
Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation - frrp
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21720076-copycats-are-out-innovators-are-shenzhen-hothouse-innovation
======
chaostheory
> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-
> examining.

No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether
Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of
current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation
is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking
rules, disobedience, opposition to the norm

When you demand that your people bow and obey, and imprison people like A1 WW,
this goes against promoting and nurturing innovation

[https://steveblank.com/2012/11/06/entrepreneurs-as-
dissident...](https://steveblank.com/2012/11/06/entrepreneurs-as-dissidents/)

[https://medium.com/@they_made_that/innovations-secret-
ingred...](https://medium.com/@they_made_that/innovations-secret-
ingredient-73da24fdd775)

[http://www.salon.com/2014/10/22/never_before_published_isaac...](http://www.salon.com/2014/10/22/never_before_published_isaac_asimov_essay_reveals_the_secret_to_true_creativity/)

When your culture is very antagonistic towards people who don't like the
status quo and forces them to carefully think about what they say and write,
the culture itself becomes a big obstacle to innovation. When you run garbage
likethe Great Firewall that limits the sharing of information, that's another
strike against innovation. (Of course one way to mitigate the effects of
authoritarian rule is by being really favorable towards immigration from
places with the opposite culture.)

I guess Shenzen is a place that's figuratively where "the mountains are high
and the emperor is far away". I wonder how long before that changes?

~~~
Nokinside
China is not Russian style system where oligarchs close to leader step in and
steal your stuff if you get rich.

China resembles (British) monarchy of the old. There are laws, but they are
not same for the common man and to the noble (60 million members of the
communist party). If you steer away from the politics, you can be entrepreneur
and become rich.

Corruption exists of course, but that's like taxation. You pay your taxes and
bribes. Bribing can sometimes allow more freedoms than completely lawful
society, because it allows more.

China has basically the same bioethical laws as the west, but they are not
enforced because party does not care. China became the first country to
approve the commercial production of a gene therapy.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Rule by law, not rule of law. Once you understand the difference between these
two concepts, you'll understand China a bit better.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's not a particularly clear distinction, care to expand / unpack?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
"Rule by law" is the use of law to control the people. You use laws as
convenient to punish your enemies, but aren't particularly interested in
enforcing laws fairly. It becomes more of the default whenever there is no
independent judiciary to interpret the law, or an independent media to make
sure the government stays honest.

"Rule of law" is the aspiration that we are used to in the west (fair
application of the law, everyone is subject to the law, etc...). It isn't
perfect, we often exist in between the two extremes, but our systems are set
up to at least aspire to it, while the Chinese system self admittedly depends
solely on the wisdom and benevolence of a singular ruling class (in this case,
the top-down CPC).

~~~
Canada
With over a billion people in the country, the highest levels of leadership
can't easily stop the kind of corruption that most businesses are victimized
by: Extortion by local officials. It's like, they walk in to your factory,
claim your fire extinguishers are not regulation, and demand that you buy a
dozen of them from their friend and no one else, and it's going to cost you
50,000 RMB ($7k USD). And if you don't go and get them, right now, then
they're taking the keys to your factory, kicking out all the employees (who
you will still have to pay) and not letting anyone back in until you do. And
it has to be cash. And no, you're not getting a receipt.

Or it will be things like, you order something, it's not delivered even close
to spec, and the corrupt police make you pay for it anyway or else. Contracts
are utterly meaningless. And of course this only starts happening when you
start making money. And they'll know you're making money because the locals
around you are definitely ratting you out and quite possibly in on it.

You need to have the right friends to avoid this, and those kind of friends
cost money.

Our systems aren't perfect, but it's rare we have to put up with shit like
that.

Still, I like it here. The cost of living is reasonable, the weather is good,
it's a big city with lots of entertainment, and a lot of people are here doing
stuff. Being right next to Hong Kong is also a big plus. Biggest downside is
how bad the internet sucks.

~~~
mncharity
> Our systems aren't perfect, but it's rare we have to put up with shit like
> that.

I'd love to see a breakdown of the US economy, sketching which rules apply
where. Including gray and black markets.

When a couple of Boston-NYC gray bus operators went legit, incumbent Greyhound
fought them in various ways, including leveraging corruption in federal law
enforcement. The sole battered survivor had to hire a DC lobbyist.

SpaceX is massively disrupting a large mature industry, while doing no
defensive patenting at all. Apparently relying entirely on something like "you
don't piss off US Senators and DoD".

There's a lot of fascinating texture to how the US economy is structured, but
I've never seen a broadly scoped and roughly quantitative sketch.

