Shanzhai

Description

From the Wikipedia:

"Shanzhai (simplified Chinese: 山寨; pinyin: shānzhài) (alternative spelling shanzai or even shan zhai) refers to Chinese imitation and pirated brands and goods, particularly electronics. Literally "mountain village" or "mountain stronghold", the term refers to the mountain stockades of warlords or thieves, far away from official control. "Shanzhai" can also be stretched to refer to people who are lookalikes, low-quality or improved goods, as well as things done in parody." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai)

Karthik Iyer:

“Shanzhai” or the copycat culture is an integral part of the Chinese society; the society is predominantly Confucian and the Confucian tradition promotes individuals sharing what they create with the society to promote greater harmony. Hence anything from shoes to cell phones are copied and sold openly in markets across the country." (http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=jekem)

Example

"The use of "shanzhai" became popular with the outstanding sale performance of "shanzhai" cell phones. According to Gartner’s data, 1.15 billion cell phones were sold worldwide in 2007, and according to data provided by the Chinese government, 150 million "Shanzhai" cell phones were sold in the same year, thus making up more than one tenth of the global sales.

The market for "shanzhai" cell phones is not only in China, but also in the surrounding developing countries in Asia, and Third World countries in Africa and Latin America. The outstanding sales performance of "shanzhai" cell phones is usually attributed to their low price, multifunctional performance and imitations of trendy cell phone design. Although "shanzhai" companies do not use branding as a marketing strategy, they are known for their flexibility of design to meet specific market needs. For example, during Barack Obama’s 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign, "shanzhai" cell phone companies started selling "Obama" cell phones in Kenya, with the slogan "yes we can" and Obama’s name on the back of the cell phone. They also designed "Bird Nest" and "Fuwa" (福娃) cell phones in light of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Before the booming "shanzhai" cell phone industries, since the early 2000s, imitation electronic products like DVD players and MP3 players were already manufactured in the Pearl River Delta ("珠三角") area. Many "shanzhai" cell phone companies accumulated their capital in that process. After understanding that many buyers like lookalike phones, but didn't need blaring fake logos, many manufacturers adopted a practice of not using fraudulent logos, instead opting for a generically designed logo. So while an overseas buyer can easily find a lookalike phone, some sellers only sell those without the fake logo.

"Shanzhai" cellphones can be sold at very low prices compared to normal cellphones. On average, the imitations sell at retailers at about $US100-$US150, while production costs are about $US20.

"Shanzhai" cell phone factories are able to manufacture at a very low cost for two reasons. First, they do not buy cell phone manufacture licenses from the Chinese government, thus saving all the related costs. Second, the Taiwanese company Mediatek has developed a complete chain of core technology support for cell phones to sell at a much lower cost than the traditional suppliers of large cell phone companies like Nokia and Motorola.

Although there many fake garments, watches, bags, and shoes in China, they are not called "shanzhai" products, perhaps because these fake products came into existence earlier than fake cellphones and the newer use of the term "shanzhai". "Shanzhai" cell phones may stand out as the most successful and most often discussed "shanzhai" products, because cell phones strongly symbolize wealth in china, but they are much more affordable than other symbolic signs of wealth like cars and apartments.

Quite a few shanzhai cell phone companies tried to exploit the market by making shanzhai Netbooks, but these gained little market acceptance and sales." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai)

Discussion

See Kevin Carson at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/shanzhai-flexible-manufacturing-for-the-next-generation/2009/09/28

How Shanzai manufacturing is related to the minipreneurial Maker Revolution

Chris Anderson:

"The term shanzhai, which derives from the Chinese word for bandit, usually refers to the thriving business of making knockoffs of electronic products, or as Shanzai.com more generously puts it, “a vendor, who operates a business without observing the traditional rules or practices often resulting in innovative and unusual products or business models.” But those same vendors are increasingly driving the manufacturing side of the maker revolution by being fast and flexible enough to work with micro-entrepreneurs. The rise of shanzhai business practices “suggests a new approach to economic recovery as well, one based on small companies well networked with each other,” observes Tom Igoe, a core developer of the open source Arduino computing platform. “What happens when that approach hits the manufacturing world? We’re about to find out.” (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/all/1)

Shanzai as Open Manufacturing using Open Innovation

See the report: Mitchell Tseng on Shanzai and Open Manufacturing, scan at http://mass-customization.blogs.com/files/tseng-2010-open-manufacturing.pdf

Commentary from Frank Piller:

"Before, the term open manufacturing often has been connected to the community of people that develop "open" manufacturing technologies like OS-based 3D-printing (Makerbot et al.) and "Open Hardware" (see http://www.openhardwaresummit.org -- I participated at this event but had not time to blog about this yet).

But Mitch is not talking about these initiatives that more or less build on the transfer of the principles of open source software idea to hardware. His approach towards open manufacturing is building more on Henry Chesbrough's understanding of open innovation as a broad collaboration of organizations.

