As Nisbett had noted, people in the West tended to focus on a specific goal and believed that if you could pour yourself into advancing it, you could change the world around you. It was part of the entrepreneurialism that made Silicon Valley not just a location but an attitude that fueled innovation. “In China,” Professor He said, “we see everything moving in cycles. Like the signs of the zodiac, we believe that life is a circle and that everything will come back to its original point at some time in the future.” It led people in China to look backward as well as forward and to focus more on
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