~~~
greglindahl
SpaceX patenting ITAR-covered technology is a landmine of problems.

------
tmoreton
WIRED UK did a great job going into more detail on Shenzhen, highly recommend
watching the documentary.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY&t=8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY&t=8s)

~~~
SexyCyborg
Wired doc is good in parts- there is no local "Maker culture" unless you
invent a new use of the word.

------
gjkood
I was in Shenzhen a few months back for the first time. I can only describe it
as Disneyland for electronics enthusiasts.

Going into all the specialized malls in Huaqiang Bei and seeing the entire
supply chain in one building is amazing.

Highly recommend that people interested in electronics hardware make a visit.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I've been reading Bunny's "The Hardware Hacker" and it does make me want to
visit.

What I find particularly fascinating is that it provides powerful evidence
that 'open' is innovative and 'closed' is stifling.

Early on in the tech business everything was 'open'. The IBM PC published the
source code to the BIOS in its technical manual, Intel and Motorola documented
all of the options on their chips and how to program them, early programmable
logic (PALs and PLDs) were easy to program with available documentation.

As a result lots of people built a wide variety of devices and systems using
those parts, and that supported (in the Bay Area at least) dozens of circuit
board houses, small run manufacturers, fastener companies, assembly houses,
and parts distributors.

Starting with 3D accelerator chips, documentation became locked up behind NDA
walls, access to small quantities was nearly impossible, and it became harder
and harder to build something out of off the shelf parts. Designers and
inventors were held back, their reduced demand for services put pressure on
the rest of the ecosystem and the vibrant economy around building hardware
crashed and burned. The biggest loss was perhaps the small boutique chip
houses that made interesting parts with a bit of this and a bit of that.

Reading Bunny's book and the economist's article it seems that a combination
of "Gongkai" and many different small factories has created this environment
in Shenzen. That is a good thing and bodes well for the future growth of the
area (assuming it isn't crushed by the powers that be). I'd love to figure out
how to rekindle that here in the Bay Area.

~~~
gjkood
Actually, buying Bunnie's "The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen" [1]
was what motivated me to make the trip. I was motivated enough to spent 7+
months learning basic Mandarin before making the trip. Not to mention the
WIRED videos on Shenzhen featuring Bunnie [2].

Learning the Mandarin number system made negotiating prices a breeze.

I just got the Hardware Hacker a month or so ago. Great read.

[1] [https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/the-essential-
gui...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/the-essential-guide-to-
electronics-in-shenzhen)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp6F_ApUq-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp6F_ApUq-c)

~~~
blacksmythe

      >> I was motivated enough to spent 7+ months learning basic Mandarin
    

That is impressive.

I have tried learning Mandarin, and found that in the same amount of time that
you could be communicating (at a very basic level) in another language (even
one considered 'hard' like Japanese), with Mandarin I am still trying to get
tones right.

~~~
contingencies
Tones are hard but far less important than people make out. If you can copy
someone else's sound, you will eventually just get tones right automatically.
This is how Chinese learn. There's no need to learn them formally. (Source: 16
years, native English speaker, fluent Mandarin, some capacity with multiple
tonal languages + dialects)

~~~
blacksmythe
What was your path to getting started?

(from beginner to being able to make basic conversation)

~~~
contingencies
Alcohol.

