China's young, hyper-adaptive population is its secret weapon for fast innovation.

In the 30 years from 1990 through 2019, the per-capita GDP growth in the United States was 2.7 times. In China, it was 32 times.

The Harvard Business Review concludes that the shocking transformations across all aspects of Chinese life have prepared its population to adapt to sudden change better than in any other country. Consider: for the 700 million Chinese citizens under the age of 40, all they have experienced is an economy that has boomed at 12 times the global average. In their lifetimes, China went from 75% rural, and where most of the rural population lacked even electricity and refrigeration, to two-thirds urban and modern. Automobiles went from fewer than 5 million to nearly 300 million. China poured more concrete in just three years, than the United States did in the entire 20th century.

For these 700 million Chinese, how did all this affect their view of progress? Of what is possible? Of what industry and universities and government and business can do?

And with respect to innovation, is it possible that we need new measurements of innovation? In the US and Europe, we tend to view a technological innovation as a great idea that can propel a company or an industry in a new direction over time; in China, the innovations are immediate, population-wide, and become permanent features of life.

Resources and links:

Harvard Business Review (2021), China's new innovation advantage
https://hbr.org/2021/05/chinas-new-in...

Harvard Business Review (2014), Why China can't innovate
https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-can...

Cityscapes of Shanghai, Shenzhen from 1990/2020, from Google Images