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 ZT:《南方周末》：创新工场不是下金蛋的鸡 |
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ZT:《南方周末》：创新工场不是下金蛋的鸡 -- 八袋长老 - (4348 Byte) 2010-9-06 周一, 16:11 (2555 reads) |
valley
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加入时间: 2004/02/20
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作者：valley 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
Ex-Googler Aims for China’s Mobile Users
By Loretta Chao
Ex-Google China President Kai-Fu Lee is out to prove that China can be innovative, and he’s starting with two projects that take aim at China’s massive mobile-subscriber population.
The first is called Tapas, a smartphone operating system based on Google’s Android with a number of features tailored for Chinese users, including software that detects what cities incoming calls are from, syncs contact lists with popular Chinese social networks, and a music player that detects what songs users are listening to and displays the lyrics, karaoke style. It also includes an e-book reader that can be optimized for subway-reading.
In the next few weeks, Tapas is expected to launch with handsets by Sharp, Haier and Tianyu, a Chinese handset maker that specializes in made-for-China features.
The second project is called Wonderpod, or Wandoujia in Chinese, an application and media distribution platform — a highly fragmented and competitive sector that is in its early stages in China — that launched two months ago for Android devices. It too is tailored to Chinese subscribers, letting them download clips from Chinese streaming-video sites Youku.com and Tudou.com, as well as backing up text messages in email format to make them easier to read. Applications offered through the platform’s marketplace are all free at the moment.
Both projects are funded by Lee’s technology “incubation” company, Innovation Works, which launched about one year ago after Lee resigned from his post at Google. The company has backed 12 projects, with plans to choose about 15 proposals per year.
It matches entrepreneurs with top engineering talent from around China, then provides an office, human-resources support and funding for the projects until they are able to sustain themselves, Lee said. Innovation Works retains a minority stake in each project, but he declined to give more details on ownership structures.
Innovation Works lures engineers from top schools by promising them Silicon Valley-level stakes in the companies they help to start, whereas engineers traditionally may not get any ownership of start-ups in China, he added. On average, he said, founding engineers in the U.S. receive a 1% stake in their companies.
Entrepreneurs at Innovation Works get to meet with Lee regularly and hear from motivational guest speakers like Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, and Kai and Charles Huang, the brothers behind the blockbuster videogame Guitar Hero. The incubator has attracted talent from Baidu, Google and other top tech companies in China.
Though Lee came from the U.S.-based Google — and prior to that, Microsoft — he cautioned against being too quick to underestimate the work of Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs. “It’s unfair to call Chinese companies non-innovative,” he said. Many, like Baidu, Google’s biggest rival in China, practice “micro-innovation,” he said, and beat their competitors with creativity on a smaller scale.
“American companies often have a technology lead, as Google did. However Baidu evolved and became good enough,” he said. Along similar lines, Innovation Works seems to take a page from the playbooks of Baidu and other Chinese companies by creating products that aren’t necessarily revolutionary, but which are tailored for Chinese users.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” Lee said.
Baidu, which has roughly 70% of search market revenue in China, has succeeded largely by tailoring existing technologies to Chinese users, and only recently began experimenting with new products such as its app-distribution platform.
Lee said that while Baidu’s most recent project may not be a commercial success, it will provide opportunities for some developers and is one of the first signs that Baidu is trying its hand at “big” innovation.
– Follow Loretta Chao on Twitter @Lorettac
作者：valley 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 ZT:《南方周末》：创新工场不是下金蛋的鸡 -- 八袋长老 - (4348 Byte) 2010-9-06 周一, 16:11 (2555 reads) - [转帖] WSJ: Ex-Googler Aims for China’s Mobile Users -- valley - (3925 Byte) 2010-9-07 周二, 16:03 (357 reads)
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