The added expense of co-ordinating research with headquarters and the feverish market for the talented staff quickly soaked up that cost advantage.

与总部之间协调研究带来的成本增加，以及优秀员工面对的活跃人才市场很快消耗掉上述成本优势。

What continued to make India and China attractive as bases for research, however, was their growing domestic markets, and the opportunity to study customers’ desire for subtly (and sometimes radically) different products.

然而，让印度和中国作为研究基地持续具有吸引力的是这两个国家不断扩大的国内市场，以及有机会研究消费者对略微（或非常）不同的产品的意愿。

The realisation that some of the simpler designs developed there could be exported back to established markets underpinned the trend.

企业认识到在那些地方研发出来的一些更简单的设计可以输回到成熟市场，这一认识也支撑了这种趋势。

Since 2003, China and India have topped the table for inbound investment in R&D projects, fDi says.

fDi表示，在2003年以后，中国和印度占据了研发项目外来投资排行榜的顶端。

This year alone, General Electric has flagged investment in an industrial internet “centre of excellence” for Chennai, and Volkswagen has plans for an innovation centre for Beijing, focused on digitisation and self-driving technology.

仅今年，通用电气(GE)就已经预定在印度金奈(Chennai)投资建立一个工业互联网“卓越中心”(centre of excellence)，大众汽车(Volkswagen)计划在北京建立一个着重数字化和自动驾驶技术的创新中心。

Inward investors have spent twice as much in China and created twice as many jobs over the past 13 years than in the third-placed US.

在过去13年中，外来投资者对中国的投资是对排在第三位的美国的两倍，在中国创造的工作机会也是在美国的两倍。

Chinese and Indian multinationals have also borrowed western rivals’ original logic by themselves investing in R&D centres abroad. Huawei, for instance, has bet on Canada and Scandinavia, where the skills legacy of Nortel, Nokia and Ericsson persists.

中国和印度的跨国公司也借鉴了西方竞争对手的原始思路，在海外投资建立研发中心。比如，华为押注了加拿大和斯堪的纳维亚，这些地方还有着北电网络(Nortel)、诺基亚(Nokia)和爱立信(Ericsson)遗留下来的技术传统。

Agility and customer engagement now complement the rigid approach that relied on white-coated boffins in sterile laboratories. In Frugal Innovation, Prof Prabhu and Navi Radjou criticise the old industrial R&D model that “values perfect solutions over general usefulness”.

过去的企业研发依赖无菌实验室里穿着白大褂的研究人员，现在，灵活性和“接触客户”已经成为这种僵硬模式的补充。在《节约式创新》(Frugal Innovation)中，普拉布教授和纳维•拉德友(Navi Radjou)批评旧的工业研发模式“比起普遍实用性更看重完美的解决方案”。

They recount, for instance, how two Fujitsu engineers had to join Japanese mandarin farmers in the fields to identify flaws in HQ’s assumptions about which technology was worth developing.

比如，他们讲述了两名富士通(Fujitsu)工程师的故事：为了找出总部关于哪种技术值得开发的假设中存在的缺陷，他们得跟种植柑橘的日本农民一起下到田间地头。

Here, then, is a chance for Apple, the Chinese R&D late-comer. Its overall “designed in California, assembled in China” philosophy is unlikely to change. But Apple already has 9,000 staff in China.

因此，这就是较晚在中国建立研发中心的苹果的一个机会。苹果的总体理念“加州设计，中国组装”不太可能改变。但苹果已经在中国雇佣了9000名员工。

Half work in its stores, gaining insights into how local customers use their devices that could be applied more widely. Mr Cook says the new centre will unite Apple’s Chinese engineering and operating teams.

其中一半的人在苹果门店中工作，了解到当地消费者的种种值得推广的使用习惯。库克表示，新研发中心将整合苹果在中国的工程师团队和运营团队。

To stay ahead of rivals, he should tell his researchers there to leave their labs and embed themselves in the shops.

如果苹果想要继续领先于竞争对手，库克就应该告诉苹果的研究人员：走出实验室，深入苹果门店。