Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
GEORGE WYPER: Well I think if you're a US investor, you always think that the great
things are invented here. And that might have been the case maybe 100 years ago. But there
is an extraordinary amount of innovation across a whole variety of products overseas. It could
be in fashion, it certainly could be in technology which is catching up to us overseas. Certainly
some of the internet and gaming companies coming out of China these days are extraordinary.
You can find a company like we found several years ago in Brazil where it's an insurance
company that ensures the Brazilian population for dental care. But it's a unique and much
better model than we have here in the United States. So for example if your IBM, this company
Odonto-prev will come in and insure all of your employees for dental care. They will
then work with the local dentists to provide care and also not only do they provide care,
but also provide all the purchasing power for the dentists that they deal with around
Brazil so they can get the supplies for the dentists at much lower costs, thereby reducing
the cost of the care provided by the dentist to you as an insured. That is a much better
model than we have here in the United States. They've now started taking that model over
to Mexico. So that's an insurance, it's a healthcare innovation which I think is extraordinarily
creative. You can find Straumann in the dental care area. You can find a number of electronics
companies overseas that are extraordinarily innovative. Sometimes they're subsidiaries
of US companies. But more often than not, they're independent companies. So innovation
is no longer confined to the borders of the United States if it ever was. And I think
people are waking up to the fact that there are a lot of very creative managements and
talents overseas.