Fewer foreign entrepreneurs say they need the U.S. That’s a problem.

Apple is facing accusations that it copied Chinese innovations in the iPhone 7.  Indeed, China’s smartphone manufacturers released dual-camera systems and handsets without headphone jacks long before Apple did.  And the stickers and animations that Apple is adding to iMessage are a direct knockoff from China’s WeChat.  This is quite a twist from the days when Apple accused the Chinese of copying its inventions.  The reality is that America’s most innovative company in no longer the world’s most innovative company: entrepreneurs all over the world are producing innovations that rival what you see in Silicon Valley.

This is also evidenced in the numbers of billion-dollar technology startups, unicorns, that are sprouting up all over the world.  According to CrunchBase, of the 191 unicorns world wide, 42 are in China and 8 in India.  Yes, more than 105 are in the U.S., but you would hardly have found any blockbuster technology startups in Asia as recently as a decade ago.  Today, Chinese Internet companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent are amongst the most innovative and valuable few in the world.

The world’s entrepreneurs used to dream of coming to Silicon Valley because it was the innovation capital of the world and there were few opportunities elsewhere.  This is no longer the case, as I learned during my recent trip to New Delhi.  There are startup incubators sprouting up all over the country, and the quality of the startups is second only to those in Silicon Valley and China—which are running head to head.

http://wadhwa.com/2016/09/13/fewer-foreign-entrepreneurs-say-they-need-the-u-s-thats-a-problem/