Is Apple one of the most innovative companies in the world? Most people would think so (so-so iPhone 5 specs notwithstanding). Google? Ditto. Baidu? Sure. Tencent? You know jack about Chinese companies if you don’t think so. All these companies made the recently published Forbes’ “The World’s Most Innovative Companies.” The authors of this study, Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, based the rankings on what they called, innovative premium, which they detailed in their book, “The Innovator’s DNA” (co-authored with Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen). Read more…
Following segment is a profile by CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout on Baidu CFO, Jennifer Li. Her advice? “Gender is not a factor when it comes to success.. it’s your attitude towards work.” That’s obviously applicable to both men and women. If you think about it, that’d be applicable to race, age, or whatever color and stripe you fancy yourself. China will have her share of Baidu’s and Huawei’s. For young Chinese who aspire to great heights, there will bound to be more captains of industry like Li to model after.
Some might wonder how is it possible that Google still commands about 15-20% search market share in China despite its google.cn service essentially shut down there. The reason is because many Chinese netizens, 450 million and growing, are still using google.com for English language searches. Actually, according to Analysys International, a Beijing market research firm, Google enjoys 19.2% in revenue share in China versus Baidu’s 75.8%. For this reason, Baidu and Microsoft have just announced combining efforts to take on Google on that market segment. Read more…
In early May, China announced a smoking ban in public places and I expressed some pessimism in how fast this will truly take effect. Later, I found a reason to be optimistic. When I saw this news of Robin Li and Bill Gates agreeing to work together between the Baidu Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for “Say No to Involuntary Smoking” in China, I became ecstatic.
This was just an announcement, so I need to wait and see, and will be looking forward to the foundations work reports in the coming years.
I rarely get very excited about new technologies, because most new technologies from large corporations are seemingly a lot of reshuffling and repackaging of old things, and sometimes a bunch of bug fixes long over due.
But Baidu’s 3D game-like pixelated 3D Map (map.baidu.com) of Chinese Cities has to be one of the coolest things I have seen in years. Much better than the 3D maps on Google, which are really just 2D maps plus some incomplete CAD drawing looking renderings. Gizmodo dubs it:
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