Open manufacturing in Mitch Tseng's understanding builds on the idea that supply chain networks are getting more open and often are organized around a kind of platform that allows the exchange of resources and capacity between the participants. This allows new and smaller players to enter the market and produce new products (often for niche markets) faster and with high efficiency.

One example of open manufacturing in his understanding is the success of Shanzhai manufacturing in China. Originally, this is the name for the Chinese companies that design and market counterfeit electronic products. According to the Blog blogs.gxs.com,

- "The term dates back several hundred years to Chinese mountain bandits which operated outside the purview of the local government."

On the website Shanzhai.com these companies “operate a business without observing the traditional rules or practices, often resulting in innovative and unusual products or business models.”

Today, the Shanzhai represent approximately 20% of the mobile phones sold in China annually! And they go global. With exports, Shanzhai were estimated to represent 10% of worldwide phone sales in 2009. And not all Shanzhai phones depend upon stealing the designs and brands of foreign brands, as blogs.gxs.com writes:

- "Some manufacturers have become so successful that they are leveraging their own brand. For example, Tianyu, which is referred to as the King of the Shanzhai, markets its phones under its own label. Tianyu started off like much of the Shanzhai imitating global brands and evading government licensing requirements. However, the company became so successful that it has adopted a new business model in which it obtains licenses, pays taxes, and sells legitimately on the commercial market. Tianyu now enjoys 8% market share in China, more than Nokia, Samsung or Motorola!"

In his paper, Mitch Tseng describes very well how open collaboration enables these companies to compete with such an efficiency -- and his conclusion is that behind the success of Shanzhai is much more than counterfeiting and stealing Western designs: It is the openness of their manufacturing and design network.

I find this case remarking due to two characteristics:

• First, the Shanzhai model shows a great way for robust processes for mass customization. Many of the models are highly individual pieces, created by a Shanzhai company to tap into a makret opportunity it realized. Production runs often are just a few hundred pieces, and often are starting with a special request by a customer or retailer.

• Second, it is a great model of what openess can offer. I have to strongly emphasize that I AM NOT in favor of stealing the IP of other companies or pirating and counterfying products. But the model shows that in a world where existing knowledge can easily being combined to new creations, a lot of creativity resides."

(http://mass-customization.blogs.com/mass_customization_open_i/2010/10/from-open-innovation-to-open-manufacturing-m-tseng-on-shanzhai-cell-phones-in-china-a-model-of-open-.html)

Shanzai as Open Innovation Model to the World

David Li:

"Shanzhai: the Open Innovation Bandit

Shanzhai is a term referring to the counterfeit goods manufacturers in China. The term itself is degenerative and the mention of it in the media often come with redicure and dismissive attitudes. However, for those who are willing to see behind the skin deep counterfeit enclosures of these "shanzhai" products, there is a super efficient and organically emerged open innovation ecosystem to be discovered and studied that would serve as a model of open innovation we are trying to promote here.

The Shanzhai factories clustered in Shenzhen started out as counterfeiting cell phones from brands like Nokia and Samsung. However, in the recent years, the ecosystem has developed into a major industry of its own estimated to be shipping 300 millions cell phones a year which accounted for a quarter of global mobile phones productions. The main market for these shanzhai phones are China, India, South America, Middle-East, and Arfica. Recently G'Five, a 4 years old Chinese brand from Shanzhai overtook Samsung as #2 cellphone vendor in India and is expect to pass Nokia for the #1 spot in the next few years.

 The Shanzhai arcvhive this success by practicing open innovation and open source in their ecosystem. There are about 2000 design/solution houses in Shenzhen that service the assemblers, marketers and distributors. The ecosystem practice OpenBOM process in which the design houses will give assemblers the full specifications to the hardware design with complete bill of materials. There is no expectation of trade secret and once the OpenBOM is out of the door of the solutio house, it's expected to be distributed openly in the Shanzhai community for some other to innovate on top of. This OpenBOM process emerged from the pirate origin of the ecosystem in which IP wasn't protected and are treated as public assets. The rules of open source are forced on this ecosystem. 

One key obstacle of promoting open innovation in the developed countries is the outdated IP protection system that has already shown it's ugly side in the recent letigations tactics used by Microsoft to force companies like Samsung and HTC to pay license fee to Microsoft on every Android device they produce. Such system is not suitable to facilitate open innovation and definitely need a serious overhaul. Shanzhai in China can be a place to start such overhaul as an initial open innovation and open source ecosystem has already be formed here. Such radical disregard of IP protection has a great precedence as American Congress in the 18th century pass legistration to invalidate all European patents and copyrights in the New World to encourage the spread and innovations of technologies in the new republic.

The shanzhai ecosystem has already create a super efficient micro manufacture system with wealth of shared works for new innovators to take advantge of. It already shows raw open innovation works in practice with an ecosystem seriously challenge the established status quo, e.g. downfall of Nokia has as much to do with iPhone on the high end as Shanzhai on the low.

I think it's important to bring the Shanzhai in China into the global discussion of open innovation and how it could be part of the force to challenge status quo created by the outdated legal IP system." (http://ietherpad.com/GES-open-innovation)