For long, Asia has primarily thrived by adapting western technologies to local markets. But going ahead, this need to change if Asia wants to accelerate away from the low cost OEM trap and thus innovation and strong brand leadership becomes the key factor to drive better margins.

Huawei Technologies, the telecom equipment company from China, spends more than 10% of its revenues on R&D, while Samsung spends more than 8% of its revenue on R&D. They serve as examples of Asian companies which focus strongly on innovation.

Asian companies need to invest substantially more in research and development and come up with new and proprietary technologies to survive amongst the impending competition.