Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation Is Disrupting Global Competition
Starred Review.According to business professors Zeng (of Cheung Kong Graduate School in China) and Williamson (of INSEAD in Fontainebleau and Singapore), the slogan of the China International Marine Container Group, "Learn, Improve, Disrupt," could just as easily apply to any such Chinese corporation, each of whom are busy using those principles to reinvent manufacturing, with global consequences. The authors reveal that low labor costs are only one advantage enjoyed by Chinese companies, and that the "three faces" of cost innovation (offering high technology at low cost, a near-impossible range of choice, and "speciality products" at volume prices) have given them impressive inroads to markets long assumed impenetrable. This is sobering reading for Western audiences; while the authors avoid the alarms that sound throughout many current business books on China, their dry, factual approach may prove even more unnerving. Though it may paint a disturbing portrait of a competitor formidable even in its infancy, the anecdotes and analysis this volume brings to light are bound to inspire anyone serious about global business or politics today.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.