------
Fricken
I'm so impressed with Shenzen, but there's nothing shocking about it. I've
been following China's rise up the value chain since the late 90's. It is
steady, predictable, and inexorable. They're not done yet. If America doesn't
get serious about invigorating it's high tech manufacturing ecosystem, so we
have the talent and supply chain needed to stay competitive innovating in the
world of atoms they way we do with bits, we're gonna have a bad time... if we
aren't already. (Here's looking at you, GoPro)

~~~
yourapostasy
> If America doesn't get serious about invigorating it's high tech
> manufacturing ecosystem, so we have the talent and supply chain needed to
> stay competitive innovating in the world of atoms they way we do with bits,
> we're gonna have a bad time... if we aren't already.

I'm convinced sufficiently that America has lost enough of that ecosystem and
will continue the erosion trend enough for the foreseeable future that I'm
giving serious consideration to physically moving closer to China if not
establish physical residency there, a possibility that was unthinkable only 10
years ago. I don't think China will stop at atoms, and challenging US
dominance in bits over the coming decades is no longer fanciful; maybe not in
my generation, but perhaps my grandchildren's. The value-over-time delivered
from "owning" an ecosystem was and is vastly underestimated by most US
business leadership that is simplistically yield-chasing (focusing on ever-
larger margins). Ownership in this context is the ability to iteratively turn
around half-baked ideas into fully-executed forms cheaper and quicker than
sourcing from an ecosystem where the local ecosystem's embedded culture (both
socially and professionally), primary language, lingo, nuances, time
difference, _etc._ , add up to a significant edge.

What I'm increasingly seeing is ever-more fragile design cycles in the US,
with an emphasis upon getting it right as far up front as possible (leading to
highly dysfunctional organizational behaviors arising from the gaming of the
metrics around "getting it right"), and tossing the design over the fence to
the "lower value rungs". There doesn't seem to be an awareness that
continuous, small feedback loops built around fast iterations are an excellent
method to break up complexity of an effort too large for one person or even
one small team to load into working memory all at once. I even see this a lot
in commercial sector "agile" software development efforts, where even if there
is some feature/area that is completely _terra incognita_ to the team, there
is little to no accommodation made to set aside generous time to perform
discovery, experimentation, and trialing.

The focus upon ever-larger margins leads to value-ladder-justifications like
ditching PC manufacturing, then wondering why your sales team all of the
sudden can no longer organically find opportunities like they did before.
Those PC's might have had "terrible" margins, but they were a built-in excuse
for on-the-ball sales teams to uncover opportunities for cross- and up-sells
of other products/services while discussing the latest PC refresh, for
example. All that discussion that flows from those "low value" goods? The
Chinese and Indian firms hold them now, and based upon what I'm seeing in the
field, they know what they hold in their hands and they're inexorably
leveraging those opportunities.

------
SexyCyborg
Ok, I'm probably more engaged in discussing and promoting Shenzhen with
Westerners in English than any other Shenzhen resident. I'm a Hackaday
contributor, tweet and vblog about it with more followers than any other
local, all that. I'm also the most prolific Maker as Westerners tend to define
"Maker" in Shenzhen, maybe China. No, I'm not bragging, check around.

>Shenzhen has only a handful of lacklustre institutions of higher learning

Shenzhen University- while not Tsinghua, it well regarded and it's graduates
are quickly hired by local tech companies.

>Shenzhen spends over 4% of its GDP on research and development (R&D), double
the mainland average; in Nanshan the share is over 6%.

This is true "on the ground" and it shows- I live in Nanshan High Tech Park
right in the center of this. The amount of money local government and local
companies are putting into innovation is staggering.

>Most of the money comes from private firms. Companies in Shenzhen file more
international patents

Lots of these are questionable. There are financial incentives for the number
of patents filed. Goodhart's law applies in China like no place else.
Likewise- you can get grants and tax breaks opening a Makerspace, so we have
over 600. In reality nearly all of these are empty offices.

>He insists this could not have been done even in Silicon Valley, because
California cannot match Shenzhen’s ecosystem of “makers”.

Shenzhen has no Makers, and no Maker culture. We have one, maybe two
Makerspaces in the Western tradition and their focus is almost entirely on
kids classes. There are huge obstacles to actually building an authentic Maker
Culture in China which we have been unable to overcome. As a result- the same
factory bosses and businessmen we've always had, are now called "Makers".
People who actually do technical things- let along things with their own hands
are still called engineers and still very much looked down on.

We have large, fantastically equipped Makerspaces- these are about as real as
a North Korean fruit stand. They are part of the local cargo cult mentality
and purely for face. It is common here to have a huge, privately catered
"Maker Meetup" of hundreds of people- and not a single person in the room will
have ever fabricated anything with their own two hands. They are also quite
proud of this.

Yes- some tremendous innovation occurring here and it's a fantastic place for
hardware. No- very little authentic Maker culture and very little interest in
actually fostering it.

