How Chinese Companies Disrupt Through Business Model Innovation

Experts continue to debate whether Chinese businesses are truly disruptive. For some industries in the West, this question appears a bit ridiculous. The American textile and apparel industries, for example, will tell you that the evidence can be found in the blood on the floor — their blood, on what used to be their floor. American and European metals industries and producers of wind turbines and solar panels will echo that same impression. But despite all the pain they have experienced, these industries are wrong. Far from being disruptive, Chinese textile, apparel, appliances, metal, and solar and wind players have done little that has been different from the practices they found in these industries when they entered them. They’ve simply undercut Western competitors by offering cheaper prices. They have been displacers, not disrupters.