High IQ and low technology: Hong Kong's key to success

Hong Kong's economy has shown impressive improvements in productivity arising from technical progress. This is despite the fact that Hong Kong's businessmen and government have been criticized for decades over their supposed short-sightedness and lack of support for technology. What the record of productivity performance shows is that Hong Kong's combination of 'high IQ and low technology' can deliver improvements in efficiency which have not been achieved in more 'technophile' Asian economies. This suggests that the need for high-technology industry in East Asia has been exaggerated and that policies and business strategies built on the perception of that need are misguided. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd