Max von Zedtwitz, a director and professor at Peking University raised the question whether China will adaopt open innovation as we start to see in the Western world.

Based on several visits and talks/workshops in China, it is my experience that Chinese companies has a steep learning curve to climb in order to understand – and execute – innovation. The good thing is that they have the will to make the effort and they learn quite fast.

The question made me draw a line to Africa. For years, the Western world looked at their almost non-existing telecommunication infrastructure thinking they will never catch up. However, they were able to skip a lot of steps and move directly to a wireless setup. Now the future looks a lot brighter.

The analogy here is that many Chinese companies can learn from the best in the West, adapt to their own culture and then execute on and harvest through one of the key elements in the future of innovation; open innovation.