12 ms·

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to t

• raverbashing 6y ago
  I kinda agree with you. But the issue I see is that innovation is a bit like herding cats. You can't really push for it. And even in the US, most of it is located on 2 cities. And of course, being on SV it is much easier to get you a check for 10Mi dollars for a worse idea than 1Mi or even 100k in Europe I don't see China's "innovation" as being much that (maybe except in AI and maybe ByteDance is a new thing, still) but more scaling up known solutions (ecommerce, fb on steroids in the form of wechat, etc) and market protection.
  • bllguo 6y ago
    getting things to work at scale is nontrivial. I would expect hn of all places to understand that and other industries they have a lead in include drones, solar technology, EV (arguable).. considering the unparalled hardware ecosystem in Shenzhen/the PRD, I expect more and more industries will be getting added to the list
    • raverbashing 6y ago
      > getting things to work at scale is nontrivial Agreed, non-trivial but also not rocket science (at least not now - I guess it's easier today than at the beginnings of twitter and fb for example) and throwing money at the problem usually helps. Agree on the other industries, and maybe their innovation is building things more cheaply than other places (externalities aside)
• tpetry 6y ago
  There‘s not enough funding and risk money in europe to play the game with the big ones. Europe is sadly completely risk averse. You only get big money if it is sure you succeed.
  • vin047 6y ago
    I remember reading an article by The Economist staring this too – US is (or at least, was) far more willing to take risks when it came to venture capital and investment, compared to Europe.
• bluecmd 6y ago
  Since you mention regulation, I think it is something to be proud of. GDPR, Germany saying hell-no to forced Facebook accounts, etc. As for innovation? US isn't even top 10 when it comes to Nobel prize per capita (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_l...). IKEA, SAP, Beretta, Airbus, Spotify, Linux, Prometheus, Grafana, Booking.com just from the top of my head of things that are proof of European innovation and tech sector.
  • WanderPanda 6y ago
    > Unicorns are concentrated in a few countries/regions: United States (136), China (120), India (26), UK (15), South Korea (11), Israel (7), Indonesia (6), Singapore (4), Switzerland (4), Hong Kong (4), France (3), Portugal (3), Sweden (3), Australia (2), Belgium (2), Canada (2), Germany (2), Luxembourg (2), Spain (2), Ukraine (2) and ten other countries (1 each) Israel has more than 3x more unicorns than we in Germany that tells one thing or two...
    • romanoderoma 6y ago
      It tells us that Israel have the same industrial military complex that US have Put it in another way: their success is due military application of technology Besides: what does counting unicorns proves? Is Israel GDP per capita higher than Germany? Is Israel richer than Germany? Europe values other metrics more than simply pure market valuation For example WhatsApp only employed 50 engineers when already had 900 million users In Germany, and Europe in general, we prefer businesses that increase the general population employment than pure profit margins EDIT: a few resources about military industrial complex in Israel https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel-and-the-military-industrial-complex-34c9d76b789c https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel... https://www.tni.org/es/node/13511 https://www.tni.org/es/node/13511 https://www.jstor.org/stable/174246 https://www.jstor.org/stable/174246 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402398308437160?journalCode=fjss20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0140239830843716...
    • yorwba 6y ago
• fvdessen 6y ago
  There was still not that long ago an incredible amount of innovative companies and products in Europe. But at that time companies were still built for their home markets first and on that regard the USA is big and unified. Since software is mostly winner takes all it means that when the USA companies came to Europe they had already won the USA and could steamroll the local competition There is for example no way a swedish mapping company could have competed with google maps , which had so much search monopoly money backing it up from the start The only way Europe could have prevented this is to just ban foreign monopolies, wich is what china did, and why they are now succesfully ‘innovating’. I read often on this website that europe cannot ‘take risks’ or ‘innovate’ and is ‘riding on american innovation for free’ and I find that a bit insulting, because I fell that as things are geopolitically it’s just not possible for Europeans to compete fairly with Americans
  • AlchemistCamp 6y ago
    > There is for example no way a Swedish mapping company could have competed with google maps An Israeli one did.
    • 317070 6y ago
      So did a Dutch one... (For the record: it's TomTom)
    • AsyncAwait 6y ago
      Waze was acquired by Google, am not sure that counts.
      • AlchemistCamp 6y ago
        If Waze couldn't compete against an incumbent Google Maps, why would Google ever have bought it?
        • AsyncAwait 6y ago
          I didn't mean from a technological perspective, but from a sustainability one. These kinds of startups can often compete/outcompete on tech, in fact that's their premise, but they're looking for an ASAP exit, rather than running something sustainably for decades.
• AsyncAwait 6y ago
  The EU is nowhere as culturally unified as the U.S is. So the pool of resources available isn't as large. I'd also not be so quick on the regulation front. Looking at the (lack of) environmental regulation in the US right about now or the absolute astonishing cost of any medical emergency, I'd say they went too far in the other direction.
  • 0xfaded 6y ago
    The lack of cultural unity thing is a curtain to hide behind. There's no reason Europe can't have a powerful federal government, other than it would result in transfers from the "export based economies" to the others.
