I believe you're on to something here. I also heard that research and small startups in the US (and west in general) tend to take on more risk for potentially h

I believe you're on to something here. I also heard that research and small startups in the US (and west in general) tend to take on more risk for potentially higher rewards. But companies for years have outsourced everything from production to research to product development. And those contract developers both are culturally risk-averse and they also have strong financial incentives to take on only the minimum of risk necessary to get paid for their research contract. And that's why the innovation speed of large US companies is limited by risk-reduction in Asia.