Should-Read: Dan Wang: How Smartphones Made Shenzhen China’s Innovation Capital

Should-Read: Speaking of “communities of engineering practice” and Hirschman linkages:

Dan Wang: How Smartphones Made Shenzhen China’s Innovation Capital: “The technological implications of smartphone technology go far beyond the smartphone itself…

…Pry open your iPhone or Android device, you’ll see… chips… computing… take pictures… wireless communications… pinpoint… GPS…. Companies have invested millions of dollars in figuring out how to make them small, cheap, and light enough to include in smartphones. And most of these chips have proven useful well beyond the smartphone market. As a result, we’re in the midst of a hardware renaissance, in which it’s easier than ever to develop and market new gadgets. The center of this renaissance is Shenzhen….

In 2013, Chris Anderson coined the phrase “the peace dividends of the smartphone wars” to describe this flowering of innovation…. Apple decided that the first iPhone would be manufactured in Shenzhen by a Taiwanese company called Foxconn. Shenzhen is now totally dominant in mobile production, turning out not just iPhones but also Android devices for the whole world. And the spillover effects of these innovations have made it a lot easier to develop new products. Electronic components that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars (if they could be bought at all) may now only cost a few dollars, allowing more inventors to prototype and produce…. Hoverboards might provide the most colorful example of how smartphones have enabled spinoff technologies…