Harvard in China: David Yoffie discusses emerging technologies

Remarks by David B. Yoffie

David B. Yoffie,  Starr professor of international business administration and senior associate dean and chair of executive education at Harvard Business School, addressed technological and economic engines for growth—and their prospective implications for how people work, study, and interact—as well as China’s new status as the fastest-growing market for and producer of technological products and services. (William Kirby had earlier noted, ruefully, that his cell-phone service worked better throughout China than on his daily 10-mile commute from home to campus in Cambridge.) The acceleration of innovations in management, technology, and collaboration in China would all have a significant effect on pushing the world forward, he said.

Yoffie cited four trends: mobility in computing (as is evident in the rapid adoption of the iPhone and its “apps”); the shift to “cloud” computing on centralized servers; social networking; and new services, such as visual search, which immediately change how work and teaching are done. The iPhone, he said, had been taken up into use more quickly than any previous technology. Social networking tools, such as Facebook or China’s Tencent (Facebook is blocked in the People’s Republic), had attracted 830 million unique users (suggesting that Yahoo and Google were already in eclipse). Combining these trends—mobility plus social networks plus cloud computing—yielded new location-based services (I’m here, what can I do, how can I navigate, what advertising would best be targeted to me at this moment) and emerging tools such as visual search (a Google application that will identify something from a picture and tell users about it and nearby things to do; a chess program that will advise on the next move from a picture of the playing board).

In the classroom, he said, the implications were already apparent, as students used more visual and real-time materials, and as instruction itself became global. Yoffie saw multiple avenues for fruitful collaboration between China and Harvard on all these opportunities, through the new center in Shanghai.

This is an online-only sidebar to the news article "Global Reach."

You might also like

Free Speech, the Bomb—and Donald Trump

A Harvard cardiologist on the unlikely alliances that shaped a global movement to prevent nuclear war

Why Harvard Needs International Students

An ed school professor on why global challenges demand global experiences

Harvard Plans Contingencies for International Students

The Kennedy School and School of Public Health are developing online options.

Most popular

What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

The Origins of Europe’s Most Mysterious Languages

A small group of Siberian hunter-gatherers changed the way millions of Europeans speak today.

The Harvard Professor Who Quantified Democracy

Erica Chenoweth’s data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.

Explore More From Current Issue

A person walks across a street lined with historic buildings and a clock tower in the background.

Harvard In the News

A legal victory against Trump, hazing in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and kicking off a Crimson football season with style

Two women in traditional Japanese clothing sitting on a wooden platform near a tranquil pond, surrounded by autumn foliage.

Japan As It Never Will Be Again

Harvard’s Stillman collection showcases glimpses of the Meiji era. 

Wadsworth House with green shutters and red brick chimneys, surrounded by trees and other buildings.

Wadsworth House Nears 300

The building is a microcosm of Harvard’s history—and the history of the United States.