A doom scenario for all innovation policy makers in Europe and USA is the rise of China (and India, and other emerging countries) as a leader in innovation. In all benchmarking studies (see previous post) the performance of countries or Europe as a whole is measured against each other and we tell each other that we have to intensify our efforts in innovation in order not to loose the competition against China and India. But why again are we afraid? What is the danger in several billion of people escaping poverty and getting good education, access to innovation tools like computers, internet, phones. I would like to see that as a gigantic pool of potential clients, collaborators and great ingenious variety of ideas and enough smart people to execute these ideas. Exactly what we need when we face the 'grand societal challenges' I therefore love the following quote from Ezra Klein in the Washington Post made today (link to article):
"People often worry about what will happen if China becomes as innovative and technologically capable as we are. I think it makes a lot more sense to worry about what happens if they don't."
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