I'm in Hong Kong en route to China.  It's my second trip to China in the last year.  Of the many aspects of my work with Evergreen IP and its offshoot, TrashCo Inc., the opportunity to travel to this part of the world has been among the most interesting.

I've come to understand the capacity to get work done a function of capability and resources.  Capability, in turn, might be thought of as a function of skill and attitude.  When it comes to doing the iterative, hard work of developing the multiple innovations required to bring a new consumer product to market, the people we've worked with in China have a positive attitude that overshadows any immediate shortcomings (relative to American or European counterparts) in skill and technology.  Funny thing--actually doing innovative work tends to increase skill.  We all read about it, but my colleagues and I have been able to observe the increase in the capabilities and capacities of Chinese manufacturers.

On the one hand, I'm thrilled, because our success depends upon having access to such capacities.  On the other hand, it's annoying--because we've interacted with many American manufacturing firms that have relatively high skills and resources, but their effective capacity is limited because they have an overly conservative attitude that is excacerbated by confusion between uncertainty and risk.