A Chinese firm is currently designing a rough equivalent of the iPad, Apple's smash-hit tablet computer. The Chinese version is expected to retail for about $80, or a fifth of the iPad's $499 base price at launch. A European carmaker is also midway through a new design -- for vehicles targeting several emerging markets. The company is borrowing design features and manufacturing ideas from its joint venture partner in India. And Fiat Brazil's Fiat Mio, an urban-targeted compact car, is being designed in Brazil for global markets.
Product development efforts at these three companies underline an accelerating trend of sourcing innovation from within mostly large, rapidly developing economies for end users in home markets, but also for export, including to the developed world. Once viewed as low-cost copycats, companies from China, India and Brazil are moving up the value chain, creating innovative products with global appeal. Ignore them at your own peril -- especially as a new "two-speed" world emerges. This duality is characterized by high incomes but slow GDP growth in the developed countries of Western Europe, the U.S. and Japan; and explosive GDP growth but low household incomes in rapidly developing economies -- most notably China, India and Brazil. This parallel dynamic is likely to continue for years. In this article, experts from Wharton and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) look at the importance of innovation as a source of competitive advantage in this two-speed world.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Innovation -- the New Two-way Play - Knowledge@Wharton
