Beijing-based artist Wang Qingsong spent the summer of 2005 putting together this amazing triptych. In the first photo, a group of hundreds of Chinese demonstrators appear to be rallying against the arrival of Western multinationals in China. In the second photo, you can see the mess and debris created by the protesters. Finally, in the third photo, you are able to see the other side of the banners - they are actually product endorsement banners for a number of Western brands! In his own words, Wang Qingsong explains the significance of the work:

“The triptych gives the viewer three very different images of the same road and landscape. In this work, I use this outdoor landscape setting polluted by “demonstrators” to pose questions such as “What Is Coming?” “Who Is Coming?”, “How Does It Come?”, and “Why Is It Coming?”…. “Why Is It Happening On The Same Road?”Are the crowds generating slogans, garbage, or commercial advertisements? Historic changes of diverse impact often take place simultaneously, while seemingly going down one and the same path. But one thing is certain: The middle road, littered with garbage rather than people, appears silent, but one can see smoke and fire in the distance, hinting at some struggle, chaos, uncertainty or disputes either having come just before or just after the people.”

Need any more proof that China is a country of contradictions?

[image: Come!Come!]

According to a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics in China, the most innovative city in China is Shanghai. Other cities cracking the Top 10 included Hangzhou, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Beijing, Changzhou, Yantai, Guangzhou and Shaoxing. For close followers of the Chinese innovation scene, these findings may not come as a shock, but I was personally a bit surprised to find Beijing at #6. Anyway, the survey also looked at the pace of R&D spending in China, the composition of this R&D spending, and the primary sources of funding for this R&D research:

“The survey found that that the majority of research and development funding is spent on improving existing products and technology; only one third is spent on developing new products and basic research programs. According to the survey, 33% of funds are used to improve efficiency and reduce the costs of production; 31% is spent perfecting current technology, and doing research to widen the uses of products; 24% is spent on the development of new products and technology; 9% is used in basic research; the remaining 3% is spent elsewhere. The survey also found that internal revenue-raising is the major source of funds for innovation. Over 75% of funds come from the enterprises themselves, 12% from loans, and less than 5% from the government, partners and capital market.”

[image: Shanghai skyline via TravelBlog]

Every now and then, it’s interesting to check out how the rest of the world views the people we consider to be the most innovative thinkers in the USA. For example, do Russians living in Moscow really read the latest works from Chris Anderson, Malcolm Gladwell and Jared Diamond? It turns out, yes, they do. Check out this recent issue of Afisha, a glossy biweekly magazine from Moscow, which has a cover story on 50 People Who Explained the World. (Don’t let the disturbing cover photo of Subcomandante Marcos put you off. Just like some American hipsters think it’s cool to wear a t-shirt with a photo of Che Guevera on it, the Moscow hipsters also dig the Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries.)

Anyway, I couldn’t find the full text to the Afisha cover story, so I scanned the page of the Afisha article featuring Chis Anderson and the Long Tail Theory (see top right corner of the scan for a picture of Chris and a Long Tail graphic). There’s a brief bio description for Chris, a quote from his groundbreaking 2004 article in Wired magazine, and a brief summary of the Long Tail theory. The other two Big Thinkers profiled on the page are David Icke (author of Children of the Matrix) and John Perry Barlow (former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and a prominent thinker about the future of cyberspace).

UPDATE: Some people have asked: Who else made the list besides Anderson, Icke and Barlow? Well, how about Kurt Vonnegut, Malcolm Gladwell, Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, Rem Koolhaas, Steven D. Levitt, Ted Turner, Camille Paglia, Alvin Toffler, James Watson, Thomas Friedman, Stephen Hawking and Umberto Eco?

Here’s the latest for international wine enthusiasts: a new $100 million Frank Gehry-designed hotel in the medieval village of Elciego. The hotel is located right smack in the middle of Spain’s Rioja wine region and is attached to a local winery dating back to 1858, meaning that guests will have the run of the local vineyard - as well as access to an ancient wine cellar and a wine tasting corner and the opportunity to partake of “wine therapy” massages.

If the building looks familiar, it should - it’s from the same celebrity architect who designed Spain’s Bilbao museum. According to Alejandro Aznar Sainz, the head of the Marques de Riscal winery, the goal was to build a “21st-century chateau” that fused the best elements of modern innovation and Old World charm. The bigger picture, of course, is that the new Frank Gehry-designed hotel will likely provide a boost to the Spanish tourism industry and stoke demand for locally-produced Spanish wines.

[image: Hotel Marques De Riscal]

As China continues to become a global economic powerhouse, “Made in China” is starting to lose some of its negative connotations. Twenty-year-old Shanghai beauty Du Juan (a former ballerina who only started modeling in 2002) has been turning heads at New York Fashion Week - and that could be good news for luxury goods makers in the Europe and the USA. As Vanessa O’Connell and Cui Rong of the Wall Street Journal explained on Friday (“Her Chinese Looks Make Du Juan a Star Everywhere but China”), the up-and-coming supermodel is being courted by the likes of Oscar de la Renta, Proenza Schouler and Carolina Herrera, all of whom see the young Du Juan as the new face of global beauty. Not only that, she’s appearing in magazine ads for Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, Roberto Cavalli and, yes, the Gap — a possible sign that Western consumers could be facing an onslaught of Chinese supermodels sometime soon:

“In Europe and the U.S., China, and all things Chinese, have suddenly become fashionable. “China is a trend,” says David Wolfe, a creative director at the Doneger Group in New York. “We’re on the brink of seeing our fascination with China move mainstream.” The buzz is growing as fashion industry executives see China as not only intriguing and mysterious to Westerners, but also a center of manufacturing and a promising market.”

