Even though the Canton Fair it is one of the world’s largest commercial fairs, do not imagine you will see a lot of innovation or new product releases in the expo. We were actually disappointed in some categories such as sports and health. For what I saw, many Chinese companies have not given that step on innovation either and have focused on creating pre-existing low cost merchandise. Although words on the street say quite the contrary, with a large portion of wealthy Chinese acquiring good education overseas, China being a territory where most western companies are finding growth areas after opening their borders and politics to private investment and, of course, low production and employee costs.

But there are some aspects you should consider in doing business in China, especially in innovation:

When assembling products in China, beware of your intellectual property. For example, in the expo a company showed us a toy that was being created exclusively for “Discovery Kids” and was therefore not included in the catalogue and had no apparent price. After a few moments of asking them about the toy, they offered: “Well, some minor changes can be done, you can send us the packaging design with your logo and we can sell it to you.” We also visited a company that sold beauty-fitness machines and during the factory tour around the place, we were able to see a customized product for a Spanish company being assembled. We liked that product more than any other generic design the company sold. At first they had told us they could sell exact replicas to us, although in our next visit they told us they couldn’t. Still, we had already seen the design and even taken pictures, we could have easily gone to a nearby factory that created the same kind of machinery. (just so you know, we didn’t).

Most Chinese I met during our company visits were pretty “squared” and didn’t know how to react when asked outside their planned outline. For example, an import and export service company took about an hour and a half to create a Service License Agreement since they were never asked for one before (!!??). We found many companies telling us “I don’t think we can” or “I don’t think so, we’ve never done that” to what appeared to us were fairly easy changes that in US or Mexico would have been no problem. We met an Argentinean who had worked in China for years, having Chinese employees and said they were the hardest working employees he had ever had, but lacked thinking outside the box or beyond the technical problem and you had to supervise them constantly and carefully.

Another good recommendation is to check the quality on everything and ask for certificates and references, specially if they are new products. We found some companies explaining their product to us for several minutes, and when we told them about certificates they would say they still don’t have international approvals and couldn’t sell them yet. Be sure certificates are specific for the product you are buying and not general approvals for the company itself. There are a lot of urban legends about Chinese product importation gone bad, such as shoes made out of cardboard paper or an importer who got only left-side shoes.

One thing that did amaze me and we should learn from was Chinese attention to details in order to gain costumers. In a service company we visited, in the 20th floor of a nice building, after the elevator door opens, a display greets you with your names. Inside, many desks had small Mexican and Chinese flags together. In the showroom they hanged a picture of all the Mexican clients they had worked for, including gobernment. I’ve never seen that kind of personalized attention and makes you think they are prepared to handle your business. They even wrote out Chinese addresses for the best restaurants and tour places for us to visit! In another company, one of the main engineers waited for us in the metro station to take us to the company since they had no car to pick us up and then he even helped us with hotel and taxi reservations.

Chinese people were kind and friendly to us and I want to thank all of those who made this experience a success. Sadly, this blog (as all others) is blocked in China.

Tolerance and Creativity

No culture or race is better than another, not in creativity and not in any other aspect, and we can find examples of smart, creative people in every single culture. As I emphasized in the post ‘Cultural Heritage’, creative ideas that can lead to innovation can come from anyone, anywhere. But after I wrote the post I’ve been asking myself some questions about the role of culture tolerance in innovation.

Some societies, because of being exposed to a wide variety of cultures are more tolerant to different ways of thinking and acting. It is no mystery that censorship and intolerance are enemies of new ideas and can kill creativity, therefore also innovation opportunities. Take for example the US, and specially New York as a cultural bouillabaisse, where you can find people almost from any origin who participate in society with their own forms of value. NY is not only a good place to have a variety of food to eat, it is a place for ideas to converge. In an organization you want this multi-cultural communication, to get the best ideas out of everyone to obtain results. Racism breaks dialogue, and should be avoided at all cost.

But what happens with cultures that were actually created from the mixture of two or more other cultures as it happens in many Latin American countries? Are we more tolerant and can this be an advantage towards enhancing a creative environment? I wish I could say cultural mixture in Latin America (with European and African cultures mainly), does make us more tolerant, but I think, as in any other culture, it’s more of a personal value than a cultural trait. Some people do feel resentment towards their ‘madre patria´ (towards Spanish or Portuguese), or feel discriminated (or have been discriminated) because of their Indian or African origin, acting with intolerance themselves. In Mexico, native indians are segregated and live in poverty.

