Innovation: pursuit for originality

Citation

Foo, C.T. (2015), "Innovation: pursuit for originality", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 9 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-02-2015-0032

Innovation: pursuit for originality

Article Type: Editorial From: Chinese Management Studies, Volume 9, Issue 1

I am delighted to see the successful publication of the inaugural 2015 issue Chinese Management Studies (CMS), because it is timely, has a range of topics that provide a multi-faceted perspective on Chinese innovation and is another dynamic result created from an East-West effort. The team behind this issue includes: Professor Li Ming-Zhi and Professor Wei Jiu-Chang from China’s top-ranking Tsinghua University (清华) and the University of Science and Technology of China (科大), and Professor Peter McKiernan from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, UK. Professor Peter McKiernan, my former colleague (and doctoral supervisor) at the University of St Andrews, acted as a Consulting Editor.

The structure for this issue may well set the course for the path ahead for CMS, where extremely experienced, seasoned professors from the West oversee the review process, while China-based guest editors play indispensable roles by helping the team to cope with critical issues. Our Chinese editors in this issue proved vital for the success and accuracy of the content, in particular for verifying:

• originality;

• authenticity (no ghost writer); and

• no parallel, concurrent submissions (in other Chinese journals).

Why the concern about parallel submissions in particular? Chinese academia is a world unto itself, and many Chinese professors regard the world outside of academia as being completely separate from the one they inhabit and, in some cases, even completely cut off from China. I know this from personal experience that is summed up in one particular episode. A professor who wished to contribute a paper at the International Conference on Knowledge and Aerospace to be held on May 30th at the Harbin Institute of Technology, Heilongjiang, China (sponsor), unapologetically rebuked me in our first email exchange: When I replied to a query she made to me about appearing at the conference in English, she retorted immediately: “In China, use Chinese not English!” She was completely unconcerned that the goal of this particular conference was to attract the best articles for CMS and that all submitted papers were required to be in English but was instead focused on my lack of Chinese during our correspondence.

Now, whenever I am asked to present a paper in China, I spend hours rehearsing my speech in putonghua, (standardized Chinese), as I know now this ability to speak the local language is a necessity, even if my contract states that I am to speak in English at a conference. It is common practice that conference organizers intend for a presentation’s accompanying slides to be in English, but the actual delivery of the paper must be in Chinese, and if one does not follow this protocol, they are in danger of losing their audience!

During the 2014 conference, a number of presenting professors delivered their papers in putonghua. I was deeply interested in the content of their papers but missed out as I did not speak the language, and many other conference attendees were affected by language barriers as well. This frustrating experience prompted me to question about the way conferences are managed in China and ways to improve their communication. Perhaps there should be a rule that all future presentations had to be given in English, and those unable to do so may be required to give an alternative presentation, such as visual instead of verbal. This could be taken one step further by limiting the submissions of papers to professors who are only willing or able to express their ideas viva voce in English. The stark reality is that the Chinese tend to communicate only in Chinese with fellow Chinese: to their minds, English-speakers are geographically separate, outside of mainland China; so, the language does not need to be spoken within Chinese borders. As the Chinese-speaking geography extends far and wide, I began to wonder further if this feeling also applied to Taiwanese, Hongkongers, Singaporean Chinese and the Chinese living abroad as well.

I discovered during a visit to Taiwan in December 2014, that the attitude is largely the same when I was invited to spend a week as a Visiting Professor at the National Taiwan Chiao Tung University (NTCTU). During my time in Taiwan, Colonel Steven Yang (retired) accompanied me throughout my residency, and my host was Professor Huang Shih-ping, the Director of the Institute of Technology Management, while I delivered lectures on publishing in CMS, emphasizing the excellence of its research and my work on Sun Zi’s Art of War (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

It must be emphasized that in China CMS refers more to a civilization (Figures 1 and 2) than simply just a nation, and despite Taiwan not being fully integrated into China, the Taiwanese are very much part of the 5000-year old Chinese civilization, and Taiwan is inseparable from China. The island is less integrated with mainland China than the other provinces, and I found Taiwan to be, in some ways, much more deeply Han Chinese than the Mainland.

Since this issue of CMS is focused on innovation, I would like to share some of the CMS lecture I delivered at the 2014 conference, where I began by asking the audience: Did mid-fifteenth century Leonardo Da Vinci create his masterpiece’s based on original ideas that he got from the Chinese? (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

As an avid collector of Chinese pottery and ceramics (Foo and Teo, 2007), I have in-depth knowledge of the history, design and technological developments of Chinese porcelain. The world’s very first global product was Chinese and originated from Chang-nan (in pinyin 昌南), the region in China regarded as the birthplace of porcelain with its center the city of Jing De Zhen (景德镇). Europeans learned the art of making porcelain through espionage by a French named Francis Xavier d’ Entrecolles (1712-1722), a French Jesuit priest who enlisted Chinese Catholic converts in his efforts to uncover the secrets of the porcelain industry. How remarkable that now, some 300 years later, the French are back in force in China, specifically in Harbin at the China Innovation Center, co-innovating with the Chinese (see Li et al.’s, 2015, paper in this issue) on advanced aerospace technology. If British author Gavin Menzies’ assertion that the Chinese exploration and discoveries is based on facts, then credence can be given to the notion that Da Vinci expanded on an original Chinese idea as opposed to being an original innovator! (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

One change that I am considering implementing for the upcoming 2015 conference is to institute two days of parallel sessions (proposed structure is presented below). Each will be led by a Guest Editor who introduces a theme, and on the second day, an Editorial Panel will invite selected authors, based on the merit of their submitted papers, to evaluate their work and offer suggestions as to how they may enrich their research with newer ideas for a future issue of CMS. Those selected will be invited to submit their work for publication in future issues.

I want to get authors to submit papers with original, creative and new ideas. Chinese professors are, due to the nature of their society, often conservative. In many of my conversations with them, they have consistently argued that it is safer, easier and less of a risk to just replicate as everything is already set up. It is the intention of CMS to, by invitation, encourage authors to be more adventurous and, therefore, more innovative. It is my hope that by this preemptive intervention, the situation may change (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

As with quality, before long innovation will become a required attribute for management to succeed in the marketplace, CMS too has to be innovative as a journal: we should be proactively seeking original ideas and concepts (preferably) that is fully supported by data.

Check Teck Foo - Editor-in-Chief

References

Foo, C.T. and Teo, K.C. (2007), “Contextualizing the design mind of an ancient potter”, Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies, Vol. 23, pp. 177-188.

Li, W., Wu, W.W., Bo, Y. and Foo, C.T. (2015), “Is China transmuting to fast overtake USA in innovation? R&D case studies in advanced technology manufacturing”, Chinese Management Studies.