~~~
che_shirecat
the seed for a lively Maker culture is there though and I think that's where
the article got it mostly right. shenzhen's unique access to a cornucopia of
the world's hardware is bound to prompt more open minds to start tinkering and
hacking than somewhere else where that sort of organic community growth would
have never even taken root. There are definitely limitations - social stigma
as you mentioned, a culture that worships the tried and true road to social
ladder climbing (good test scores -> good university -> good job -> ??) and
looks down on anything else. But then again, that's the whole cyberpunk dream
right? it's the losers and the weirdos and the nerds of society that will have
outsized impact in our high-tech future. and if any city is destined to be the
cyberpunk mecca of 2050, it's shenzhen. love your stuff by the way, you're
probably the first exposure alot of westerners have to the Shenzhen scene on
reddit and other sites. have you lived in the US? always been curious where
you picked up your fluency in english and western culture

~~~
SexyCyborg
>love your stuff by the way, you're probably the first exposure alot of
westerners have to the Shenzhen scene on reddit and other sites.

Thanks!

>have you lived in the US? always been curious where you picked up your
fluency in english and western culture

No, never been to the West I'm entirely locally educated. When I first posted
on Reddit I just tried to reply to everyone- and I was usually on my phone so
my English was very careless. After a while I realized my "chat Chinglish"
really made it hard for people to take me seriously. I slowed down, started
using my computer, Grammerly is a huge help but for important stuff like the
above post or my Hackaday article there's a small group of overseas educated
friends that help me proofread my posts. I make all my stuff and document it
all carefully on video, but you'll see regular disclaimers when my English has
been polished for readability (but not content).

------
Animats
The "maker movement" is alive in Shentzen, but mostly dead in Silicon Valley.
TechShop is mostly crafters, not people building anything innovative. Hacker
Dojo is appslaves. If there's a maker space in Silicon Valley with a pick and
place machine, I can't find it.

~~~
leggomylibro
This is also true in Seattle. The "makerspaces" here are incapable of working
with anything beyond PLA. There are some cool tool libraries, which can be
useful for larger hardware projects, but there seems to be very little in the
way of true hackerspaces. If you want to get into EE or circuitry in the US,
there are plenty of good online resources, but you will be at a severe
disadvantage to people living in parts of the world with active maker
communities.

But I think there's a reason for that. Innovation faces a steep uphill climb
in the USA.

1\. I have a cool idea, but I don't have the capital to bootstrap it right
away. No problem, I can work and draw a wage while doing my research on the
side, right? Nope! This is America, and your employer likely claims to own
everything that you create or think of, on or off the clock.

2\. I have a cool idea, and want to play around with it even though I could
use some help with some basic concepts. Well that's great, but I'm on my own.
There are no incubators that specialize in electronics or circuitry, no groups
of experienced hardware hackers to mentor newcomers, and no specialized
training or local resources. You also cannot source circuit components locally
when most cities seem to lack a single hobby shop. Often if you want to find
out if a circuit will work, you need to wait a whole week for new parts, if
you're lucky and can find them from a stateside retailer at a reasonable
price.

3\. You might think that academic institutions would make themselves available
to their surrounding communities, offering night classes and/or access to
facilities like machine shops or lab equipment which are typically beyond the
reach of an individual. You would be wrong; this is America, and if you don't
pay full tuition, you can fuck right off.

~~~
icelancer
>This is also true in Seattle

Especially with Metrix:Create completely abandoning hackerspacedom for blah
structure. Extremely sad.

~~~
leggomylibro
Metrix:Create...is that the place in Cap Hill with a laser cutter, poor
lighting, unsupervised live-in children, a few tool drawers, a plastic mill,
and a couple of 3D printers? Yeah, that place isn't even worth walking to when
you're in the neighborhood. Surprised they're still in business.

~~~
icelancer
Pretty much. What made it good was the open lab space and gathering area, then
people would consume other services. I know I sure did when I was
bootstrapping my startup.

The psuedo live-in children thing was kinda weird now that you mention it...

------
faragon
Despite the politics, and crazy economics, China future looks amazing, because
of the huge of human potential. If I were 20 years younger, and having the
possibility of an interesting job in software programming, I would go to
Shanghai or Shenzen.

