It takes a peculiar kind of logic to argue that we are in a bad way because we have fewer stupid ideas than anyone else. It takes the Intel Corp of the United States to argue it in fact.
Intel's triumph of incisive reasoning came from a recent survey in which it asked 8,000 people across Asia whether they had ever had an idea for an Internet start-up. Hong Kong tied with Australia for the lowest proportion of 'yes' answers, only 12 per cent, and Intel, taking this as an indication of poor entrepreneurial spirit in the SAR, said it reflected badly on education and government policies.
The first thing you may notice about these survey results shown in the first chart is that you have only to make a few adjustments, such as Indonesia to a higher figure and South Korea to a lower, and you get a fairly good inverse ranking of per capita wealth across the region.
This fits. Wealth depends these days on the use of brains. There are millions of ideas out there for the use of money and it takes brains to sift through them for the few that make commercial sense.
One class of them that has proved to make no commercial sense at all is Internet start-ups and the survey demonstrates that we saw it earlier and more clearly than anyone else.
But let us make another distinction here too. Starting up a dotcom is not the same thing as using the Internet. They are in fact opposites.
One seeks to provide, the other uses what is provided and it is true that use of the Internet can produce commercial efficiencies. How many of us thus use it and how does this stack up against the number of users elsewhere?
