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Book Reviews
User reviews for:
Silicon Dragon: How China Is Winning the Tech Race |
A compelling book, but oddly enough, not because of the writing, which was rather magazine-like, not surprising since Fanning herself used to write for _Red Herring_. It was also a bit sloppy (e.g. in the chapter on Oriental Wisdom there are at least 3 references to Lingtu, the company profiled in the previous chapter - and I don't think that was intended), and Fannin injected a bit too much of herself into the book ("I talked to X, I rode in a convertible, I escaped from China when SARS broke out, etc, etc").
It was the entrepreneurs being interviewed who made the book compelling. You read about the usual suspects like Baidu's Robin Li and Alibaba's Jack Ma, but also other not-so-usual suspects like Peggy YuYu of Dangdang, Maxthon's Jeff Chen, etc. Each one gets a brief overview of the person, the company, comments by venture capitalists/analysts, etc.
If I have any complaint about this portion, it's that (a) each overview is way too brief and (b) a few of the overviews seem a bit hastily put-together, as if she had a bit of leftover material she decided to scrape into an additional chapter. But their passion and drive does come out, which I found inspiring.
There's also a section on the venture capitalists who invest in China, but this was kinda out-of-place, between the "copycats" section (entrepreneurs replicating stuff that's already shown to work in the West) and the "innovators" section.
I said before the book was magazine-like. This is borne out most by the complete and utter lack of a conclusion. Yep, there is a fairly decent overview in the beginning, but I expected some sort of closure, like...are the 12 entrepreneurs interviewed the tip of the iceberg or the whole iceberg. I mean, if you went to Ethiopia or something you'd probably be able to find 12 entrepreneurs who are Doing Great Things despite their country's relative demerits as a place to do a start-up. While I personally have no doubt that China is only going to get bigger and stronger, it would be good if Fannin managed to extract some trends and generalities out of what is, after all, a handful of anecdotes. (read less)
A compelling book, but oddly enough, not because of the writing, which was rather magazine-like, not surprising since Fanning herself used to write for _Red Herring_. It was also a bit sloppy (e.g. in the chapter on Oriental Wisdom there are at least 3 references to Lingtu, the company profiled in the previous chapter - and I don't think that was intended), and Fannin injected a bit too much of herself into the book ("I talked to X, I rode in a convertible, I escaped from China ... (read more)