What can I say about a society whose 25% of the population can't read or write?
If it happens in S/F, then it is happening in the U.S. We can look at cities like Oakland, Compton, Richmond where their education system is falling apart.
Back to the original topic, ask yourself this question, how many people are really doing something innovative? ... Are you?
The gap between the elite and the poor shrinks when the kids of the working class does not concentrate on education but on being entertained.
Bottom line: At the end, "the elite" prevails over the masses of "the poor". "The Smarts" takes from the Elite. How many people do you know belong to the group of "Innovative Smarts"?
///
Moving up the chain
MALAYSIA WANTS RESEARCH, ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY WORK
Mercury News
When Silicon Valley firms talk these days about competing with China, they stress ``moving up the value chain'' -- focusing on complex innovation rather than on simple manufacturing alone.
They're not the only ones.
Just as Asian upstarts rapidly adopted the valley's earlier manufacturing ethos, they are now starting to appropriate this latest prescription for competitiveness.
Take Malaysia.
The humid, Southeast Asian nation boasts a population about the same size as California's and was once best known for its production of rubber and tin, not for its multimedia research corridor and science parks. Now Malaysia is touting itself as the perfect site for U.S firms to locate research centers delving into information sciences and biotechnology, as was apparent when a delegation of trade officials and business executives from Kuala Lumpur recently came to Silicon Valley to troll for new sources of foreign investment.
No longer, say Malaysian officials, are they seeking investment in the humdrum assembly lines and simple packaging facilities designed to take advantage of low-wage labor, because even the Malaysians can no longer compete with the low wages Chinese factories pay. Instead, like Silicon Valley's own leaders, Kuala Lumpur's business executives and government officials want to induce the cutting-edge industries designing the future to set up their newest think tanks and laboratories in Malaysia.
The result is likely to be even more pressure on Silicon Valley to innovate to remain competitive.
``We don't seek labor-intensive manufacturing any more, but those with higher value added,'' Rafidah Aziz, Malaysia's Minister of International Trade and Industry, said in an interview. She said Malaysia doesn't have ``the raw numbers'' to compete with the billions in China and India for basic manufacturing or back-office services, but prefers to recruit firms who want to work in nanotechnology, photonics and more advanced fields of information technology.
When it comes to big-ticket investment, ``China is a black hole,'' she added.
`Niche strategy'
That's why Malaysia has now begun to develop its own ``niche strategy,'' designed to attract a greater flow of sophisticated U.S. firms to invest and build new facilities in their nation, rather than in Shanghai or Bangalore.
Indeed, even Malaysia is now having to reposition itself in the more capital-intensive, knowledge-intensive industries, explained Thomas Finn, a management consultant based in San Anselmo who consults for the Malaysian Industrial Development Authority. The group sponsored the recent seminar at the Santa Clara Marriott Hotel, which drew more than 150 listeners.
``China has undercut everybody,'' in labor-intensive manufacturing, he added. ``Malaysia is not the bargain it once was.''
Instead, officials now tout Malaysia as a gateway to duty-free trade within ASEAN, the 10-member grouping that includes 550 million people in such Asian nations as Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, as well as Australia and New Zealand, and offers nearly $800 billion in annual economic output.
They also suggest that Malaysia's influential Chinese community, which tends to lead in most business sectors, can help foreign firms expand their factories and exports into Greater China. Malaysia's strategy is to complement rather than compete with China, given the cultural and economic links between them, Finn said.
That doesn't rule out the occasional subtle dig at China. Aziz, the trade minister, says she doesn't ``like to talk badly about other nations.'' But she is eager to note that many factory owners in China are plagued by frequent brownouts because of rampant energy shortages and by the rapid turnover of employees, who depart for new employers offering an extra $10 per week. ``Our workers are much more stable,'' she said.
She also insisted there are no ``hidden costs'' to doing business in Malaysia. Foreign business owners find themselves subject to fraud and bribery when setting up operations in China.
Two decades ago, Malaysian cities like Penang drew major investments from Silicon Valley firms like hard-drive manufacturers Seagate, Komag and Connor Peripherals and chip makers Intel and AMD, who conducted assembly and testing for memory chips. Agilent, the former test and measurement division of Hewlett-Packard, continues to have a major investment there.
Fremont company
Today, firms like Smart Modular Technologies are in Malaysia. The Fremont-based maker of memory cards and flash memories uses its Penang facility, established in 1998, to ship for export to Europe and the United States. It also uses the factory to train the managers who operate Smart's first factory in Southern China, which produces memory chips for the fast-growing Chinese market.
``We have no expatriates running our Malaysian facilities,'' said Jack Pacheco, vice president and chief financial officer for Smart. ``There's no language barrier.''
The Malaysian workforce speaks fluent English and the company feels comfortable that its intellectual property will be protected, whereas theft is sometimes a major concern among high-tech firms operating inside Mainland China.
Executives attending the trade event, from large firms like Cypress Semiconductor and Google to small software start-ups, were interested to learn more about Malaysia's potential. Some expressed concern that the 40,000 engineers the nation produces each year are not enough to compete against India and China. Others said while they continued to be intrigued by the prospects of a booming China, they were reluctant to put all their Asian investments in a single basket.
But whatever success Malaysia achieves in attracting research and development opportunities will create more competition for Silicon Valley.
``If you talk to Agilent they'll tell you that almost all their design work is now done in Penang using home-grown Malaysian engineering talent,'' Finn said. ``I don't know what that bodes for the valley . . . but it puts a lot of pressure on people to create new innovation.''
Agilent spokesman Jeff Weber notes the Penang plant has begun designing new, less sophisticated test and measurement devices that can be targeted to users in China and other less-developed nations.
``We have started doing some design work there,'' he said of the Penang plant, while emphasizing that this does not represent a ``shift of work'' from U.S. facilities.
Statistics compiled by Malaysia's branch of the American Electronic Industry association estimate that $178 million of design and development work was carried out in Malaysia last year. That number is forecast to exceed $260 million this year, Aziz said.
------
More technology news and opinion at www.siliconvalley.com
Michael Zielenziger can be reached at mzielenziger@mercurynews.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment