Good Reads: What China can learn about innovation from Skype and Steve Jobs

Why do some societies rise and others fall? Today's must reads watch the rise of authoritarian societies like China, and the loose, question-everything innovation of Skype and Steve Jobs.

Fans of the author Jared Diamond ? author of those books about why certain societies rise and others fail, including ?Guns, Germs, and Steel? and ?Collapse? ? will find a lot to enjoy in today?s Good Reads.

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First up is The Christian Science Monitor?s own Peter Ford, who wrote an insightful cover story in the Monitor?s weekly called ?What does China want???

China, of course, is the nation everyone is watching as the next global economic superpower.

But while China?s penchant for supporting dictators and its rising economic clout in the developing world are both seen as worrisome signs by many Western diplomats, Mr. Ford writes that ?most China watchers in the West agree. What China wants is pretty straightforward and unexceptionable: to be prosperous, secure, and respected.?

"We'd like to be an equal partner on the world stage, and we want the Chinese people to enjoy prosperity," says Wu Jianmin, a former ambassador to Paris and now an adviser to the Foreign Ministry. "For that, international cooperation is indispensable; China is not so arrogant as to say that it's our turn now to run the world our way."?

Ultimately, societies that succeed do so because of innovation, and innovation can crop up anywhere there are educated people living in an environment that allows them to question the status quo and come up with invention.

For Richard Orange, a writer for Global Post, one of the world?s most exciting centers of innovation is Sweden, the land that brought us Skype, and Spotify, and yes, ABBA.

Why would a country of 9 million people on the fringes of Europe become the next Silicon Valley? The answer seems to be a mixture of high literacy, a strong high-tech corporate base, and sound government policies. Pushed by Internet entrepreneurs, Sweden became the first country in Europe to roll out a government initiative to allow Swedes to buy tax-free home computers, and to give them access to broadband services nationwide. The result was a high-tech boom, or as ABBA would have sung, ?money, money, money?.?

"The Nordics generally, and Sweden in particular, are a very vibrant market for venture capitalists," said Ben Holmes, from the London office of Switzerland?s Index Ventures. "The chasm between geeks and marketers doesn?t exist so much in Sweden,? said Holmes, ?so they have quite productive teams."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Xj9v9TSccY8/Good-Reads-What-China-can-learn-about-innovation-from-Skype-and-Steve-Jobs

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