Some emerging markets are really quite wild.

For example, a certain Southeast Asian country has made rapid advancements in communication technology recently—not by relying on its own innovations, but by directly connecting to a mature supply chain. They use communication equipment, AI solutions, electric vehicle industry chains, and even robotics technology can be directly implemented.

Sounds like "utilitarianism"? But upon closer thought, this logic really holds up.

What is its biggest shortcoming? The proportion of R&D investment is pitifully low. But the question is - isn't the endpoint of R&D implementation? If a mature solution can be obtained directly, why start from scratch and burn money?

Some people might say: "Doesn't this just become a technical appendage? Without its own system, isn't the ceiling quite obvious?"

That's wrong. This statement is fine in a static environment, but we are now in an era of dynamic competition.

Look at the electric vehicle market: a Southeast Asian country was originally going to compete head-on with Japanese cars, but now? It just waits for the upstream supply chain to knock the Japanese down, and then smoothly takes over the technical solutions, winning without having to do anything. The same goes for the communications sector—while others are still struggling with the costs of 5G deployment, it directly adopts the latest infrastructure, and the future network quality may even be stronger than that of some European countries.

What is the key to this gameplay? Geography and timing.

Next door is the world's largest manufacturing center, with a natural strong technological spillover effect. Europe is far away, and they don't have the conditions to learn. Moreover, in the wave of industrial upgrading, there is no need to climb up by oneself—when the upstream eliminates competitors, it conveniently lifts them up along the way.

Of course, this will create a strong dependency—but from a pragmatic perspective, dependency itself is not the issue; the key is whether it can take advantage of the situation to take off. From the results, this path may be more efficient than just focusing on research and development.

So don't underestimate these markets that "lack core technology"; sometimes they take shortcuts and end up running faster.