Growing army of engineers gives China tech edge

"There are also going to be a lot of resources devoted in China to diseases that affect older people, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and cardiovascular illnesses, because China's population is aging fast. I think medical technology will be a cutting-edge area for China."

Von Zedtwitz says it would be wrong to expect instant breakthroughs since the lead time for scientific development can often take decades.

He cites Tu Youyou, the Chinese pharmacist who was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine last year for developing the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. She began to work in this area in the late 1960s, but the drug only became available in the middle of the last decade, eventually saving millions of lives.

"A breakthrough discovery generally takes about 30 years, certainly in terms of bringing it to the market. So what we are doing now in terms of research and development might not have any impact until 2046," he says.

Von Zedtwitz, whose parents were originally from Germany, was born in Switzerland. He studied computer science at ETH Zurich, a leading technological institution, before an early spell in Asia, working at a research institute in Kyoto, Japan in the mid-1990s. He returned to Switzerland for his doctorate from University of St. Gallen and then moved to Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow.

At 29, he became one of the youngest professors at IMD, one of Europe's top business schools.

In 2002, teaching opportunities came up both in California and Beijing, and he chose the latter.

"There were not many people then who could say they had gone and worked in China," he says of his decision.