~~~
devy
> China future looks amazing, because of the huge of human potential.

I grew up in China and spent half of my life there before immigrated in the
states while I was in college. Being bilingual and keeping an close eye on the
start-up focused medias from both countries, I totally concur. And it's
increasing clear to me that Silicon Delta[1][2] suppressing Silicon Valley is
very probable. And Shenzhen is at the heart of it.

I am approaching 40, but if there is an interesting opportunity I would give
Shenzhen calling a shot for sure.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_River_Delta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_River_Delta)

[2]: [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/china-
pearl-r...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/china-pearl-river-
delta-overtake-tokyo-world-largest-megacity-urban-area)

------
imjustsaying
wake me up when connections to non-Chinese servers (the vast majority of them)
don't time out half the time, or connections to neighbors like HK and
Singapore don't do crazy routing through Beijing, to America, to HK/Singapore
and back instead of directly to HK/Singapore, or numerous key websites aren't
outright blocked

>lived in Shenzhen, the internets are broken and everybody knows it

~~~
contingencies
It's not nearly so bad in Shenzhen as it is in some more remote parts of
China. In Shenzhen, you can get around it in many ways, eg. HK phone with data
roaming.

------
anubisresources
Shenzhen has to be one of my favorite cities. If you're at all interested in
manufacturing or supply chain management you have to go to Shenzhen sometime
and check out Huaqiangbei

------
0xCMP
I've always wanted to visit Shenzhen. Ever since I studied it in a required
elective in college ("Design the City") I've admired it.

sn: Sometimes the required but irrelevant/"easy" classes do provide some
value. Anyone in college should remember that you need to expand your mind a
bit too and sometimes take these stupid classes seriously enough to get
something out of them.

------
HillaryBriss
_Getting from early-stage research to manufactured product would require a
massive amount of what he calls integrated innovation: “Materials, process,
device design, circuit design—all needed to be innovated…if you changed one
material, you had to change the process.” His team had to develop entirely new
materials and factory tools, including custom-built robots, to make his
screens, accumulating over 600 patents along the way. He insists this could
not have been done even in Silicon Valley, because California cannot match
Shenzhen’s ecosystem of “makers”._

This phenomenon has been under appreciated by the macroeconomists guiding the
US. If the people with the expertise, their factories, their suppliers - the
whole chain -- migrate to places far outside the US, then something extremely
important is lost.

And favorable exchange rates plus container ship globalization is not enough
to get that something back.

------
csense
What would it take to create a Shenzen in the US, say, to economically
revitalize a Rust Belt industrial center that's near rock-bottom after decades
of decline? I'm, uh...asking for a friend... :)

------
kqr2
Dangerous Prototypes used to host Hacker Camp Tours of Shenzhen:

[http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/category/hacker-camp-
she...](http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/category/hacker-camp-shenzhen/)

Does anyone know if there is something similar that is still going on?

~~~
adammunich
Ask Mitch Altman

------
contingencies
Anyone keen on working in Shenzhen, please review our recent _Who 's Hiring?_
post at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14029295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14029295)

(We are currently relocating to Shenzhen from elsewhere in China.)

------
finid
_“order is important in the market.” But one of the local speakers livened
things up by delivering a surprisingly stout defence of disruptive
innovation._

Order and disruptive innovation are not necessarily mutually exclusive. What
happened to ordered disruptive innovation?

------
draw_down
For those unfamiliar, what sort of companies, products, etc has this
innovative scene fostered?

~~~
bcohen5055
If it's made in China and involves electronics it probably involves Shenzen

------
jaffaq
I lived there for a couple of months in 2014. Amazing city, even outside of
the hacker world. The locals are very friendly and there's a great expat
community too. I would love to go back.

------
diefunction
Every time there is good aspect about China, people in HN have to talk about
Government. 4Q !

