Taiwan Credit Insight 9: Taiwan’s “Contractor Mindset.”

In recent years, Taiwan has been suffering from economic downturn. Some people pointed out that Taiwan's success caused its downturn. How?

Lately, a school of visionary businesspeople pointed out that Taiwan’s economic downturn was related to a typical contractor mindset in most local management people.

While its education system, business style, and political culture have provided once a valuable platform for contract manufacturing, those golden days were over because the margins in most of the contract manufacturing businesses tended to be around 3% and shrinking these days.

​Currently, the economy embraced a weak climate of innovation because of the contractor mindset (to manufacture rather than to create products), the Confucian values (to obey rather than to breakthrough), and the education system (to go after certificates rather than knowledge).

Various commentaries can be found in the following articles:

Are three-letter acronyms holding Taiwan hostage? By Mark Stocker, Managing Director, DDG:
http://www.ddg.com.tw/en/archives/journal/acronym

Taiwan companies must learn to value communications. By David Green, Communications Strategist, DDG:
http://www.ddg.com.tw/en/archives/journal/valuecommunications

Huaren (means Chinese) design must break free of the contractor mindset. By Keng Liu, the Founder of Bito Design Production Studio, and the Winner of ADC Award:
http://designperspectives.org/en/2015/12/15/keng-liu/

​This Credit Insight is an extract from the book Happy Customers Faster Cash, Taiwan Edition and it is now on sale at Amazon.

This book is a learning tool for people engaged in the credit process. It contains three extensive chapters about credit management, business culture and communication with the focus in Taiwan. A chapter is dedicated to discussing various aspects of Taiwan company credit reports.