China is pushing innovation. It wants to move on from the ‘made in China’ phase to the ‘designed in China’ and ‘invented in China’ phase. To see if Shanghai is moving in the right direction it has developed a creativity index.
China Daily wrote an article about it entitled Creating a Clever Country.
“By combining industrial scale, research and development, cultural environment, human resources and social environment into a comprehensive measure, the new index aims to reflect the overall development of industrial businesses in this metropolis.
Mainly thanks to rapid growth in research and development investment, Shanghai’s creativity index increased to 109.1 in 2005 from 100 in 2004, the benchmark year. Since design and development is crucial to creative businesses like music, film, design, television and publishing industries, the enhanced capacity of innovation indicates that Shanghai will likely be able to better bolster its creative economy.“
Innovation however is a very complex matter. If Shanghai wants to be a magnet for innovation it needs to be open and treasure diversity and different opinions, have a good working climate, which does not equal to eternal smog or water poisoning.
What is lacking in the index, however, is an intellectual property protection and enforcement component. Real innovation can prosper when it is protected and when it can be effectively enforced.
Read China Daily’s article here.
