The price of patience

There's an old saying in business that being early is better than being wrong. But what about being late? Now that (finally) India is positioning itself to capture a larger slice of the global manufacturing pie. Investors will find it worth understanding the peculiar advantages and disadvantages of being a latecomer to the industrial party. Conventional wisdom suggests that latecomers face big obstacles: established competitors, saturated markets, and a steep climb up the technological ladder. Pessimists fear that we're too far behind China. Yet, history tells a different story. Japan's post-war industrial miracle, South Korea's transformation in the 1970s, and China's rise since the 1990s demonstrate how latecomers can turn their position into an advantage. Each succeeded not by copying predecessors but by a