| |
Shop
| |  |
|
Best Sellers | | |  | |  | | | Silicon Dragon: How China Is Winning the Tech Race | | SKU:
| | Availability:
Usually ships in 1 business days | | | In her brisk and flattering analysis of China's charge into the high-tech market, Fannin spotlights 12 Eastern technopreneurs who are giving Silicon Valley mainstays a run for their money. Identifying her profile subjects the next Thomas Edison or the next Rupert Murdoch, and their companies as MySpace China and the like, the former Red Herring news editor supports her observational thesis with data and anecdotes from a variety of Western and Eastern CEOs, professors and financial analysts. Drawing parallels between the Middle Kingdom's growth and the height of the dot-com bubble, Fannin also takes care to note that most of her China-born sea turtles' were educated in the West, but returned to their homeland to take advantage of growing markets there. If anything, her writing overly praises Chinese entrepreneurships' reach in the world, choosing to gloss over negative statistics and paying controversial social issues—such as censorship of China's Internet sites—mere lip service. Overall, Fannin is best at tracing her subject's mostly humble beginnings through Mao's Cultural Revolution to the self-made Internet era as the tech world searches for the next Bill Gates. Given the sheer number of Chinese expected to be alive in the next decade, new media moguls (and profitable IPOs) are inevitable. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. | | | |
List Price:
| $24.95 | |
Our Price:
| $16.47
& eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
| |
You Save:
| $8.48 (34%)
|
| | |
|
| | Product Details | | Author: | Rebecca Fannin | | Hardcover: | 300 pages | | Publisher: | McGraw-Hill | | Publication Date: | January 18, 2008 | | ISBN: | 0071494472 | | Package Length: | 9.13 inches | | Package Width: | 6.14 inches | | Package Height: | 0.87 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.01 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 11 reviews |
| |
| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
 Required Reading Aug 19, 2008
Increasing numbers of Western observers, not to mention the Chinese themselves, are coming to realize that Chinese models of innovation and management may eventually drive competitive advantage beyond the home court. It's old news that China has the lead in manufacturing, but what about technology? More specifically, growing technology-based businesses to scale has been the trump card of the U.S. economy for decades. So why are Silicon Valley venture capitalists betting more each year on Chinese tech businesses? Rebecca Fannin's Silicon Dragons is a smoothly written, handy guide to the "who, what, when, where and why" of high profile Chinese tech companies, and an inside look at both the American investors who back them, and the role that American models, education, and capital continue to play in China's development. It's also required reading for anyone who needs to understand Chinese business culture, and why it fosters such nimble, ambitious and technically expert enterprises.
 Flight of the Silicon Dargon Aug 07, 2008
Every journalist dreams of writing a book and Silicon Dragon (McGraw- Hill, $24.95) is Rebecca Fannin's. She interviews a dozen of China's most successful entrepreneurs and builds a book around her profiles of their roads to success. These are some of China's movers and shakers in the high tech industry, especially in Internet and wireless communication sectors. All of them are well known inside China but most are relatively unknown to the West. By describing and analyzing the keys to their success, Fannin has provided some lessons learned that are useful to anyone contemplating doing business in China.
As readers go through the 150 pages of easy to read text, they find certain common themes. The first lesson is that a proven business model from the U.S. does not guarantee success in China. Whether it's Alibaba vs. eBay, Dangdang vs. Amazon or Baidu vs. Google, the local version has first mover advantage and can move quickly to localize the business model to ensure acceptance in China.
The established American competitors initially focused on their U.S. market and paid no attention to China. By the time they are ready for China, they attempt to leapfrog via acquisition of a local company. They then make the mistake of replacing the Chinese management team with culturally deaf and dumb managers from home or even move the headquarters back to the U.S. Thus they further handcuff themselves by removing the ability to react quickly to a fast changing market. The book offers many other gems on rules of conduct in China that readers will find useful.
Alas, the subtitle of this book: "How China is Winning the Tech Race" is unfortunately misleading. With the possible exception of the last chapter on possible technological breakthrough on light emitting diodes based on silicon, other chapters depict no threat of world leading edge, technical breakthroughs. Even the LED development with its vast potential to revolutionize the lighting of the world is at the pre-commercial stage. All the other chapters describe clever, hard working entrepreneurs that have basically improved upon something that already existed.
My personal view of where China will make a world leading edge, technology breakthrough is to look in life sciences and not in electronics. My reason is that China has been investing heavily in R&D. In such cases as stem cell therapy, researchers in China do not have the school of intelligent design as competitor for funding.
Regrettably, this book exhibits too much rush to publish and could have improved its quality with a bit of fact checking and editing. For example, the book says "China accounts for 24% of world production of semiconductors." This is not true. China accounts for 24% of consumption but barely produces one fifth of what they consume. Albert Yu is described as "now-retired programmer" at Intel. His actual last position was Senior Vice President in charge of Intel's microprocessor development. The two top foundries in Taiwan are identified as Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronics Corp. UMC is correct but the other, by far the largest and best known in the business is TSMC, where T stands for Taiwan.
Blemishes like those listed above, and there were others, are reasons why I deducted one star in my rating of otherwise an useful case study sort of business book.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Get behind the scenes on the next wave of innovation Jun 04, 2008
Having not only read the book, but having had the pleasure of seeing Ms. Fannin speak on the topics she covers in this book I can attest that her insights are both unique and compelling for anyone seeking to understand what is happening "on the ground" in China. Her journalism experience shines through quite clearly as this is a well-structured, well supported view into the behind the scenes of the digital innovation / entrepreneurship wave in China. I would strongly suggest picking this up if the subject matter is of interest, you'll be happy you did.
Pioneering Effort Apr 02, 2008
Rebecca does a great job capturing the flavor of (largely web) entrepreneurship in China today. This first (or second, depending on perspective) generation of public market aware tech entrepreneurs is breaking ground much like the wave of folks who did the same in the US tech industry in the '70s after Steve Jobs and Apple made it every tecchie teenager's dream to build a company. Like the PC industry in the 70's the world revolved around larger than life entrepreneurs. Some how ultimately made it big, others who failed, and some who failed then came back. She's identified all of the above and captured their essence in her book; now we just have to wait and see how it plays out for everyone!!
0 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Must read on the future of tech industries Mar 05, 2008
This is a must read for anyone interested in the future of tech industries, both in China and around the world. In recent years, China has not only emerged as a major producer of consumer electronics; it is also developing a huge internal market for digital services and electronic gear. It already has more Internet and mobile phone users than any other country and will soon have more broadband, high speed internet subscribers than any other market. It is rapidly digitizing its cable TV sector, which already has over 120 million subs, more than any other market and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a fiber infrastructure. Fannin has traveled widely throughout the Asia Pacific region for years and has long produced insightful journalism on China's growth into a tech powerhouse. Drawing on her extensive contacts in a way few Western journalists can, Fannin provides an fly on the wall look at the entrepreneurs and the money men who are seeking to capitalize on a burgeoning domestic Chinese market that is growing at double digit rates.
| |
| |
| |  | |  |
|
| You may also like ... |
