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Andrew Perlot's avatar

I think about how China's Wanxiang corp bought A123 Systems (lithium-ion batteries) and Fisker Automotive's tech after both went bankrupt.

Both received millions in American taxpayer dollars to develop their tech. But then no more was forthcoming. They failed on their first "try", and there was no more government or investor willingness to fund a second, so they closed shop. The Chinese swooped in and scooped up those distressed assets, meaning the US lost the tech.

Meanwhile, China provided loans, investments, and incentives to Wanxiang to move it to China and spend the better part of a decade developing it before it became profitable.

China's strategy is expensive and often wasteful. It sometimes fails completely. We like to criticize them for "picking winners." But I wonder to what degree there's a fail-based iteration process that we're less tolerant, or which our system does not support, which costs us in the long run.

This doesn't directly touch on your point, which was a good one. Why rush into execution on a shaky foundation?

But their tech was good, just not quick enough to scale and become profitable.

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Tian Wen's avatar

As always I appreciate you avoid binary thinking. The question isn’t whether “fail fast” is right or wrong, it is in which circumstances it should be applied. Website design? Maybe, with caveats. Submarine construction? No.

“OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush, lived up to his name”

I love this kind of witty writing!

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