Hi everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal and I'm really excited because we have a podcast today with two guests and we're talking about smartphones,

Xiaomi and the Chinese Dream. That's actually the subtitle of the book Little Rice by Clay Shirky,

who's one of the guests on this podcast. Clay has been a longtime observer and commenter of internet culture,

social media. He's written a really

popular book called Here Comes Everybody, and he's currently the Global Network Professor at

NYU Shanghai. We also have on the podcast, Connie Chan, who's a partner in the deal and

investing team here at Andreessen Horowitz, and she's an expert in all things China. Among many of her

other pieces, she wrote a piece earlier this year on

WeChat. And in both of these cases, we're just mentioning WeChat and Xiaomi. What we're really talking

about more broadly is this broader theme of innovation and how it's now happening in a different

way than before where we're starting to see companies that maybe previously might have been,

quote, so-called copycats actually

lead the march forward. I want to just start on that note and hear from both of you, Connie and

Clay, on what's happening. I think the important note here is to understand that there are various

ways of defining the word innovation. Some people might say and take a very strict view that

innovation is the first person that comes up with the new piece of technology or the first person to figure out some formula.

If you argue, though, that innovation can mean the first person to scale a company, scale a product, the first person who can figure out a distribution model or a business model that allows the product to be

given to millions of consumers, then I would say there's a ton of innovation happening in China,

and there has been for the last several years.

I think that's absolutely right.

And one of the things I think people often miss is the Americans have been brought into the

cult of Steve Jobs and have regarded innovation as being basically

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