Cultural tolerance comes from contact with other cultures that challenge our own paradigms and with whom we cooperate for common benefits. As an advice for cultural tolerance, try focusing on things you have in common and work from there. Embrace difference, hear more than you talk, and try understanding why that person thinks or acts the way he does. You can always express your points of view but always with respect and looking for a win-win relationship. Believe that you can learn something from anyone. And basically don't be a prick.

But tolerance for fostering creativity is not only manifested in cultural difference. Tolerance is also important in gender, sexual orientation and religion. In general, in Latin America as in many other regions, women still don’t have the same opportunities and are still not treated equal at work, and sexual orientation is a cause of mock. Catholicism is the main religion in most latin countries and we are not used to other strong opposing ideologies.

I once saw an “innovativeness” score-board for evaluating “how innovative can a company be”. Although I didn’t agree with most of it, and I don’t think “innovativeness” can be measured (that’s another topic), I did find some interesting points. Here are some of its questions to ponder:
- How many different cultures are there in the company and in what percentage?
- How many women in executive levels are there in the organization compared to the total of employees?
- How many self-declared gay/lesbians are there in the organization compared to the total of employees?
- How many different self-professed religion followers are there in the company and in what percentage?

We should practice tolerance, better yet empathy, not only for creative purposes, but for personal growth.

(DORA THE EXPLORER IN ARIZONA PICTURE IS NOT OF MY AUTHORITY BUT FROM FREAKINGNEWS.COM)

Creative Heritage

Since early ages humans had to develop different skills in order to survive in their environment. It is said that cultures that lived in regions with drastic climate changes, like very hot summers and cold winters, had to become more creative. Being exposed to a wider range of problems in a changing environment, they needed to develop different knowledge and tools for each adverse situation… therefore innovating.

Weather also has an impact on biodiversity. Cultures that had access to all kinds of natural materials, such as woods, plant extracts and those from animal origin had greater chances of creating different products just by combining them. Some regions have two or three biomes ( deserts, tundra, forests, etc) relatively near to each other. It was not only the diversity of resources what was important but also their quantity. You could spare a few resources in inventing new things!... therefore innovating.

Basic human needs have to be covered first in order to expand knowledge to less vital areas. Would humans be concerned about philosophy if they had no food? Most “advanced” cultures were built around places that provided water and with it, fertile land that allowed a sedentary life. Mesopotamia was built between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Egyptians along the Nile River, and Aztecs at the Lago of Texcoco. Having basic needs covered because of fertile land allowed progress in new fields… therefore innovating.

The amount of light received due to weather also affects our mood, which as we know, can influence our activities. What color of clothes do you choose for a sunny day or for a cloudy day? Ever felt depressed according to the weather? Mexico, as many other latin american countries, is full of light and it is said that our taste for bright colors and contrasting combinations come from the sun’s influence and being used to nature’s tropical colors, like fruits and flowers. It also affects latin “warmth”, openness and explosiveness in personal contact. Compare Mexico’s use of colors (in art, design or architecture) with color use in countries like Norway, Finland or Russia that have long winter periods or absence of light. Therefore… well this doesn’t mean more innovation , just being more colorful.

In our days, globalization, transportation and information technology have standardized any cultural heritage as a creative advantage. Education, networking and financial capabilities become more important for innovation than any of the references above. Not even resources are a decisive factor, many developing countries have good extraction industries for raw minerals, agriculture or animal husbandry, but real value is being generated in the transformation industry. Rural sectors, such as agriculture, are one of the poorest world-wide, while the prepared and packed food industry is one of the richest. Mexico sells petroleum to US and then imports gasoline! Having the natural resources doesn’t mean having the value (at least not yet again i.e. water).

Having said this, I still hope something from latin origin, either fighting climate adversity, our anthropological use of biodiversity, or even the colorful joy of living, could brighten up our regional creativity… and with the right education, networking and financial capabilities use it to add some value… therefore innovating.