Can Asians be creative?

• Main Authors: CHUA, Roy Y. J., ZREMSKI, Jerry
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2016
• Subjects: Culture; Asia; Creativity; Cultural Tightness; Asian Studies; Human Resources Management
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5003; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/6002/viewcontent/10.Creative_Asians.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

A crotchety American named Henry Ford invented a modern, fast and efficient way to manufacture automobiles and a Japanese man named Eiji Toyoda refined and perfected it. A series of innovators across the western world developed the television - and the tech specialists at Sony, Toshiba and a host of other Asian companies found ways to make TVs better, cheaper, faster. And an idiosyncratic Californian named Steve Jobs invented a company that made a smart phone for the masses - and then outsourced the manufacturing to China. If you detect a pattern here, you are not alone. Asia may be the home of some of the world’s hottest economies, but it is not the home of the world’s hottest inventions. Although Asia has been innovating, its innovations tend to be incremental, lacking global reach and impact. Admittedly, there have been some Asian breakthroughs from time to time (e.g., Chinese scientist Tu Youyou won the 2015 Nobel prize for medicine for her discovery of artemisinin and its treatment of malaria), but these are more exceptions than the norm.