    • AsyncAwait 6y ago
      > There's no reason Europe can't have a powerful federal government Europe does not share a language in common, a culture in common, not even a currency in common. The "federal government" idea would be rejected by many out of hand. The history of bitter wars between European countries has not simply been forgotten and many would feel it encroaches on their sovereignty. Just look at the reaction to mild proposals for an EU armed force as an example, or the many "Euroskeptic" politicians going around. I think you underestimate what it takes to form a strong federal government.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • pmachinery 6y ago
      The reason Europe can't have a powerful federal government is that most people in Europe quite rightly don't want one.
      • 0xfaded 6y ago
        This is obviously a massive topic, but from my vantage as a foreigner living in Europe is that Europe already has (and pays for) all features of a federal government with two exceptions. * Responsibility to implement treaties remains with the individual members. * No ability to tax or set fiscal policy. The advantage of a single set of laws is obvious. For starters I wouldn't be spending my Sunday reading a 500 page document on minor items describing how Denmark's implementation of an EU treaty differs from the treaty's wording. (Although it would cost the jobs of the people who produce such documents, and as such would fly in the face of the one central pillar of paneuropean identity). The ability to tax and set fiscal policy is needed to offset the imbalance created by the single currency. Another lengthy topic, but basically the assumption that every EU member should "export" is simply impossible. A normal currency system would correct a trade imbalance automatically. The euro systematically undervalues the cost of German output buy forcing their European neighbors to transact in the same currency. And then you have mafias, bankers, tax havens, uneven social nets, and a raft of other social problems that can only effectively be dealt with by a central government. The irony should not be lost that the American government has had better success battling the Italian mafia than the Italians have.
• matthewmacleod 6y ago
  What metric are you basing this determination on? Is it purely about “big tech”? It seems from my perspective that most European countries are pretty decently innovative, in particular with a variety of companies offering advanced engineering and technology services. Is there actually a lack of innovation, or is it specifically a lack of “innovation” in the “there is no Airbnb so Europe sucks” sense?
  • Aerroon 6y ago
    I think it's more of a case of "most electronics and everything that runs on it is not made in Europe". I'm a European posting on an American company's forum using a browser made in the US running on an operating system made by an American company running on a phone designed and built in China with components made in a variety of countries that aren't in Europe. The same goes for using a desktop PC. Even most of the websites you end up using aren't made in Europe. And that's talking about the things that are already there. Looking into the future I don't see anything technology related on the horizon either. The main technological thing that isn't like that is cars, but even there EVs from Tesla appear more innovative.
    • ainiriand 6y ago
      Linux was developed by finnish guy and the www protocol was developed by a brit.
      • warrenq 6y ago
        30 years ago and 40 years ago, respectively
        • lixtra 6y ago
          30 years ago you would have said that Microsoft dominates and www is a niche thing. And Turing was already 50 years ago. It’s likely that something significant is going on in Europe that we don’t know about yet.
• YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  I don't know how to judge general innovation but it should be noted that in AI at least, Europe has been the major contributing region since 1990. See the AI index report 2019: https://hai.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ai_index_2019_report.pdf https://hai.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ai_index_2019_r... Sorry I can't link directly to the plot. Go to page 16 in the pdf, a section titled "Published papers: AI Papers by Region". In short, Europe has been the region with the most output in AI research in the last 30 years with US second and China initially at third place, but overtaking the US around 2006 ish and finally Europe in 2018.
• tnolet 6y ago
  I’d say the EU and euro zone is one of the biggest and boldest innovations in the postwar Western world.
  • throwawayinfo 6y ago
    But it's still terribly fragile and Brexit risks the whole thing collapsing. Not necessarily an innovation if it won't stand up to time.
    • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      > Brexit risks the whole thing collapsing I know it's off topic, but could you clarify how you could see this happening? I mean the only issue I can see is that the EU will end up with multiple, smaller finanical centres, hindering scale. But other than that, I can't see the problems of EU with respect to Brexit. Now, the euro without transfers, that's a bloody problem, but that's been a real problem for 20 years, and no amount of ECB bandaging will fix it.
      • throwawayinfo 6y ago
        If Brexit succeeds then other countries will plan a leave of their own. That's the reason for all these punitive measures the EU is putting on the UK. Innovation must stand up to the test of time, but history teaches us that large empires and political unions generally don't. Even the US might be having trouble one day.
    • dmitriid 6y ago
      If anything, the Brexit mess has cooled many heads.
    • hardlianotion 6y ago
      Brexit isn't the thing that might collapse the whole thing so much as economic stresses brought on by adoption of the Euro.
    • danielovichdk 6y ago
• MikusR 6y ago
  They are also building roads, making houses more energy efficient and building small scale particle colliders.
• srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Europeans innovate for American companies because it's the largest common language zone of wealthy people.
• aborsy 6y ago
  The political economy of the Europe makes it fundamentally ill-suited to technological innovation. Its best years are already behind it.
• xster 6y ago
  I don't think that's necessarily the case. The Bretton Woods era produced national industries when finance wasn't as unrestricted. Though what happened is more or less the same as today. Companies like Alstom were competitive but got Huawei/TikTok'ed (executive arrests, forced sales etc). The EU just doesn't have the structural resilience to compete with the US shifting the Nash equilibrium. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/former-exec-of-french-firm-alstom-yesterday-alstom-today-huawei-and-tomorrow https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/former-exec-of-f...