This seminar is part 1 of SPRIE's 5-part series on "Greater China: Entrepreneurial Leaders."

For a long time, researchers have asked whether the success of Silicon Valley can be replicated elsewhere. There have been various levels of attempts and various levels of success outside the United States.

Depending on how success is measured, one can draw different conclusions. How do we evaluate Hsinchu Science Park? Have they created innovative products? Have they produced entrepreneurs? How do they stack up to Silicon Valley? What is their competitive edge? As China joins the WTO, what should its strategy be?

On a long-term basis, what are the factors that will drive and deliver sustainable competitive advantages? With changes in global economic conditions, how does one re-evaluate the Silicon Valley model? As China joins the WTO, what should its strategy be? And as China becomes the manufacturer of the world, what is its impact on Taiwan and Silicon Valley?

This talk offers an analysis of experiences in Silicon Valley and Asia in the past twenty years. It also offers some reflections on the model and strategy for Greater China.

Since November 1998, Sha has been a managing partner at Spring Creek Venture, which specializes in early-stage venture investment and business consultation with Internet and infrastructure companies. Sha is currently serving on the board of directors of several start-up companies, including Appstream, Acela, Aduva, E21, LiveABC, Optoplex, Mediostream, and Tom.com.

Sha has extensive experience as a leader of high technology companies. He served as CEO for Sina.com and senior vice president of Commerce Solutions at Netscape Communications. While at Netscape, he served concurrently as president and CEO of Actra Business Systems, a joint venture formed by Netscape and GE Information Services. A company Sha built from scratch, Actra was the first company to focus on business-to-business e-commerce and e-procurement application systems. Prior to Actra, Mr. Sha served as vice president and general manager of business-to-consumer integrated application business at Netscape Communications and vice president of the UNIX Product Division at Oracle Corporation.

In his community service, Sha served as chairman of the Monte Jade West Coast association from 2000-2001. Sha currently is serving as chairman of the Monte Jade Global Association, the premier technology entrepreneur association with twelve chapters in the United States, Canada, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Mr. Sha holds an MS in EECS from the University of California at Berkeley, an MBA from Santa Clara University, and a BS in EE from Taiwan University.

The following papers will be presented. Dinner will be served. "Selling the Chinese State: Bureaucratic transformation in the Post-Deng Era" Martin Dimitrov, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Political Science, Stanford University "The Unmaking of the Chinese Proletariat: Xiagang, Its Origins, and Effects" William Hurst, Ph.D., Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley "Political Office, Kinship, and Household Wealth in Rural China" Andrew Walder, Director, Shorenstein APARC; Professor of Sociology, Stanford University

As Secretary of the Technology, Trade, and Commerce Agency, Lon Hatamiya advises the governor and the legislature on all matters related to international business, serving as the voice of California's private sector in the State Cabinet. Appointed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999 and confirmed unanimously by the State Senate, Secretary Hatamiya is the first Asian-American to hold a cabinet-level position in California history. As the state's primary promoter of economic development, he directs numerous programs stimulating economic activity for international trade and investment, and under his leadership the Agency added the Division of Science, Technology, and Innovation, focusing on R&D and the commercialization of new technologies. Prior to his appointment as secretary, Mr. Hatamiya served as administrator for the Foreign Agricultural Service in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). He holds a degree in economics from Harvard University, and JD and MBA degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.

During the past decade, multinational companies (MNCs) have made radical institutional changes: instead of generating research and development (R&D) knowledge solely in central laboratories in home countries, they have shifted their strategy to developing the capability to absorb and utilize cutting-edge technologies worldwide. Based on over 80 interviews with mainly electronics and pharmaceutical companies in Europe, Japan and the United States, this presentation addresses the question: How have MNCs developed their capability to evaluate, internalize, and utilize external R&D knowledge from abroad? Still a work in progress, this research provides an understanding of the evolutionary process of internationalization of R&D as well as the various strategies of Japanese and European high technology MNCs to absorb new technologies from US and Europe.

Biography: Seiko Arai is a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, UK, and currently a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University. She obtained a bachelor's degree in law and political science from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and a Masters in public policy from Harvard University. She has worked for the Japanese government and the headquarters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), France, in the areas of science and technology and education policies.

Over the last two years in Southeast Asia, acts of terror done in the name of Islam have divided analysts into two broad camps. Academic specialists on Islam in Southeast Asia have tended to emphasize the moderation of the vast majority of Muslims in the region and the local roots of so-called jihadist violence there. While not denying the moderation of most Muslims, Western journalists and officials have relied more on intelligence reports and detainee confessions to situate Southeast Asian jihadists within a global terrorist network organized and inspired by Al Qaeda. Compared with Western journalists and officials, scholars have also tended to portray Islam as a basically tolerant religion and to seek nonreligious explanations and motivations for seemingly Islamist violence. If the scholars have had faith in explanatory contexts--distinctively local, historical, cultural, socioeconomic, and political--their counterparts in media and policy circles have been more inclined to showcase conspiratorial texts: interrogation transcripts, recordings of clandestine conversations, and the selectively Koranic rhetoric of militant Islamists urging global jihad. Which of these contrasting perspectives is superior, analytically and as a basis for counter-terror policy? Are the perpetrators of apparently Islamist terror in Southeast Asia thinking and acting locally? Or globally? Is there a demonstrably Al Qaeda network in the region? If so, what sort of a structure is it? How does it operate? Can a "war" against it succeed? If not, what might be a better approach? Zachary Abuza is an assistant professor of political science and international relations at Simmons College. His most recent book is Renovating Politics in Contemporary Vietnam (2001). Foreign-affairs journals that have published his work include Asian Survey and Contemporary Southeast Asia. He has spoken on Southeast Asian subjects before Congress, at the State Department, on Jim Lehrer's "NewsHour," and in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and Time, among other media. He received his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1998. In 1995-96 he was a visiting researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Hanoi.

This talk will discuss Wipro's growth to become one of India's top three software service providers and its readiness for the future. To achieve its current position, a key strategy was to develop human capital by providing an entrepreneurial working environment and undertaking a higher level of complexity of work than available with competitors, supplemented by an internal degree program. How will this strategy help the firm in the emerging environment characterized by a slowdown in traditional businesses, strategic shifts towards high-end work and the growth of untraditional, IT-linked businesses (such as business process outsourcing)?