Within ten years, experts predict that China will account for nearly 30% of all luxury goods sold worldwide. Not only that, but Western luxury goods makers are getting over their hesitation of using Chinese supermodels to promote their products: “It’s completely new ground for Europeans and Americans to feature a Chinese woman so prominently in fashion spreads and ads.”

Tags: China Du Juan luxury design fashion

The British government is thinking about introducing prize competitions as a way to spur breakthrough innovation: “A future Conservative government may offer prizes for companies that come up with innovative answers to difficult problems - like a workable system of wave power. The prize scheme would mean reviving a former practice, which in the 18th century produced a breakthrough in global navigation by determining longitude…” The innovation prizes would become part of a broader effort by the government to “encourage more innovation in the UK, discourage the shift of highly skilled jobs to rival foreign states, and promote a positive and inspiring vision of what science can do for society.” While all plans are still tentative, one idea that has been discussed is a £10 million prize for the first company or organization that can produce a workable system of generating power from waves.

Not coincidentally, the $10 million X Prize competition in the U.S. led to the creation and development of the first-ever manned commercial spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, in October 2004.

Tags: British UK innovation prize

[image: The winner of the 1714 British longitude prize competition]

European aerospace giant Airbus has been running into all kinds of problems recently, including the embarrassing delay of its A380 superjumbo jet and a major shakeup of its senior management team. Which makes it all the more surprising that some European business execs - including Christoph Mohn, heir to the Bertelsmann media empire - are calling for Europe to create “an Airbus of the Internet.” Yep, that’s right. The Europeans apparently think a bloated, state-supported company can take on the likes of Google, eBay, Yahoo and Amazon. As Daniel Gross of Slate explains, this idea is “really stupid” for two reasons:

(1) The notion that European governments could will into being a competitor to eBay or Google conflicts with pretty much everything we know about how consumer-driven internet businesses grow;

(2) Airbus is a disaster just now. Literally speaking, an “Airbus of the Internet” would mean a company that loses ground to its U.S. competitor, is plagued by product delays, and has an untenable ownership structure.

Tags: Airbus Internet innovation Europe

[image: Airbus A380]

The next time you step into the local supermarket to pick up a sack of potatoes, think about how innovative those potatoes really are. What? According to Canada.com, the Canadian government is investing almost a million dollars in potato industry innovation:

“The federal government [in Canada] is contributing $590,000 to help launch a national network geared to finding new markets and innovative uses for potatoes. The goal of the Potato Innovation Network 2020 is to create alliances between university, government and industry to create new or improved potato-based food, bio-medical, and industrial products. The provinces of New Brunswick, Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Quebec are also contributing to the project, putting its total value at over $830,000. The potato industry contributes approximately $6.4 billion to Canada’s economy.”

If you look up “pork barrel” in the dictionary, I think you’d find something like this. In Canada, I guess, the term “potato barrel” might be more relevant.

Tags: potato innovation Canada

[image: Potatoes]

Korea Life Insurance has launched a new program (“Working Together”) to foster innovation in customer service. According to the Korea Times, Working Together is a “unique decision making procedure” that calls for employees to gather out of the office and engage in one night and two days of discussion until they find a solution to a customer service problem. To be glib, I suppose you might call it a one-night stand and two morning afters.

Anyway, from the description of the program in the Korea Times, it sounds like any idea judged worthy of future implementation must eventually find a “sponsor” from one of the executives attending the brainstorming session. Once an executive signs off on the program, it speeds up the implementation process by creating a sense of buy-in throughout the organization. Working together, staff members from Korea Life Insurance have already come up with over 100 ideas, from an insurance money-payment service to better IT quality, during eight previous Working Together sessions. In addition, staff members from different sectors of the company participate in the sessions, ensuring that they walk away with a “deep understanding” of how other parts of the company function.

Tags: innovation Korea working together

[image: Korea Life Insurance workers]

The new Himalayan railway that links Beijing with Tibet is now the world’s highest rail line. It’s also an “engineering marvel” and a testament to the spirit of the human imagination - it took nearly five years and more than $4 billion to build, and its 1,200 miles of tracks traverse 342 miles of permafrost, much of it at altitudes exceeding 13,000 feet. In order to overcome these conditions, engineers used sunshades and high-tech cooling columns plunged into embankments to help ensure the ground stays frozen. Moreover, China reached out to Western companies such as Bombardier, GE, and Nortel for the communications network and locomotives capable of hauling at high altitudes. During the inaugural journey that began on July 1, it was impossible to forget the harsh conditions of the high-altitude Himalayan permafrost: “Pens spit ink and packaged foods burst in the low pressure as the Sky Train climbed the 16,640-foot Tanggula Pass. Laptop computers and digital music players failed… Some passengers threw up. Others took Tibetan herbs or breathed oxygen from tubes…”

Certainly, the Chinese innovation is not without its problems. Many Tibetans view the railway as a “Chinese invasion” that will encourage Chinese immigrants to displace the native Tibetan culture. While Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has thus far avoided criticizing the railway, it’s easy to understand the fears of the native Tibetan population. (How would some remote areas of Texas feel about the prospect of new high-speed trains from Mexico crossing the Rio Grande?) Moreover, there are environmental concerns about the train. For example, during the maiden voyage, passengers noticed plastic bags, bottles and cardboard boxes scattered along the tracks.

Anyway, there are great photos of the railway over at Wired magazine as well as a great account of the building of the railway at Fortune magazine. There’s also a brief one-minute video of the railway from Reuters.

Tags: China Tibet railway innovation

[image: Wired]